If you want to experience Rumney at it's best (or maybe worst?), then look no further than Muscle Beach. The climb starts easily enough, passing a roof. After the roof, the weirdness starts. Expect terrible footholds, terrible hand holds, and a strange feeling that you are still on the wall despite the fact that you really aren't pulling on anything. Then you may realize that you have engaged muscles you never knew you had just to stay on the wall. Then you need to clip, but you realize how futile this proposition really is. Then you grab the draw and/or fall.
Like many other Rumney routes, Muscle Beach does yield once you figure out the contortions, subtleties, and general weirdness required. When you send, you are amazed at how hard it used to feel. That left kneepad didn't hurt though, as you ended up improvising that desperation kneebar at the top. You would have fallen otherwise, but you didn't. You sent. You must be psyched.
Location
Muscle Beach starts to the right of Butt Bongo and is the right route that starts off the raised ledge on the left side of Waimea.
Protection
Bolts. Muscle Beach is one of the few routes at Rumney for which a left (rather than right) kneepad is useful.
The next to the last bolt is missing the nut and hanger. Apparently the thread is stripped closest to the rock. Does anyone know how to re-tap the thread or does it have to be cut and a new one put in?
I'm psyched for a redpoint attempt and sure there are others as well.
It will have to be replaced with a glue in. I'll let Ward know and maybe he can do it, as my drill is stashed somewhere and I'm not planning on being at Rumney with the free time for a few weeks, unless the bugs get hideous elsewhere. Those bolts Mallory used are usually tough to snap and require a lot of beating back and forth to break before you can tap the remains back in the hole and patch it. Don't tap it in before snapping it off, or it may bottom out and be hard to do a nice patch job
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