Heel and Toe

Wedauwoo is about 16 miles from Laramie, which makes for about a 20 minute door to climbing time. In 1999, I also did the trip on bike a couple of times, which involves about a 1500' elevation gain, and can be done on some pretty neat trails south of the Interstate (the Windmill Trail). We climbed here a lot, and enjoyed it. Tape is pretty much a must, since the rock is even rougher than at J-Tree, and large camming units are also very, very useful. Heel and toe technique is also very handy, and I can say the guidebook is appropriately named after it.

As customary, I worked my way up the grades. Here are some of the climbs we did (or not).

• Foolishness (5.4) -- way harder, I backed off, as it was the first climb of the trip
• Walt's Wall (5.4) -- good climb for this grade, the Left Exit (5.5) last pitch is probably better than the regular route. Both climb a low angle slab, but the regular route is not bolted
• Edwards Crack ** (5.7-) -- one of the classic climbs in the area, really nice, has very good pro. I wasn't sure how to get past the final exit move (an offwidth through a roof), but with a #4 Camalot placed in close proximity, I could work out the move without getting too freaked.
• Jaquot's Face * (5.7) and Edwards Right Exit (5.5) -- an alternative finish to the Edwards Crack offwidth. There is one more bolt on the face than shown in the guidebook. The short Right Exit dihedral is nice, but I didn't think my pro was totally bomber. We didn't do the Left Exit (5.4) variation, which may be the easiest way to top out.
• Glen's Crack (5.4) -- awkward, not recommended
• Cornelius * (5.5) -- very nice finger crack on a slab. Got some good practice in placing some of the smaller pieces, while using friction for my feet.
• EO Layback * (5.5) -- very nice. Stan led this, I think it was his first trad lead, and actually pretty bold for a first lead (no ledges to stand on).
• EO Friction (5.5) -- "easy" friction. It didn't feel easy until I got to the anchors. It had three bolts for 50 feet of climbing.
• Slat (5.7) -- good moves, but too short
• Stinkzieg *** (5.6) -- another area classic, has great variation of moves, and all in all a great climb. I backed off the first pitch, where I stupidly tried to climb through an off-width chimney, after about 20 minutes of thrashing, I didn't have it in me to do the balancy stemming move required to get past that point (on the outside of the chimney). Stan did do the move on lead, finished the pitch and brought me up. After a small conference, he decided he didn't want to keep leading. Lucky, lucky me. The second pitch was one of the nicer ones in recent memory, a fist-size crack, followed by a layback / hand crack. Bomber jams and bomber pro all the way.