Sunday, January 28, 2007

Rainbow, CA (in the snow)

Well, I had a free day yesterday and decided that Taz needed to see some snow. I had been watching the weather and decided that the snow level was low enough to go climb at Rainbow!

I had a great trip, but when I got there, it started to remind me of a experience I had in Rock Creek. I need to buy some snow-shoes :)

First when I got there, I pulled into the usual 'parking' area, only to find out it was completley iced over and my car got stuck in the snow. (2wd yota pickup with hard street tyres). I was fortunatley smart enough to use some towels to gain enough momentum to get out of my prediciment.

After wasting a whole crapload of energy getting my car out, I decided to head over to the Jawbone area. I warmed up on the short slope and bulge next to the jawbone boulder. I wanted to get on Ishmael, but there was ice up at the top, so I figured it could wait.

I started to get on the 'evil arete' but got shutdown because (lame excuse to come...) my shoes were wet ;). I walked over to the other arete of this boulder and found a cool technical crimping problem with GREAT feet that I aptly named 'Righteous Arete' (v5). Lynn and Paul put up 'evil arete' because it was evil and had no feet, so I named this 'Righteous arete' because god gave it good feet :)

The rest of the day I spent hiking around with the dogs and trying this crimper dyno thing that was pretty fun and I almost got.

All in All, a great trip and fun day :)

(update)
Forgot to mention, that it looked like someone had done a sit-start to Ishmael

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Black Plague (v6) or Pinkey Paralasys?

Well, a project I had been working on at Mortor Rock finally went, I dunno if this had been done before, the holds I used seemed to be used as gastons on two different problems rather then sidepulls for this 'double arete' bulge problem.

The problem starts just under 'the wave' start on some underclings and uses the first few jugs of 'the wave' to gain two sidepulls to use as a double arete. You then work your way up the bulge to some sharp slopers and topout, the problem has some cool knee-barring techniques. Topping out straight up over the sharp slopers probably goes at like v7, while if you topout right or left on better holds probably goes at v6.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

HP40, AL

working moves on Popeye (v5)


Well, on a trip to visit the parents in Georgia, I planned on trying to hitup some of the local bouldering and the classic Horse Pens 40 in Alabama.

The bouldering there is awesome, the rock is bullet hard sandstone, and some of the stuff has little quartz pieces embedded, while other is smooth as glass.

I did some of the classic problems; Bum Boy, Popeye, Hammerhead witch all were great problems with good moves on them. I also got on a couple problems that weren't so great; like Boy Scout Route witch seemed a most contrived problem and a couple v2's that felt more like VB even in my tennies. I even put up a cool new problem out there that requires a huge shouldery move off the bat then some cool moves with a comitting heel hook up an arete, aptly named 'Keebler's Arete' after my family helped with the FA :)

All in all, I really liked this place. I don't know if it would be worth a trip to go to JUST HP40, but a trip to hit-up all the bouldering in the south would be well worth it. This resolved my past experiences with sandstone at castle rock, and HP40 makes castle a choss pile of crap.