Bol-dar

Yep, I’m still here. Still kicking. I’ve neglected my blogging duties for long enough that I’m gonna have to leave a lot out, since I’ve climbed like 5 days since my last post. I guess it’s lucky for the blog’s sake I haven’t actually sent anything. So here’s a quick recap of the last week:

On Tuesday I went to a cool bouldering area with my main focus being the Highball Test Piece Fish Out of Water (V12). We warmed up on a really cool V6ish highball, and then hiked over to the FOOW and found it’s north facing prow to be too wet to climb on, so we abandoned ship to go hike around Lumpy Ridge, but no before I did like 10 laps on the highball warm up for photos. Killer Photos.

On Wednesday we went up to lumpy and I thrashed and dangeled on the crack testpiece Anaconda. Overall, it just isn’t my style, but I had fun flailing on it anyway. At the end of the day I pieced it together with only like two hangs, but really didn’t feel that close to sending. I might have been able to come back another day and send, but didn’t really feel like putting the time in on a route that I wasn’t all that inspired on. It’s this weird corner at the bottom, lie backing on a big slopey sidepull and kneebaring, then a hard boulderproblem out of the last kneebar, then another little boulder before it eases up. Cool looking line, but for me not the most fun and pretty chossy, exfoliating rock outside of the crack. I had a slightly scary moment when I went for it over a slightly suspicious piece of gear and kind of dynoed into this tight hand jam, but fortunatelly stuck it. Props to Beth for doing this burly route, and for tommy for doing it in a day!

On Thursday I went to Clear Creek Canyon and got on a classic V12ish roof thing called Dark Waters. Even though it was fun to do some bouldering, it was also super frustrating because I did all the moves, but then couldn’t do one of them again, and just kept falling and falling because I didn’t have the right body position, even though I was obviously strong enough… Ugh. I admit, I did scream the words F#@k Bouldering!

After resting on Friday and soloing the first flat iorn, epic free this time, I finally went up to Eldo and got on the Iron Monkey, 14a, which was sort of my main goal for coming out to CO. For those who don’t know, the IM is a really short, hard, bouldery trad line up in Eldorado Canyon that follows a thin seam up a 30 degree overhanging wall with a dyno to a positive edge at the crux. Put up by Matt Segal some two years ago, this line is a candidate for the second hardest single trad pitch in north america and has still yet to see a repeat! For a video of matty on the FA, check out MVM‘s archievs for the video that was put online 2007-05-18. It’s actually about to get taken offline I think to watch it soon! Anyway, It was pretty warm on Saturday evening, which isn’t ideal for holding the heinously small crimps at the crux of the route. I did however manage to stick the crux lunge once before packing up and calling it a day.

On Sunday, I went to the Rincon wall up in Eldo and was able to make a flash ascent of an amazing trad line link up of Frayed Line and The Evictor called Free Line, 13a, sans warm up. I got a litlle flash pumped, and my toes were screaming from standing on tiny holds for so long, but I was able to hang on for the finish and hadn’t bee that psyched to top something out since getting to the top of china doll! I definitely owe my ascent to Nick Martino who gave me the full beta spray down including all the gear for the route. He also offered up dinner, unfortuately for him, for a flash of the route! I also flashed, with Nick’s beta of course, Surf’s up, another 13a to the left, so the day turned out to be very sucsessful indeed, even though I didn’t get on the route Nick was working on, the coolest looking line on the cliff, Musta Been High, 13c r. After climbing we went to the southern sun, where his girl worked, and ate like kings! I can’t wait to go back to the Rincon wall and give a flash go on Musta Been High.

On Monday I returned to the Iron Monkey with Carlo Traversi and Tommy Caldwell. It was rad to get to climb with one of my climbing heros from my grom years, even though I’d climbed a little with him when I was like 11… It was a good atmosphere up there at the Kloof alcove, pretty good conditions, and Tommy was able to figure out some different foot beta that kept your body a lot lower before you make the jump, instead of having to create momentum off of the shitty holds you dyno from. I was able to stick the lunge two more times, and went through the route on lead, falling at the dyno, pulling back on and going to the top.

I’m going back up to the route tomorrow afternoon to try and send so wish me luck!!!