Cove Beach Climbing, Sandstone and Granite?
So my friend Michael (I'll try and get him on a blog of his own), managed to send Mt. Hood on Wednesday, and told me we were climbing on Thursday. So I got my stuff together and woke up early in the morning (early for me is before noon). So I got up around 9'ish and headed to Marymoor to meet up with the rest of the group. I figured we were headed to middle earth, but being such a nice day, we decided to go to Cove Beach (not quite sure on the name, but you can view the map of the place using the Mapquest link I've provided).
Okay, so it's a beach. Much better than being in the middle of the woods, or so we thought. After getting down to the beach we launch ourselves onto the one problem presented us by Terry (the guy that invited Michael). He mentioned how the problem was a classic (sounds good), and that there were many more problems on the beach (even better). After about 2 hours of hitting the classic, we started thinking about moving, but Terry wasn't quite done with the classic yet. He was determined to hit it. Michael had already made a good run of it and made up some elimination problems (taking out moves) that he had also completed. I had pretty much decided this V3/4 wasn't going to be sent by one such as myself today and started working some one offs.
Terry, spent another 2 hours I believe on that particular problem and I did some scrambling up and down the rock facing the beach. Most of the problems here were 5.2 to 5.4 (don't think these have a V rating really, and most of the scrambles could be sustained for hundreds of feet). I did manage to find a couple of additional problems, probably V2 or higher, and probably some easier stuff that I didn't even bother trying. Eventually Terry got tired of his route and we headed further down the beach.
This was actually kind of nice, but most of the rocks were less than usable. Most of the rocks were barnacled upwards of 5 or 6 feet (we got there during low tide), and would have only peaked about 2 feet above the water. This didn't leave much in the form of bouldering space. After getting a 1/4 mile down the beach we found a nice sandstone arete, a couple of oddly placed granite boulders with upwards of V8+ problems, and a slab that I had fun with. Had we a rope, these areas would have been more interesting, but we didn't. After hitting the arete for as much as we'd care to risk, we headed back to the car. A full day of climbing over.
Once up to the railroad tracks (passed these coming down), we found at least 4 or 5 good incut routes (an incut is where the railroad came through band blasted through or incut some rock that was in their way). Honestly, some of these routes would have been much more fun than the routes down on the beach. If we ever do go back (thinking probably not), then we'll have to investigate the woods more, especially along the tracks where everything has already been cleared and a good crash zone is provided.
Want to find out where we were? Well, we were just inside of Larabee State Park (you'll see it on the map provided by the below link). Head down from the road passed the railroad tracks and down to the beach. We again have GPS coords, but Michael has the device and so I'll have to wait until he gives them to me. I'll probably get a GPS device of my own by the next trip.
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/print.adp?mapdata=p5kqyoo6yZIkn3PcLCfoi%252bqtGPrTPPMMVnjPEbYFFHMRZpKgM9jsvm1wd%252fWbWaCbcHqgbKB0BmsTMJaiLJo7SnHBFUVBBTvJ2yZnG65jM4ErSh%252bnin1o7%252ftq3non5JxVROqco6jB%252b6b6J141Qf1UmIYdkV0fvHeO32f38vPkVhVJT5O6RHXdVFiGErKoVjNBlVB0JaGNjmGnVWzNocTOpIbXUAXU0D7Wy9zn7oMrBhA%253d