gangwando climbing frenzy

[punchy]

wow. after being bummed in the early days of last week due to a deluge of rain, we've managed to make up for the lack of climbing with a frenzy. on thursday, the sokcho crew (consisting of jenn, aka. kogooma, andrew and his wife sylvie and i) did a morning mission to ahgulbawi. with only fifteen routes, that place never ceases to entertain us. there are still two routes there i've yet to tick. there's not much steep at ahgulbawi, so when the climbing gets hard, that usually means it gets thin. andrew owned up and polished off his redpoint of a pumpy 12c that had been haunting his dreams since his last futile attempts. on friday, andrew and i did an early morning mission to sotuwang falls. 10 min drive. 20 min trail run. 3 hours of stellar multipitch sport climbing with views of nearby ulsanbawi beckoning us with her flaring joshua-tree-esque cracks. sweetness. saturday put us back at ahgulbawi. the pitches may be short, but if you climb enough of them, you get your moneys worth. i guess that'd be the 5 chun in gas to get there. on sunday we were on the road pretty early, heading to ganhyun. the place was a zoo when we got there and even after heading to one of the upper walls, we were still relegated to waiting. some multipitching got us away from the crowds and we climbed a stellar line at the top of one of the 5.10's to the left of the steeps. a long sustained 11d with finger locks and a balancy mantle. a thing of sheer beauty. highly recommended. by the time we got down from a few more of the higher pitches, almost everyone had cleared out save for the waygooks, which included the crew from ilsan. nice to see you guys out there. we burned ourselves out on the steeps and made a side trip to chuncheon to feast on some dalkkalbi before heading home to sokcho. a day of rest yesterday was followed by another visit to ahgulbawi today. we spent the morning recking our tips putting up a direct line to a bolted 12a whose crux was move after move on a sequence of finger friendly drilled pockets. we sorted the buisness out and both redpointed it without so much as toeing a drilled hold. it was both satisfying and saddening to see a drilled line go without using any of the drilled holds. a grade or two harder, and a hell of a lot sharper, but a much purer line. after that effort, we could barely climb a 10 without being reduced to whining at how painful all the holds felt without skin on our tips. tomorrow's a restday. thursday we'll head to sotuwang again for another long route. then friday off. the weekend... who knows? but it'll probably involve climbing.