Saturday, December 31, 2011

Bushwacking into 2012

It's been over a month since I've posted. The holidays were pretty busy and I haven't had many opportunities to climb for a while. With cold weather coming I'm excited for ice climbing. There's been a lot of moisture in the last 4 weeks and the soils ought to be saturated. With cold weather here seepage should be good for a while.

Today I did manage to convince Jon and Angela to scope out ice development local to Fredericton (I failed on dragging them all the way to Parlee Brook in the freezing rain). We checked out Jocelyn Brook falls and a creek just beside it.
I liked the colour contrast... although admittedly the water looked like pee
Nothing yet... just an incredible volume of water rushing over it. After seeing this we didn't even bother heading to Hayes falls... which would surely be more suitable for kayaking right now.

We killed the rest of the day hiking into some small crag Jon discovered near Crabbe Mt. years ago. Although it was a choss heap the day wasn't totally lost... we did find a sweet smashed up car which someone had trundled off the top of said choss heap.  You ask who would do something like that?  I answer who wouldn't?
Just a few nicks to buff-out.  In Cuba, it'd be on the road in a day with cheap Russian parts!

Happy New Year readers... I hope to find lots to write about in 2012. Cheers.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Utopia

Over the weekend Adam and I spent a day checking out a cliff west of Lake Utopia and the Bonnie River. I'd had this spot, and another just north of it marked on my Potential Rock maps for some time but I hadn't seen it on the ground yet.

Access is no issue as it is public lands and a passable road leads to a quarry pile within spitting distance of the climbing. The approach is a 3 minute walk on level ground. Nice!



With two walls summing to about the size of Sunnyside, this place has some real potential. The rock is granite of similar character to the Upper Tier and varies from friction slab to radically overhung. 'Utopia', as it's been coined, will probably sport some of the most athletic lines in the province... eventually.

Development will be a challenge on the really overhanging stuff but a significant amount of work has already been done. Anchors are starting to be installed and several lines have been scrubbed and have seen top ropes. A slab line has been bolted and led already.

For our part, we spent the better part of the day establishing a climber's trail. Please try to use it. It has been flagged/blazed and some marker stones cleared. Henni also helped in a big way to fell some trees which were obstructing the cliffs. With a better clearing it should dry more. We also bushwacked to the top, and Adam established an anchor over what will be an outstanding crack line. Fingers to hands it is about 15 degrees overhung. I bushwacked to a good spruce at the pinnacle of the overhanging prow shown below and cleared it for an anchor. A fixed line skirting the top might be a wise idea. I did not rap it however as it didn't look like my 60m rope made it to ground. A 70m would work for sure.

This tries... but doesn't do justice to just how overhung this prow is.
I think there's a good crew of developers working here and projects are being staked out. Given the huge effort required to establish some of these lines it might be a good idea to map out who's working on what?

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Yosemite Report (Part 3 - the Bail)

We woke up early on the morning of the third day. Although I thought we were off to an alpine start it seemed as if we were not. Before we had the first pitch of the morning led a party was fast on us. A kiwi by the name of Mayan reached our ledge and we offered to share a belay. Adam tried to spark a bit of conversation with her as she brought up her second but she seemed distracted to me. Fair enough... and I didn't think much of it. Later on she cruised the pitch above us at light speed in an attempt to quickly pass us. Adam asked me whether I recognized her.

'No... should I?'

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Yosemite Report (Part 2 - Rescue)

I purposely left out a big part of the story in part 1. It seemed big enough to get it's own post.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon on that second day we saw a helicopter approaching. It climbed above us and hovered around making several passes near the Great Roof high up on the Nose. We couldn't see any nearby climbers so we figured that it was perhaps doing training maneuvers? At the same time that didn't really add up; the day was windy, and there were plenty of climbers on the wall so why risk knocking loose rocks on us for the sake of training? A few minutes passed and the helicopter eventually moved off, landing in the meadow below. I continued doing whatever it was that I was doing (probably hauling).

About 15 minutes later a voice came booming up from below. Someone was on a bullhorn in the valley. They started asking for a party on the Nose a pile of questions, indicating that they should use hand signals for yes / no responses. (I guess there must have been someone up there). They asked some basic stuff before questioning them about leader falls, and the extent of injuries suffered. From the conversation I gathered that a leader fell and somehow injured a hand.

A bit of time passed and I remember that it was starting to get late in the day. The sun was low and the wind started up by the time I saw the helicopter re-starting it's engine. This time it carried a YOSAR ranger dangling below it swinging in the breeze. It made it's way back to the spot it had been earlier. This time however it was much closer to the face. From our vantage point, the spinning blades seemed as if they were grazing the wall. It was impressive. It hovered there fighting the wind for about 10 minutes it seemed. I remember thinking that if the pilot blew it... it would mean fiery metal death raining down on us (Nice).
The YOSAR chopper lifts off from the valley with a climbing ranger in tow.
The helicopter moves into position.
And the rescue pick-off is underway. Look closely and there's a big helicopter hugging that big cliff!
Fortunately, this pilot had skills. I'd come to find out several days later that the dangling ranger had to throw a bean-bag in at the stranded climbers connected to a rope used to haul him into their anchor. He apparently had 7 of these bean-bag lines and the climbers fumbled the first 6. I'd also learn that the leader somehow managed to sever his thumb clean off in a fall. It somehow got tangled in a sling... although I have a hard time picturing the circumstances.

The most impressive and improbable thing about the whole event is yet to come. We quickly found out on the wall that any object not connected firmly to your party is lost. We managed to drop a cam, a wag-bag, and a helmet-cam (most of which were supposedly attached). Absolutely defying this universal rule was that instead of disappearing into space, the severed thumb somehow dropped and landed on a small ledge near the party's belayer. It was collected up and the rescue was completed in quick enough time such that the climber apparently had it reattached! Almost unbelievable but such is what we heard. Only in Yosemite could a big-wall climber have a reasonable expectation of a rescue 2000' off the ground and such a successful outcome. Anywhere else and the consequences would surely have been very serious.

Anyway... an impressive show thanks to the YOSAR team.

...the story about our climb to be continued tomorrow. 

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Yosemite Report (Part 1 - El Cap)

We didn't send :(

El Cap (the big tower on the left)
Urgg... that was difficult to write. I thought I'd put that up front since this could be a long post. It probably wasn't news to anyone anyway. It was still a memorable climb nevertheless.

Organizing the gear and packing the haul bags
We packed up the haulbags and made our way to El Cap to scope out a potential line. The decision was made quickly. There was a slow-moving soloist on Zodiac, and the topos for Lurking Fear & the Nose were missing. As such... Triple Direct was the target. It was almost absent of climbers at the time, had a trivial 10 minute flat approach, and offered 31 pitches of climbing at moderate aid grades. It follows the first 10 pitches of the Salate' wall, the middle pitches of the Muir wall, and the final pitches of the Nose. It seemed doable and totally classic.

Carrying in heavy loads.

We humped in the loads Sunday afternoon and shortly thereafter Adam was freeing the stout 5.10c first pitch. The aim was simply to have our food and bags hauled to the top of pitch 1 by nightfall, and to sleep back on the ground. It all went well that evening, and we were tucked into our sleeping bags on time ready for an alpine start in the morning.

Sleeping at El Cap is a bit surreal... You really don't sleep; there's simply too many things competing for your attention. All night long your mind wanders and your eyes are drawn to the twinkling lights off in the distance. The lights aren't stars though; rather they are the headlamps of parties far above you moving around sporadically as they set up their ledges, cook their dinners, and in some cases... continue climbing through the night. All the while you are listening to the deep grunts El Cap climbers yell at each other.

'OOoooohh ooh oohhh'  (imagine the sound that you'd get from crossing a bear with a gorilla)

Morning comes at about 4:30 a.m. We get out of our bivi bags, and shake dozens of sliverfish off our clothes (the place was infested|). After a quick breakfast, we're blasted off. I lead pitch 2 fairly quickly leapfrogging big cams up a long fist / offwidth corner. Sometime during that morning we looked down at our campsite to see a good-sized bear roaming through it. Yoikes. The leading went o.k. for the rest of the day but the hauling was another story. The bags, full with 6 days food / water / supplies for the four of us weighed over 300lbs. At that weight, the friction on the slabby pitches meant that 3 people were needed full-time to haul. 2 men counterweighting the pulley and a dedicated 'wrangler' to dislodge them from every crack, mini-roof, and depression that would catch. In the heat the hauling punished us and we weren't able to keep up with the leader.  That day we managed to only make it to the top of pitch 5. We set up the ledges, ate a quick meal, drank what we could, and crashed.

Erick jugging

The heavy bags... 
It seemed like I had just managed to doze off when voices in the dark got closer and woke us up. A minute later a head poked over the ledge. We were being passed in the middle of the night! After asking our permission, the leader clipped a biner and a ropeman to our ledge anchor and took off at light-speed up a difficult looking corner crack. I watched him run it out at least 30' over us while I realize that another voice is getting closer below. The party is simul-climbing at pitch that clocks in somewhere around 5.12 and if either the second or the leader blows it... the leader will crater right through the ledge Erick and I are sleeping on. I decide to put my helmet on (not that it would help).  After a few more long moments the second appears, say's hi, and climbs past us. The remainder of the night goes by as I watch headlamps high above me, as it would be impossible to sleep after that.

That's enough for this post... more later

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Leaving for El Cap

In less than 48 hours I'll be leaving for a 2 week trip to California with the aim of climbing El Cap with my buddies Erick, Chris, and Adam.

'Psyched' doesn't really do it any justice.


It will be interesting. In about a year of training I've already accomplished quite a bit. I've pushed my climbing grades, I've dropped almost 20 lbs, and I've become better at separating irrational fear from things that are actually real risks. It's still going to pretty epic though.

Not sure what route we'll pick.


That will have to wait until we get there and scope out the crowds. The short list includes the Nose, Triple Direct, Lurking Fear, or the Zodiac. Any of those will be a significant challenge, and outside of anything we've done before. If all goes well we'll still be friends when we're back on terra-firma.

I've decided to bring the big camera on the route and I've borrowed a helmet-video cam.  Should be fun. I've also been in contact with Tom E. at ElCapReport and hopefully he'll shoot some really cool photos of us. So, you might find us on his site mid-way through next week.

Should be fun and I'll post up some pics in two week when I return.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Orpheus

Saturday was a good adventure.

For some time this summer, we've been climbing the aid routes in Welsford both for fun, and to train for our upcoming trip. With most of the established routes crossed off our list, we've been looking around at other possibilities. For some time now, we've been looking at Cerebus.

Cerebus is a line found next to Odin at the back of the Ampitheatre. Cerebus is also the 3-headed dog of Greek mythology who guards the underworld. Although it's had a number of interested parties, to my knowledge it's never been climbed. With good reason. It's line begin's in the most radically overhung cave in Welsford for 50 feet before breaking out into 50 more feet of overhung cracks. The rock quality in the initial cave is mixed, with some solid granite breaking though areas of what resembles crumbly kitty-litter.

The discussion around this route is part of the lore. Although it's never been sent it apparently has a name? Even more interesting is that it's had a grade of 5.12d proposed for it as a free climb? Odd given that it seems as if nobody has lead it and it's nature would prove impossible to top-rope. Saturday, Erick decided to put an end to the speculation...

In exceptional style, Erick lead the route ground-up, complete to the top, maximizing his use of clean aid. He placed only 3 bolts on the 30 meter pitch, all hand-drilled, some while hanging from hooks on overhung terrain.
Hand-drilling... full-sized bolts = about 20 minutes each to place.
The route had no evidence of previous attempts as far as I could tell. For the entire ordeal (6 hours to lead, 2 hours to clean), a rain of lichen and rockfall filled the ampitheatre. Even after breaking through the roof after about 4 hours hanging in his harness on lead... I didn't hear a single gripe out of the fellow... he asked only that I send up some smokes to him on the tag line.  Classic!


When I finished cleaning the pitch for him my only question was: What's the new name going to be? His response: Orpheus... (who according to the ancient Greeks was the man who tamed Cerebus). Nice!
A shot of me rapping back down as the sun had set.
*as a footnote... if someone were to return and add a few more bolts to the lower section, this could potentially be a popular and modern mixed/drytooling route. The rock quality is poor in many of the cracks but there's ample solid face for bolts. There's plenty of features for hooking and this could be an absolutely stellar and athletic challenge. As is... I highly doubt that it will see more than a single ascent per decade. 

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Camp Coffee

Finally broke out my new camp coffee machine. Works really great with freshly ground Johnny Java Roaster beans! Thanks Browns! 
This picture makes my mouth water! Yumm.

A Friend in Town

... is a great excuse to go climbing. With Anders back from Norway for a two week stint in Fredericton we took off to Welsford as soon as he was over his jet-lag.

Apparently all the grades in Welsford are sandbagged... so I can't wait to head to Lofoten! Apparently I hear that a new guidebook is to be published soon!

Climbed a good day at Minkey and Upper Tier. At the tree anchor on Smokin' Crack I found a really amusing set up: 3 bomber lockers through 4 old sketchy slings. I bootied the newly added 3rd locker. Not needed. I will bring some new tat next time I'm there however... as all the existing stuff is pretty baked.

At the Upper Tier I got on the Waltz for the first time. This had some really great climbing on it. I found the crux pretty tricky and hung several times figuring it out. Placing the gear through the layback was awkward but not all that bad. I've got to suggest that the bolts could be better placed. The crux comes as your feet are above the first bolt and before the second is clipped. It was a heady situation. I ended up backing down to the bolt for several tries before I got the sequence. I think if I had of bombed on the first bolt it would have been difficult for Anders to keep me off the ground with a combination of a hard catch and him being pulled up. This first bolt hanger was also spinning but otherwise in good shape. Whenever it is up for rebolting I think they should either be relocated higher (and stick clipped) or a 3rd added.

Also... I found on the trail at the Upper Tier a Garmin heart rate monitor. I'm told it pairs up to a fancy watch and makes a system. If you've lost it... contact me.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

A Letter Submitted To Gripped

Just submitted the following letter to Gripped Magazine. In the event that it's not published...


Dear Gripped, 


During the 1980's a wave of development and discovery hit the Welsford areas which saw many routes established on outstanding rock features in a traditional style. Bolts were often used as a last resort to unlock key passages between natural features. The hardware of the day was of mixed composition, and maritime climate has taken its toll. Many of these original bolts are now brittle with rust, and some have been reported to break under minimal effort. Reputation of sketchy bolts spreads quickly and otherwise approachable routes go unclimbed. In this part of the world, when classics go unclimbed the flora moves quickly to reclaim the land. 


Over the past 3 months a surge of energy has come forward to refresh the hardware on many of NB's classic lines. Lead by a small group of three local climbers, many classics have been rebolted and anchors upgraded with modern hardware. The quality in their work is top-notch and a visiting climber would be challenged to find the remnants of the original bolts. Best yet, they've spurred some momentum in the local community to the cause. Their lead has inspired others to contribute time, sweat, and hardware to the effort. At the time of writing, more than 40 routes have refreshed. 


First ascent parties often reap the glory with a classic line. Often unnoticed are the scrubbers and rebolters that keep these classics in shape. So.. in the event that future guidebook editions fail to mention this: thanks to Luc Gallant, Marty Thériault, and Dom Caron!
-- 
Chris Norfolk
Fredericton, N.B. 

Monday, July 18, 2011

Big Aid Weekend 4

Friday Night: 

Loaded Adam's car with ledges, haulbags, racks, ropes, food, & all the stuff we'd expect to need for 3 wall days. Erick met us there. In keeping with annual tradition, the bachelor was assigned with the care and well-being for Rosalita... the big wall doll for the weekend. Erick aided the arch and established a camp below Gumby's Roof for the night. The rest of us jugged to Rock Opera's anchors and set up ledges there.

With the help of the FA (providing the hardware), and Dom (providing the drill), I rebolted the old anchor for Rock Opera as well as the sole lead bolt on the slab. The rusty lead bolt was chopped but the old anchor remains. We found it useful for hanging ledges and hauling... and since we plan on doing this again soon, we decided to leave it in place. If anyone is truly offended... be my guest to go chop the old anchor.

Spent the evening trading insults with the Moncton Crew camped at Exfoliated. Aiding is awesome... Moncton sucks!

Saturday: 

Woke up at nearly first light after little sleep, had breakfast, and I led through Gumby roof. A nice aid practice, it went rather easily through the roof but I managed to get stuck and only worked it out by unweightting my daisies with the kneebar free-beta. Wicked! I think I'm going to try to free this route in the future!



After hauling through Gumby we made it to the ground and started up Menage A Trois with the goal of camping on top of the detached pillar. Chris & Adam freed the first 2 pitches and set up two independent hauls. I jugged the 60m while wrangling haul bag #1. Arriving at the pitch 2 anchors, I relieved Adam of hauling, and he belayed Chris up pitch 3 after his solo-aiding hit a roadblock. The haul is getting dialed. We went quick.

The excitement came as the haul was finished and Henni was still only half way up the last pitch. Rain, thunder, and lightening rolled over us. Erick & I started thinking that camping on top of the pillar with a bunch of metal lightening rods wasn't such a great idea and thought about bailing. About 15 minutes into the storm Henni still hadn't finished his pitch and the weather started to ease up. Sticking through it paid off and we set up of the night hanging off one of the coolest spots in Welsford!


Sunday


Another early morning and it starts off with a mini-epic no-doubt. We lower the haul bags two pitches down to the Waterwalk pitch 1 ledge and then do a double rope rap off the tree behind the pillar. Despite making every effort to pick my spot... I manage to get the knot connecting the ropes stuck and they won't pull. Henni decides to be the hero and jugs up the full 60m to free the knot! Nice work bro!

Erick, Chris and I then decide to explore Eagle Rock based on rumors of aid lines there. After considerable bushwhacking we find it. This place has considerable potential. There are some nice unclimbed cracks and some overhung faces that are featured. The existing lines seem to go up the obvious treed slabs and weaknesses but there are more difficult lines there. There is also height. 2 pitches for sure.

I go to aid the Great Roof and Erick solo-aids Diurnal Pegs. Erick get's nowhere fast when the rusted, quarter inch bolt placed in 1977 by the FA party shears off just as he's getting off the ground. It's now gone. Exploding bolts. Nice. I should have taken a picture of it before he ripped it. The Great Roof goes better for me and it's a fun aid-boulder problem followed by 60 feet of slabby blueberries to a tree anchor. With another easy looking pitch above us that rounds an arete to a nice view of the valley the three of us top out Eagle Rock and soak in a great view of Cochrane lane. We find at the summit a prospectors claim stake and drill hole, and stumble onto a funny geo-cache which we sign the log-book for. Silly geo-cachers!

A great weekend.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Cochrane Lane Trailmap

Given that a number of climbers have been going out of their way to make Cochrane Lane a nicer place, I thought of a way I might be able to contribute. Today at lunch I developed an updated trail map with the intent that the painted version at the sign-in box might be replaced. This version is somewhat inspired by the style of a classic Colin Bell sketch map of the area but is made to scale, with modern names assigned to areas. I could plot and laminate a large version to post... but before going to that expense, I thought I'd post this draft for comment first. Hope it's of some value.


And... the data behind it:


Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Big Aid Weekend 3

Sunday was another day for aid training. I had a few things I wanted to accomplish. First was to get my system for solo-aid dialed and the second was to get some more mileage jugging and cleaning on a traverse.

The solo-aid bit went pretty well. At one point it was actually pretty cool to see the four of us solo-aiding across the entire span of Joe's garage simultaneously. Erick on Astroboy, myself on Trundling, Chris on the Arch, and Adam at Sticky Fingers. I managed to figure out the flow much more quickly than last time and had two pitches start to finish, cleaned, and rapped in about 2.5 hours. Not bad. Easy stuff when every piece is bomber and the falls are clean. For anything else I gotta say that I'd still much prefer a human being at the other end of the lead line.

After finishing with that Henni had half-finished his project for the day: a traverse across the entire length of the Arch... finishing on the anchor for Bone Machine. He'd fixed a cleaning line for me and I got started. I made quick progress thorough the slimy, wet, arch until I arrived at the tat below Gumby roof. At this point, the line traverses approx. 30' horizontally and it appeared as if Chris was either forced to hook considerably, or decided to back clean in order to link pitches. There was as I could see, only 2 pieces for the entire traverse, separated by 10' horizontal stretches between them. Without having cleaned the right gear to re-aid the traverse, my first option was to try to hook through it. Before unclipping my last good directional and committing to the traverse I tried a few hook placements... each one blowing... with the potential to send me whizzing off on a pretty big pendulum. Eff that! Instead I thought I'd use the Gumby tat as a lower-out with the spare cleaning line I had. I rigged it up and after some horrible awkwardness, I managed to get myself on the correct side and weighted the system. Problem was that once that happened, I was dangling in space with no way to get back to the wall to clean Chris's cam back in the crack. Totally stuck, wet, and fried at this point (this had taken me about 90 minutes of struggling) I lowered out and ended up at the Rock Opera anchors.  From there, I bailed. More on that later.

Earlier on in the arch I made the decision to remove an old, horribly rotten pin that was presumably in place since the FA (perhaps 35 years ago). Last summer I'd actually weighted this thing and gotten away with it... a feat which now I can't explain. I decided to give it two light taps up and down with the hammer in an effort to prevent breaking the biner-hole with direct funking. It moved almost completely out. I simply connected a draw to it and gave it a light yank by hand and she flung out no problem. The metal on the eye was rusted thinner than the edge of a dime and the main body of the pin is badly fatigued. It was removed as it was of limited value in place and it obscured natural gear placements readily available. The same could be said of all bolts on this beautiful arch.

Overall I was disappointed with myself for not making it successfully through the problem at hand. Hennigar jugged back up to my high point and re-aided the section back cleaning his gear as he went. The problem was do-able, but I didn't see the solution, and I wasn't willing to accept the risk of the pendulum... even though it looked clean. Clean or not a 15 foot pendulum fall doesn't sound nice. I'd just wish now that I'd been able to invent some other way out of that situation... having bailed doesn't sit well with me today.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

A Year at Cochrane Lane

Sometime this spring I replaced the log book at Cochrane lane. The musty & molded book from last year has sat in my car's trunk for several months but today I was curious enough to rifle through it. It was an interesting read. The book has hundreds of entries, chronicled at least a dozen new routes, and contained some pretty interesting passages. Here's a few of the entries that caught my eye: 

Sweet illustration Dom. Now I understand.

Sounds like somebody found an unwanted poo!

Wow. No thanks.

Seriously? He continued to sign with this logo for months afterwards.

That was the day I did this:

Swiped gear sucks.... but really... you waited 2 months to go back to get it?

Funny.

And I thought I was the image of internet douchbaggery... wow!
 


Open Source Cedar Point Topo

Argh...

Home sick today with a man-cold! Rather than be totally useless I cranked off another topo with BetaFlash. This one is for Cedar Pt. Again... it's a model... so it is mostly wrong, but hopefully useful. Input/edits welcome. Download the file here:


Friday, June 17, 2011

Open Source Sunnyside Topo

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a neat bit of open-source software called BetaFlash. It's a simple drawing program with standardized elements for climbing topos. Nice idea! I decided to give it a spin.

At the time Fred put out his last guidebook Sunnyside was relatively new and developments were happening fast. There are a fair number of nice lines not captured in the topos. So using my shaky mental image of the crag along with the new routes thread, I sketched up this:

Not perfect by any means... but it's just a model right?

I figure the intent of a topo is to allow you to navigate to the start of the route... the description should tell you what you need to know about the climbing and gear. So the bolt counts are wrong, the rap stations aren't all there, and the orbiting crags (Farside and Darkside) aren't included. But it's a start.

If anyone is interested in improving this work that would be great! You can download the file I was working with HERE and make whatever changes are for the better. I'd also expect this would be a nice tool to use for newer areas like Cedar Pt. and Kingston.

Cheers.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Dover

Went to Dover over the weekend with a strong crew from the club. Years of avoiding this place came to an end.  Bouldering is somewhat cool I guess. Managed to send a few problems and took a few pictures. Highlights for me were topping out The Bear, running laps on Orgasmatron, and eventually sending The Wave after about a dozen ugly-looking tries.

It was pretty impressive to see the power that the ocean commands over the blocks at this place. We saw spots where house-sized boulders were picked up and either carried uphill or completely away by the surf. It was pretty unreal. I was pretty disappointed to see Orangutan smashed away but we found a newly created double-arete near the John Doe area which made up for it somewhat. I thought I may have bagged the FA of it but I guess not. It was new enough to still have holds crumbling and breaking off on us... and you wouldn't expect that for a super-aesthetic V1 boulder in a well-traveled area.  Get on it... it looks like this:

Just don't fall.

O.k so I have got my better pictures posted here... but these are my selections:

The basecamp... before we torched the creosote wood!
Brent... Agent Orange - V0 highball

Melissa... Orange Arete - V2 sloper problem

Cara on The A-Frame, a nice V1 crack

Tom, both feet cut loose from the The Bear, V4
Tom. Orgasmatron. V0. This should go on for 300'. 
Pete wrestling with Orange Crush V6. Loving the Jihadi look!
Franca reaching for the better pinch on The Bear, V4

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Tree-Go

Assembled a stellar crew today to head to the Tree-Go rope course today with me on Jill's birthday! Thanks everybody. Super fun. We rocked it for sure!