Peanut Butter & Jam 5.9, Chocolate Rocks

Climbed on December 10, 2022

Fun Rating: One of the JHAT Classics

It’s been a very difficult couple of weeks in the Klein household, and while I’m not the most consistent with this blog at the best of times (understatement of the year,) I have found it insurmountably difficult to put digital pen to digital paper of late. My wife woke up last week with a badly swollen arm, concerning but there’s a lot of things that can cause that. So began our #AmericanHealthCareJourney as we were shuffled from urgent care to imaging to the ER to the hospital to surgery to recovery to home and a week of not being able to lift her arm above her head. Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, or something like it. Fuck. Anticoagulants for 3 months, no climbing outside because of the risk of brain bleeds if she hit her head, then a potential surgery that would have her laid up for another 6. For the two of us who climb every weekend together this is about as major a disruption to our life as we could envision. I mean we met in the gym back in Chicago for fuck’s sake. I’m doing everything I can to make this less horrible for her but it’s difficult and scary and it’s tough to grieve the year we thought we were going to have while still holding on in all other areas of our life. There goes the summer season of “climestone” up on Charleston. There goes at least the first half of the Vegas season next fall and likely into next year. I am currently a cauldron of thoughts and worries and emotions and I don’t really know what comes next. Focus on other sports? Running? Yoga? Can she even have her arms above her head for that? I don’t know. 

I hope it’s obvious that my concern and care is far more for her than myself, but I can’t speak for her, I can only barf out my own thoughts and feelings on this blog and so here we are. It’s hard to allow myself to feel bad when we were so lucky that the blood clot that caused her arm to swell was in a vein and not an artery. When we were so lucky that we didn’t wake up with her struggling to breath with a pulmonary embolism. When we were so lucky that the surgery went well with no complications thus far. When we were so lucky that Jen, my sister in law, was able to come out and was an absolute lifesaver for us in terms of us being able to feel just a little normal right after she got home. I don’t know, this is something that I’m grappling with and will be for awhile. In the meantime here’s a post about climbing or whatever:

I think a lot about climbing, progression, ability level, and perception in climbing. I’m sure it won’t surprise readers of this blog, as this is essentially an exercise in over-thinking about things that don’t really need to be over-thought. In this thinking, I spend a lot of time focusing on myself, stuff like:

“Am I good enough?” No.

“Am I strong enough?” No.

“Am I climbing cool enough things?” No.

“Am I mentally resilient enough? No.

“Am I having fun?” No.

I often find myself mulling, as I’m sure many climbers do, about the grades that I climb and whether I could be climbing harder than I do (on paper.) This is something that I feel more strongly with trad than sport, partially because I’m more comfortable pushing grades on bolts than gear usually, probably not all that surprising and certainly how a plurality of other climbers feel. One aspect, however, that I think on regularly and that may not be shared quite so widely, is how the JHAT itself has had an impact on me and my climbing journey.

Cryptic, I know. It seems obvious to me that the routes you’ve climbed in the past inform and influence the routes you climb in the future in a myriad of ways. Remembering that one spooky move you pulled through can result in you being a more confident leader the next time something feels insecure. Taking a big safe whip can give you the confidence in your gear to go for something you’re not sure of. On the other hand, climbing old sandbagged routes can inform your expectations of what you may experience on certain grades in ways that may not be reflected usually in the real world.



I find myself, after completing a route on the JHAT, thinking “wow, that was crazy for 5.whatever.” Nadia’s Nine being one of the first 5.10 routes I did, and it being considered a 5.10a, had a dramatic influence in my expectations of other 5.10 routes when I’m preparing for them. To contrast with that, someone doing Plan F or Aliens Have Landed may learn to expect a different type of experience on climbs that are “hard” for them. Rinse and repeat for every other grade of climb on the tour. Stilgar’s is 5.8? Whoa. Sandy Hole was 5.6 originally? Hilarious. Now I know that nothing in RRC is like the Valley or Jtree or Tahquitz or anything like that, but we can only compare things that we’ve experienced and when you compare Y2K to something like La Muerte you end up with “5.10” that is universes apart.

Justin approaching the Crag

Waffle and waffle and waffle and we’re finally to the part where I talk about PB&J. 

I’ve talked about climbs up at Chocolate Rocks before. I love that crag for a variety of reasons, the stellar rock quality (for the most part) the remote seclusion (for the most part) and the predominance of Herbst routes endear it to me a great deal more than most. I remember looking at the guidebook and seeing how many routes Herbst put up there in the past and being incredibly excited to hike up there and see it for myself. The crag is visible from the road if you know where to look, and its appearance from afar is deceiving. It doesn’t look particularly climbable and from below it’s hard to make out where the belayer would be able to stand comfortably. There’s also the matter of getting there. I’ve described it in the past, but it involves a long hike up a fairly moderate hill but the lack of traffic going there means the trail is meandering and poorly marked at the best of times. While there are no real opportunities to cliff out or get fully lost, deciding which of the gullies is the most efficient way to reach the crag requires a decent amount of trial and error, mostly error when I’m involved of course.

Once there, you’re met with a very pleasant surprise: beautiful chocolate stone (surprise surprise) with some incredible looking cracks to climb. I’ve reviewed Spinach on the blog in the past and if it were in a more reasonably accessible crag I believe it would be spoken of as a must-climb for leaders in the 10- range. There are just so many solid routes there: The Gallows, Zacker Cracker, Combination Corner, and then of course we come to the star of today’s show Peanut Butter & Jam.

Maybe the coolest picture of me climbing.

I play magic the gathering (yeah…nerd alert, I’m sure you’re shocked) and there’s a common tongue-in-cheek but also true saying that goes, “reading the card explains the card.” I think PBJ is very much like that, the name explains the climb. You’re gonna be jamming on this one. Starting with broken but interesting vertical terrain that leads to a loose section just before a break, the climb looks intimidating from the ground. The bottom broken section climbs fairly easy, probably around 5.7 or 5.8, then an interesting pull gets the climber established on the main face. 

The meat of the climb isn’t super long, but it’s long enough. The face begins with a very pleasant section of climbing through a hand sized crack, twos to fours. Following this is the offwidth section. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve done this route, so I can’t speak for whether there are the usual RRC face holds that can allow stronger folks to burl their way around the wide crack on the outside. I did what I always do, and squeezed. Chicken wings, armbars, and bicep locks along with some heel-toe camming will see you through this section and get you to the top. It is sustained and thuggy, but the rock is very high quality and doesn’t have the occasional teeth that you can encounter to make offwidths truly uncomfortable.

I absolutely loved this climb for all of its constituent parts. The broken bits, the pull to the face, the jamming and the offwidth above. It has something for everyone, and protects incredibly well the whole way. I would highly recommend anyone looking to experience some solid OW to do the hike up to Chocolate Rocks and give this one a try. Then go do Combination Corner. Then do Spinach. Then maybe do The Gallows if you hate yourself the way I do. There’s just so much up there in such a condensed area, it’s a great 1-2 day crag depending on how hard you get after it, and you can be confident you won’t be waiting in line for any of these fantastic routes. 

I don’t really have a pithy conclusion to this one. So I’ll leave you with a recommendation to be grateful for your health if you have it, and enjoy your hobbies as fully as you’re able to while you’re capable of doing them. Eventually there will be a moment where that is put into crystal focus for you, and I hope that for you it goes as well as it can. Be safe and be well.

Petroglyphs on the approach.