Bouldering in the middle of suburbia

Who would have thought one might find semi-suitable climbing in an abandoned pasture, surrounded by a checkerboard of housing developments? Well, it never would have went this way had the original plan gone through. I met with Stephen, who through Facebook we managed to finally get a day when we could both climb. Stephen just graduated last summer with his master from WVU, where I had met him, he's a strong climber and a real dude. In fact, he even coined the term "beer flash", which is when someone drinks some beer, then uses that beer propulsion to climb a bouldering problem, it is sure to frequent the pages of the next climbing mag.

Anyway, the original plan was to go to a climbing paradise near Lake Tahoe and play around placing gear on some trad routes. Stephen overbooked himself and needed to be back home in the early evening, so we reasoned to climb in Vacaville, 78 miles from my place in Half Moon Bay and a bit closer for Stephen coming from Sacramento. For those who don't know it, Vacaville is in the heat-blasted central valley, east of San Francisco and I am pretty sure it means "place of cows" in Spanish. It was a strange park, atop a knoll, overlooking seemingly endless cookie-cutter houses that sparkled from their backyard swimming pools.

The climbing was decent, a half-dozen boulders strewn about. I don't have any photos of us climbing, but I do of the arete of the rock we played around with and the eery view of suburbia in the backyard. No place to go without an automobile here!

Unfortunately I picked up some damn poison oak while I was there, made worse by a light sunburn and sweat. I don't know that I will return to the Vacaville boulders, the commute back to the coast was so miserable, I80 near Berkeley and trying to cross the Bay Bridge is ALWAYS a damn yardsale. However, it was nice to see some familiarity from West Virginia, I hope to climb mountains with Stephen this summer.