Buttermilks revisited

Last weekend in bishop was rad! The last couple months has been a roller-coaster of motivation for me, dealing with these dumb injuries and not climbing outside that much. But this weekend was def finitely an adrenaline rush, a surge of psyche if you will. I had a blast sessioning on some amazing boulders, on real rock for Christ’s sake, with a fun group of people of all different abilities, and got psyched to climb well again! My shoulders didn’t hurt a bit either. Hopefully things stay that way.

Doug Munsch, DW and I headed out on Thursday night and spent the night at Noah Kaufman’s new house in South lake Tahoe. We check out his bad-ass new woodie, played some fun video games on the x-box 360, and got SOOOO freaken psyched for South Africa watching raw footage of Rocklands on his HD camera. So psyched.

We mobded the rest of the way to bish on Friday morning to meet Mark and Brian and some other friends. We made it there mid morning, just in time to watch Giovani Traversi dispatch Heroun and the Sea of Stories, a climb he’s been trying for about a year now. This climb does not lend itself in any way to shorter people, with long spans between holds and very low foot holds, so it was rad to see G grunt his was up the thing for a well deserved send. Lisa Rands will be next to hop on the send train leaving those start holds, you can be sure of that. Mark my words!

To escape the uncommonly hot conditions we ventured over to Dale’s Camp to have a go on a fantastic roof problem of Xavier’s. Daniel almost flashed the rig, sending second go, then Brian made a quick repeat and myself… a while later. What an amazing problem though. The crux is jacking your feet way up to your waist and pressing out this funky lunge-mantle (munge), or mantle-dyno (myno, or dantle) to a perfect finish bucket. We then hussled over to the Japanese Zen Flute, an amazing dyno problem Sharma FAed probably 8 years ago. I did it a few years ago, before it was in vogue, so I tried and sent the line next to it, an impossible looking-but quite do-able flake problem Chris also FAed, aptly named Sharma Flake… where does he come up with these names? Daniel did both the lines with the quickness so me moved on to one final boulder with a really nice V8 called Solitaire, and another fun V8/9 one-mover dyno problem on the back, on really grainy rock. Overall it was a really fun day with good people. We ate at Whiskey Creek happy hour (of course) and hunkered down for the night at the Thunderbird motel in Bishop.

We got a fairly late start on Saturday after our continental breakfast and a quick game of b-ball in the parking lot, and again wanting to escape the later morning blaze (gosh darn climate change!) we assembled the troops, met up with Austrians Emi and David and opted to spend the afternoon at the Secrets of the Beehive area. The Secrets of the Beehive is an amazing highball face that Hidetaka Suzuki FAed in the early 90s after some TR rehearsal. It has some of the coolest holds in the Buttermilks and is quite committing with a technical crux at about 25 feet, just before the victory jug. Having done the problem before I felt confident I could repeat it and remember the beta on the fly, so I ran a quick lap on it to try to get people psyched. It took a minute for others to strap on their shoes (and their balls:) but eventually Mark sacked up for the send, managing to get through the bottom physical crux and taking his time on the top bit, figuring out better beta than what I did and got-er-done on the flash tip. Yeah Malarkus! Brian was quick to follow suit, and Daniel finally committed and found himself at the bucket, after chickening out a few times (we rejoiced having actually completed a problem before Daniel).

A few members of the group fired the classic V9 Queen Sweet Nectar, and Brian and I gave the Swarm (it’s so warm!) a few goes, but soon gave up siting the unseasonably hot temps our excuse. I rapped down the mega classic Flight of the Bumblebee to inspect the holds. The way I had the rope draped over the wall didn’t really make it easy to reach the holds at the top of the climb, so not wanting to take a weird swinging fall I just gave them a quick brush and fondle and got out of there. The beta is obvious enough so I don’t think it really made a difference weather I tried the moves or not. Originally dubbed the Titan, Flight is a striking line that had been looked at for years until Kevin Jorgeson manned up for the FA a couple seasons ago. Local hellman Kevin Daniels got the first and only repeat of the monster “boulder problem” after he fell and kneed himself in the cheek, cutting himself so bad he needed stitches (which he applied himself…). My dad’s words came flooding back into my head- “remember what I always tell you before you leave on a climbing trip: NO HIGHBALLING!” I decided to sweep his sentiment to the back of my mind. I figured I’d take advantage of the large number of pads we had on hand, and the chalked up grips and give ‘er the ole collage try… You are kinda committed from the get go on this problem, jump-starting off a small boulder at the base of the wall to gain the bottom jug portion of the flake feature that makes up the bottom half of the climb. I advenutred up the flake on my first go, but backed off when I couldn’t muster the confidence to charge the crux section. On my second go I tried to focus on my breathing a little more, stayed more relaxed on the beginning portion and felt confident enough to embark when I reached the point of no return. I just tried to do the moves as controlled as I could manage and soon found myself standing up on the slabby head wall, about 30 feet off the deck. That’s when I got just the slightest bit freaked out, despite the copious amount of pads (and terrible landing) underneath me, I felt small and exposed. I hastily skipped a hold and just reached straight for the top of the wall, which fortunately I was tall enough to grab from my stance. I campused my foot up to a good foothold and reached over the lip to the jug xenolith, topped out and felt safe again… everyone brethed a sigh of relief.

After that we headed back to the peabodys and there were like a million pad people. Brian and I headed up the the scene of the crime, the Mandala Sit, the problem I fell off of on January 1st, 2008 and fractured my heel. It was funny because Brian and Mark were both there that day, and there we all were again. Same conditions, same time of day, more pads, a year and a month later. I showed brian my super-awesome tall-person cheater beta and he dispatched in a few goes. Congrats dude! I tried the sit a few times, then just tried to repeat the stand, but didn’t have the juice for it (or probably the fitness) at that point. We watched DW through himself at the crazy hard sit start project to the Rasta Man probelm just left of Evilution which he was doing all the moves on, and watched Jeremy Smith come quite close to sending the direct finish of Evilution. The landing was built up almost three pads thick, covering quite a bit of surface area. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many pads under a climb before. I wish I had had the energy to give a burn on it. Instead I monkeyed up to the top of the boulder to retrieve the rope Daniel had left after repelling down on the Rastaman. Seeing how sketched he was climbing UP the 5.9 slab on the back of the boulder, I didn’t want to force him to climb back up there, free the rope and gear, then climb back down as well with almost o light left to see. I through the rope down the other side of the boulder, over Ambrosia… rapped down to the ground, climbed up the boulder just next to the start of the problem and set up the mini traction. I swung over to the boulder about 10 feet up and pulled on to the wall above the hardest climbing. I did about three moves to the hueco that marks the finish of the bottom boulder. I was told the section leaving the hueco feature was about V9, and granted I was doing the moves on a rope, it didn’t feel that hard to me and I litzed to the top first go. I tried to imagine what it would be like doing the moves without the rope… it’s definitely really high, and you wouldn’t want to look down or really think to much about where you are, just execute the moves and get to the top. But all the holds up there are pretty positive and you can do the moves very controlled. It’s not you are up on the headwall of halfdome or anything. Anyway, I’m really psyched to go back and do this thing this season! I would for sure mini traction the top half a few more times to get the moves dialed before working the bottom sans rope. Again, huge props to Kevin for sacking up for the FA on this one. Deffinitely a benchmark for highball bouldering.

On sunday morning everyone’s fingertips were pretty much shot. Daniel repeated the Mandala and the Buttermilker in a couple tries each, and cuz made quick progress on the Buttermilker as well, lining up the send for a return visit. I tried the Mandala sit a few more times but it was futile. My tips just hurt too much. We ate some greasy cheesy Mexican food at La Casita and hit the road back. It was a very fun weekend, and I often found myself thinking that there was nowhere I’d rather be. I’m really psyched to return for all the projects. The Mandala sit is at the top of the list. The Swarm, Ambrosia and the direct finish of Evilution are next. A Maze of Death, A Scanner Darkly and Michael Cain are on there as well. If I could do all those climbs before I leave for NZ I’d be quite pleased. Get ‘er done!

We were supposed to return to the east side this weekend, but crappy weather, sore throats and lingering pain in the fingertips got the best of us. Time to hit the gym! Next weekend are the bouldering nationals in Boulder. With the smorgisboard of talent in attendance, I’ll be lucky just to make the finals! We’ll see, maybe this last minute training is going to pay off.

If you haven’t already, check out this dope video Jon McCartie put together of just a few of the sends of the weekend.

Mirando from Jon McCartie on Vimeo.

Random pics for the weekend and week: