Muscle Beach

Post by **Myke Dronez** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:01 am

Tried to get out Muscle Beach on Saturday but we could never find the place. Three different interpretations of the approach beta all led us to the same wrong location. I think I found the crags location on the topo map- just wondering if there was something we missed as far as the approach beta. We made a sharp left off the main dirt road and could never find another 'logging road'- instead we ended up in some large boulders. The cliffline that we did find had a few doable cracks but was not by any stretch MB. We did run across a large timber rattler out there and got to see some gun totin' hillbillies gettin shut down by the man so all was not lost.

Post by **SCIN** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:13 am

Did you use the little map thing in the 2nd edition? I can't remember if I stuck it in the 1st edition.

Post by **Wes** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:28 am

Are you sure you are at the correct parking area? I have heard of a couple people ending up at the junkyard because they used the wrong parking area.

Once you have the right parking beta, it isn't too hard to find. Once you walk across the concrete foot bridge, turn right and follow the creek for a bit, the trail will sorta head off left away from the creek, and you will hit a little stand on trees, where one big tree has fallen across the trail. Work around this, and you will see a faint trail on the left, going through some thick brush. Take this, and once through the brush the trail will open up onto an old logging road, which is the trail to muscle. If you cross a small steam before turning left, you have gone to far. Take the 2nd right, and head uphill to the crag.

Post by **Myke Dronez** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:46 am

The concrete bridge was solid with drainage pipes running through-not a foot brigde, you drive over the top of it, sort of like a dam. The boulders we found were chalked and obviously had problems- it's funny how the same approach beta can be coincidentally applied to many different areas. Just looked for the downed trees, logging road etc.

Post by **Crankmas** » Mon May 19, 2008 11:12 am

sounds like you went too far and hiked up to Junkyard???

Post by **ahab** » Mon May 19, 2008 11:31 am

dronez, if you look carefully at the sat. imagery you can see the dam that we parked at (you can even see the camp area of the gun totin' hillbillies). looks like that's the parking beta for Backside, and those are probably the cracks that we found.
apparently we drove 1.4 miles past the muscle beach parking, hence the confounding and mysterious '2nd logging road' we never could find.

Post by **Don McGlone** » Mon May 19, 2008 12:11 pm

Beautiful creature.

Post by **Wes** » Mon May 19, 2008 12:18 pm

Yep, you drove too far. And what you found is the junkyard, a bouldering area.

Myke Dronez wrote:The concrete bridge was solid with drainage pipes running through-not a foot brigde, you drive over the top of it, sort of like a dam. The boulders we found were chalked and obviously had problems- it's funny how the same approach beta can be coincidentally applied to many different areas. Just looked for the downed trees, logging road etc.

Post by **ahab** » Mon May 19, 2008 12:28 pm

wes, if one were to continue hiking in a NEasterly direction (uphill and to the right) from the junkyard and come upon some dirty lookin' (but climbable) cracks, what area would that be? frustrated from hiking around for hours and not climbing anything, we resorted to putting up a short dihedral that felt something like 5.6 - 5.7. Is this the 'Backside Wall'?

the rattler pictured above is not the actual snake we encountered. looked just like that tho and pretty intimidating, but i think he was more interested in catchin' some rays rather than messing w/ us.

Post by **Wes** » Mon May 19, 2008 12:34 pm

Could be, depends on how far right you ended up. There is a pretty big chunk of undocumented cliff between Backside and Lumpy wall though, with rumors of routes here and there in that area. The big thing to look for at backside is Handcrack my ass, a splitter (at the top) wide crack, that you can see from the road. If you keep walking on the logging road for a while, and take a logging road left after a couple big boulders, you will pass near Major's pinnacle, and can drop left into lumpy wall, or continue along some more undocumented cliff, with a few pretty sweet looking cracks.

ahab wrote:wes, if one were to continue hiking in a NEasterly direction (uphill and to the right) from the junkyard and come upon some dirty lookin' (but climbable) cracks, what area would that be? frustrated from hiking around for hours and not climbing anything, we resorted to putting up a short dihedral that felt something like 5.6 - 5.7. Is this the 'Backside Wall'?

the rattler pictured above is not the actual snake we encountered. looked just like that tho and pretty intimidating, but i think he was more interested in catchin' some rays rather than messing w/ us.