8 Routes on the Hulk in 2 weeks
Almost 3 years ago, I walked pass this rock formation on a backpacking trip in the Sierra and looked up in awe at a team of climbers making their way up the steep face. This 1200 foot piece of stone is called the Incredible Hulk and a picture of it has lived as the background of my phone ever since that trip. I was new to climbing at the time, but I vowed to return and climb the thing when I was ready. I’ve hyped up the Hulk in my head over the past years but after spending 8 days out of the past 2 weeks camped at the base, I can confirm the hype is real! Cedar and I hiked out there initially and climbed 4 routes in 3 days, which included an onsight of Tradewinds and 3 hour romp up Red Dihedral in the same day. We climbed Positive Vibrations on a day when there wasn’t a single other party on the wall and managed to snag a quick lap on Sunspot Dihedral before heading out. We came back the next week to climb Wind Shear, a route stacked with 7 pitches of 5.12 and 7 pitches of 5.11, and each managed to onsight all but a few. We went for a looong nighttime hike under the full moon and climbed a route called Beeline the next day which turned out to be quite bad. After all four of Cedar’s gallon Ziplock bags full of home baked banana bread were consumed, he headed out of the backcountry and left me to socialize with other climbers camped at the base. That night, Thomas Burkowski hiked in, and we set off the next morning to attempt The Venturi Effect for our first climb together. Venturi is perhaps the king line on the Hulk and we cruised up the route in a leisurely 8 hours. No send for either of us, but I only had two falls, both at the very end of each crux pitch. With my muscles completely worked, we agreed to climb the Polish route the next day where I was encouraged to link 70 meters of splitter offwidth into one mega pitch. We repelled some fixed lines on a futuristic project adjacent to the route and hiked out for the hot springs. The last two weeks have been magical but today is finally a much needed rest day.
