Randy and Glen laughing their asses off at…

My lesbian hair dew.

I could totally roll into the Lexington looking like this and no one would bat an eyelash.

And finally…

So yeah, it’s finally over. Now I don’t have the Eem-over, as Thomas so aptly titled my previous hair style… on the plus side, I won’t have to shake the water from my hair when I come up from a duckdive, and it doesn’t take forever to dry when I get out of the shower, and I could skip the initiation into the suburban white supremacy gang… JK about that one. It also won’t fall into my eyes as much. On the minus side, if you will, my head will be a little cooler. I think it was the right decision.

Here are some pics of the succulents I planted and left on my back deck like six months ago. They’re doing pretty well! The one on the right is my poor little avo plant, Carlos. He got bit my some bugs.

Here’s my stoned-ass roomate Glen… don’t worry, he won’t see this. Actually, my hair would still be all emo if it wasn’t for Glen’s Flowbee and clipper skills, so, thanks Glen.

Here’s the flickr set from our trip to Tuolumne two weeks ago. It’s so gorgeous up there right now. We’re going back Sunday night. Psyched.

Still looking for a rig… stay tuned.

So, I’ve been back for over two… er, no sorry, three weeks now. What the heck have I been doing all this time except updating my blog and tweeting and facebooking and emailing!?! Well, I actually have been doing a lot of emailing, but I’ve also made two trip to the sierras to go sportclimbing- one day at the Column of the Giants and two days in Tuolumne. It’s sooo beautiful up there right now! And the valley will just keep getting better and better… but more on that later.

K so, I went to OZ with two serious projects in mind, the first being Dia Koyomada’s endurance roof The Wheel of Life. I managed to send this problem after about three days (and one really shotty humid day where I made reverse progress). No doubt I was psyched to have climbed this spectacular piece of rock, but I was almost a little dissapointed that it wasn’t harder for me… I mean, If I wouldn’t have sent it the day I did, then I probably wouldn’t have sent it before Mark and Mike (M&M) left, and I probably wouldn’t have had time to do a bunch of other problems I wanted to do, so yeah, I was psyched that it came together quick… I guess I could have made it a lot harder on myself? The two major things that made the climb easy for me were tricky, feet fisrt/tall person beta that I found for the crux the second V9, Cave Man, and more crucially on the RP crux of the entire problem that comes at the end of roof on Dead Can’t Dance where I kicked my foot out right- a sequence that made that peoblem feel more like tenuous V9 after I had done it a couple times, instead of V11. Also, I found this slammer kneebar halfway through Cave Man, only like ten easier moves from the start of DCD that I could basically get it all back on… it was almost like starting over there… almost like cheating… We got video of the send so hopefully I’ll have that edited and online at some point. In the meantime, check these pics that Simon Carter took of me on the problem after I had done it-

The other climb I really wanted to do in the Grampians was, well, the hardest established route on the Taipan wall- The Groove Train. At first, all I knew about the Groove Train was that it was meant to be 33 (5.14B) and that the Taipan wall looked amazing, so how could it not be good?!? But after Jake Besnehan sent me these pics of one of his RP attmepts on the route, then I was REALLY keen to get on it!

At the beginning of the trip, after bouldering for two days and climbing on walls like this-

while this

loomed above or near us at virtually every boulder we went to, I couldn’t go another day without climbing on it… not that Snookie Badlands isn’t a great little piece of rock, it just felt a little silly.

That first day on the Tiapan wall, while a little humid, was one of my best days of the trip and probably the best day of sport cragging I’d had since my shoulder surgery. I think I did my favorive all time 26(12c)- The Invisible Fist of Professor Hiddich Smiddich

Flashed my all time favorite 27 (12d)- Mirage

(the famous all-points off dyno on Mirage)

and my all time fave 28 (13a)- Groovy

Pretty good day, nah? I mean, the favorite all ways seems like that last one… there are a lot of classic 12cs and ds out there, but take my word that these ones are really good. I also tried to go up up the extension of Groovy…. yep, the Groove Train, and got past the first cux, and one of two twenty foot runouts, but I almost broke what I thought at the time was a crucial hold at the redpoint crux and had to take a huge fall (a fall I would take a coupe more tomes before the red point), so I left my draws on it and vowed to return after my bouldering-only accompliaces left me.

It was an easy vow to make considering how good the route was… I’ve only done two, maybe three other 5.14s that are as good, in my opinion, as the Groove Train- one is The Bleeding at Mill Creek, and the other is The All Around Routine at Ibex. What makes these three climbs special? Location and setting of the climb, asthetics and beauty of the line, funess of the moves and the cruxes, and no fucking chipped holds! Obviously, like I said before, there are lots of really classic 5.14s in the world, but these are the three that I’ve actually done that stick out the most in my mind… and like the previous two climbs that fall into this category for me, I was in love again, and I wanted to send.

Here are the pics that David took of my flash of Groovy and my first adventure up the Groove Train…

(Notice the space between the bolt I’m clipped into and the one before it? The runouts did make the route harder to work on, but all in all I liked them… it took %100 commitment and added a little more excitement. And there was just less hardwear in the wall.)

After M&M left on the 27th of June, I had one good day on the Groove Train which I used to pracitce sequences and refine beta. My tips were trashed from the day of bouldering before and I needed a rest day… unfortunately two days later the rain came. It rained for 24 hours straight that first day, and after sitting under the shelter all day, freezing my arse off while reading my book, I came down with a cold… lameness. I was seriously considering just leaving my gear on the GT  and bailing back home early. In the end I stuck it out though, through almost ten days of rainy and humid, basically unclimbable conditoins, and sent the groove train! I even tried to repeat it the next day wearing a friend’s headcam. I didn’t manage the repeat but I did get some pretty cool POV footage that I’ve never really seen of climbing, especially on this type of rock, before. Below are a coupe pics that Simon Carter took of my second serious RP attempt on the Groove Train, two days before the send. Before this go I had pretty much given up on actually doing the route because I wanted to go to the Bluies and I thought the GT would take more time (and skin) to send then I had, but after falling on the LAST hard move (the move is about V3, I was just too pumped…), I decided to stay and do this route no matter if I made it to the Bluies or not. Fortunately I sent after one rest day and got a ride to NSW the day after that, but it was such a killer route I would have stayed until the end of my trip to complete it.

This is the fantastically fun crux section of Groovy.

And this is the fall sequence of me letting go of the last bad hold before the jug on the GT and whizzing past Simon… crazy shit huh?

I was realy happy to leave the grampians having sent both of the climbs I most wanted to do. I did however spend 5 out of the six total weeks of my trip there, pretty much confined withing the 30KM section of Australia between the Bogan town of Horsham and the Mt Stapylton campground. It would have been nice to travel around a bit more, see more of the country, and maybe even go for a surf… but I guess that’s the sacrifice one has to make if you want to send your projects, and to me, it’s a worthy sacrifice.

I spent my last week down under in the Blue Mountains which is a couple hours drive Northwest of Sydney. The Blueies as they are called, is a beautiful place. While the rock there isn’t quite what it is in the Grampians, the scenery and more importantly the community there is amazing. I felt like I was family to the lovely people that I had the pleasure of spending time with there. It was great not to be wrapped up in projects on the rock and just enjoy my time there… although I was roped into doing an impromptu slideshow at the local gym-in-construction that turned into a huge technical ordeal (Aido!?!). But quite a few people showed up, my show seemed relatively entertaining and well received, and it was great to just be accepted into the community with such hospitality.

The last couple days of trip my were spent hanging with an old friend, Carlie LeBreton (formerly Carlie Happ) and her husband Rob LeBreton just down the hill from the Bluies in a nice little town called Penrith.  Carlie came to the US twelve years ago and stayed at my house and traveled with my family and I to youth comps in Cali and Utah. I remember having a blast with her when she visited and it was great to reconnect with her, hang out with her and her husband (and their awesome dog Spice) and share some laughs. We even spent a fun day climbing at Nawra.

On my very last day in OZ, Chris Webb who had just returned from the states, took me to a little bouldering wall near his house in Sydney, and after he showed me some pics and video from a few other areas around sydney, I realized how much freaken awesome bouldering is in and around that city! It must be one of the best cities to live in if you’re a boulderer. There really is a lot to do there.

There were quite a lot of boulders and routes in the Gramps and the Arapiles (pronounced affectionately Ara-piles) that I just didn’t have time to get on or send, that I’m psyched to return for… ya know, unless you’re the strongest climber in the world and you spend months in a place, there’s almost always more to return for.

So, I’m skipping school (again…) this fall to road trip around the states. My plan is to buy a camper rig of some sort and spend a good amount of time between as many good areas as I can mangae to visit… a few areas that are definitely on the list are Yosemite, Tuolumne, and pretty much all of the high Sierras, Mt Clark and the St George area, the Horn in Utah and the Red and the New… I have a lot on my plate. I was originally planning on spending all of the fall season in Spain, sport climbing at the newer limestone areas, but I have so many routes I want to do closer to home that that will have to wait until the spring… I’m pretty lucky I have these kind of options.

I’d like to take a few minutes to thank everyone that helped me out on my trip, including Mark and Mike, Kent, Ruben, Simon and Monique, JT and Britnay, Andy, Aido, Claire and Archie, Julian and Lee, and Carlie, Rob and Spice… And thanks for the ride to the airport Chris! To those I forgot, just go ahead and curse me!

Thanks for reading. Here is the flickr set with all my pics from my camera. Sorry, there are almost 300 pics in the set, but there are some really good ones in there.

PS, anyone out there with a post 2007 4WD Tacoma or Honda Element they’d like to sell me for half the KBB value ;-? I’m thinking either something like this, or like this. It’s hard to know what to get when you have to consider so many things… am I gonna want to drive it around the city? it it more important that I have maximum comfort while the rig is stationary or going from place to place? Is it more important to have 4X4 or better gas mileage, and will the godamn thing even fit into my garage? Anyway, stay tuned and hopefully I’ll have lots more to post on this web page in the near future. Ciao for now.

A short list of things I’ve done since my last post:

• Fell off the redpoint crux of Scarface three times on my last day at Smith over spring break, then went back to send it on my second try first day back on it about a month and a half later. Then J-Star went and dispatched second try! Jeez dude, at least have some consideration for those of us that still have to try!
• Went to Baltimore to compete in the Earth Treks Rock Comp presented by MHW which was my first bouldering comp since destroying my shoulder. I jumped some huge mental hurdles by not destroying it again and also making it to Semi finals, busting some pretty shouldery moves and coming out in 11th in the while shebang. I really enjoyed myself, got to watch the finals from a spectators perspective (which is something that I normally don’t get to do) and I really hope MHW, my biggest sponsor, gets behind this comp again next year!
• Finished my third semester at City College! I only took two classes, but still! I have a hard time pretending to be an over achiever.
• Went to Japan for the FiveTen Cup where I had a really great time, despite pulling my right hamstring in the quallies. Hammy is doing much better now. Blogs are on FiveTen’s site.
• Had one of my most successful and fun days of bouldering at a granite spot near South Lake Tahoe last Sunday on my 24th birthday!

Lots of good pictures from all my travels can be found on my flickr page.

Ok seriously, I have to go to the airport now. Don’t wanna miss my flight. I’ll be climbing and bouldering in the Grampians, possibly in the Blue Mountains and who knows where else… be back in 6 weeks with a $#it ton more images and video, and hopefully no injuries! Have a great June everybody! Peace.

P.S. I’m taking the fall off of school so I will have much less stress and more time to write blog posts.  And climb!

Since my last post I’ve been back to Bishop for another weekend of tip tenderizing (only to come away from the Mandala squat start empty handed after several heart-break attempts falling off the second to last move), a couple days at Jailhouse (this crag actually doesn’t exist), five days hanging out at Red Rocks (each day was filled with epic adventures) and now after a slideshow in Portland and one in Seattle, I’m here at good ole Smith Rocks, climbing up a storm! No literally, I was climbing through an intense hail/sleet storm on my warm-up this morning. I’ve spent like three days at home in the past three weeks… and this time there are just too many memories and too many times (bad and good… mostly good) to rehash… so you’ll just have to check out the pics and vids and fill in the blanks for yourself. One thing that I just wanna say real quick is that, there aren’t enough strong climbers traveling to go sport-climbing around the united states anymore! I mean… there are a few people, but for the most part, when strong climbers go on climbing trips these days, most go to boulder in Hueco or Bishop or Yosmite and very few go sport climbing, and the ones that do certainly aren’t coming to Smith Rocks! *Most of the strong climbers who climb at Smith are locals. The style of climbing here has certainly fallen out of vogue. Which makes me love it all the more! To Bolt or Not To Be was FAed by J. B. Tribout the year I was born… I tried it for the second time today and even though the skin on my left middle finger is worn all the way through I was still able to surprise myself by climbing all the way to the fifth draw! This route is damn hard– super technical and delicate. When the hand holds get decent (a slopey half pad crimp) they start to face the wrong way or the feet disappear… I hope I can do it before I leave! I quickly searched the internets for images of someone on To Bolt wearing some sick 80′s lycra, but no location… sad… does anyone know if that one video from the snowbird world cup that has that really famous NFL commentator announcing? Bitter?

Some panoramas to start off with…

Here’s one of Ben climbing the rope ladder in BV Canyon on the way to Epinephrine that I took back in January that I never posted before:

A couple funky ones from Jailhouse:

Here are a few our hike up to the Optimist the other day,

and one from the gorge below Smith.

Up Next are my latest flickr sets from Da House, Red Rocks and Smith.

Link to all my flickr sets. Expect another huge set to arrive on my flickr page in the next few days…

And here’s a little video of our last evening bouldering in BV Canyon. Sorry Jason…

Short Evening Sesh in BV Canyon from Ethan Pringle on Vimeo.

check out my Vimeo page for the HD Camparison! …and for this buttermilks video that I posted a few weeks ago.

One more thing before I go… my friend Dave Kimber from Seattle wanted to know what our mutual friend… lets just call him Jonny, climbed in Hueco on a recent visit… problem is Jonny doesn’t really like to talk about his climbing accpomplishments because he just a humble dude… I suggested to dave that he try finding out what Jonny sent in Hueco via the 8a.nu and when he googled 8a.nu, my log-book was the second search result!?! Now I know that my 8a page it’s the most looked at in the world, or the country, or probably even the city of San Francisco… I thought maybe Dave’s iPhone somehow knew that I was with him and modified the search results so I tried it on my friend Luke’s computer and sure enough… Same damn thing! Weird…. I don’t understand them damn compruters!

Ok, it’s freaken time to go outside! I’ve spent far too much time on my computer in the last few days.

Everyone, follow my lead!!!

*added PS.

We’re back in boshop ladies and gents. Psyched! we we’re blessed with pretty deese weather today despite what the forecasts and weekenders have been saying lately. It was pretty good- good for me means chilly and overcast- this morning. we got a late start out of the hotel room after sleeping in until about 9:30 because neither of us got very good sleep last night. After a quick break of the fast, we ducked to the milks to meet friends and warm up. I lent a pad and spot to Sean McColl as he made a ground up ascent of the direct finish to Evilution, chalking up and figuring it out as he went. Proud SON! Sean is really impressive… Upon my advice, Sean made an FA of the right extension to the ultra-calssic Heroun and the Sea of Stories today. It adds about five moves to an already brutally pumpy problem… It’s cool to see youngsters like Sean putting it on the line on the higher stuff… inspired by his effort I grabbed the rope and gear from the car and threw a rope on the top of the grandpa peabody, first to scope Ambrosia. I mini-tractioned the last 3/4 of the route (it’s a route no doubt) and did all the moves pretty casually, but found it hard to imagine doing them without the comfort of the rope and after doing a henious, crimpy V11… I usually tend not to think about the fall and consequences of one while in the mmonent because I just don’t have time for such thoughts, but maybe on a climb like that it’d be different because you’re climbing for so long…

After the clouds scattered and the sun shone through, Am-bro baked, so I rapped down the other side to brush the top of the Evilution direct and feel the holds. I got pretty psyched because the holds seemed pretty positive and none of the moves felt too stopper or dangerous on the shoulder. I comitted to come back to it later in the day when the sun dissapeared.

It was fun to just hang out and heckle, shoot some photos and video and watch my friends climb on the classics. Congrats to Jason on sending Change of Heart and Randy on his efforts on High Plains (he will surely send tomorrow) and to Karl for cleaning up some classics!

After sitting around for four hours and watching people try hard, I was cold and ansy and didn’t wanna wait until tomorrow to climb so I rallied pads (which kept getting blown away!) and spotters for the Evilution Direct. On my first try I got up standing on the lip, having basically speed-climbed up to there, staring down the last hard, comitting move with absolutely numb fingers. I made the smart decision to downclimb and drop from the lip… spice! I told everyone “one more try”, as we all know that could mean anything… but this time I meant it because the last thing I wanted to do was end up hurting myself wrecklessly after just coming back for an injury… but at the same time, after not experiencing “the feeling” on real rock for almost a year, I was hungry. My second try went even smoother from the beginning and without messing up any foot beta I found myself staring down the same last committing move, stuck for a split second in indecision, before thrutching and sticking the final right hand sloper, highstepping and rocking onto the slab! Ok it was a tad wreckless, but hey, I didn’t fall so it’s all good! And with all the pads and capable spotters I had I probably could have been fine falling even from that height. Hearing Audrey and Jason yelling victory screams from the car (where they had been watcing) was music to my ears as I scrambled to the top of the boulder. After descending, a really strong gust of wind came and keeping the pads with us was like trying to tame a wild rhino. We all packed up quick, got out of the cold and ducked down to whiskey creek just in time to place our order for happy hour! How ironic that whiskey creek is the same place I ended up right after busting my heel on new year’s day, 2008… a delicious dinner, a pitcher of beer and a hot tub sesh later found us back at the hotel room psyching on climbing and surfing videos, and others blogs, wasted and ready for bed… thanks to Ryan Olson for taking footage of the evilness and good luck on the Milker! Crush it!

We have tomorrow morning before going back home from our ninja mish so I better get some sleep. I’ll try to update during the week with video and pics from the trip.

One more thing: here’s a pretty cool shot from our last trip, from a nice guy named Pat who gave this shot to me to use for the blog. Thanks Pat.

Honestly (and Rod could sense this), after our first day of shooting at goat rock, I had my doubts about how many usable pictures Rod was gonna come up with… the scenes we were shooting just seemed too staged and cheesy, and the art director wasn’t really directing…. Even after our second day of shooting at the endless bummer rock… well, I had my doubts. Sorry Rod! After he told me his plan of taking 15 shots and splicing them into one amazing image to use for the cover I was thinking, “why doesn’t he just go shoot from the freaken perch like everyone else? At least he could see get the city in the shot from there?” Even Ben, my friend and loyal belayer of the day (he got to send Endless and work out the moves on Surf Sarafi so don’t feel too bad for him) who is on the quite side, had voiced his disbelief in Rod’s artistic direction… sorry again! But, the man had a plan and was one step ahead. Basically, we didn’t realize how much of a photoshop wizard Rod really was. He spliced the original iamge, the one SF Mag adopted for the cover, from about 15 different raw files that we’re taken that afternoon, many from different vantage points. He couldn’t actually see the city or any distinguishing features thereof from the place he shot me on the wall, so from the base of the climb he shot several pictures of the city and the horizon, including Monterrey bay, which can be seen in the OG image. Then he took several closeups of me, full frame on the route itself with no background and spliced them in there too. Then he took pics of a few of the rocks surrounding the climb on the hillside and in the foreground. He took all those shots, worked his magic, and wallah! When he emailed me the preliminary image I was, pleasantly surprised to say the least. After the mag came out I was at mission cliffs and ran into Scott Fry (the old-school hard man/bay area climbing legend who FA’ed Endless Bummer and surf Safari in the mid-90s). He said he bought a copy of the mag after he saw it at a store and wondered how someone had managed to snag the angle that had alluded Ansel Adams, who shot Ron Kauk on the route many years earlier… that made me chuckle.

I used to frown upon pics in climbing mags with bad artificial light or a posed down feel (and I still do) not that either of those are a part of the above images, but I think in the case of the the SF Mag cover, a little doctoring was just fine and produced an image that I’m proud to be a part of. Ok I’ll stop slobbing my own nob now. Check out Rod’s site and blog if you haven’t already. Here is an interesting blog post written by Rod on the above subject. Also, thanks to Rob for framing a bunch of photos for me, including a blown-up version of the cover shot. WERD.

Check out the Flickr set!

And a short little Vimeo.

Red Rocks, Jan. ’10 from Ethan Pringle on Vimeo.

Chikity-check the Flickr set, Phu!

I also went to the tradeshow but I somehow didn’t take one single picture or video… probably for the best. Those things are better forgotten anyway.

I have a series of shoe demos for 5.10 at the Planet Granite Gyms next week- Monday at 6pm at Belmont, Wednesday at Sunnyvale and Thursday at PG SF. If you’re near any of those places and want to come check out some new 5.10s… come one down!

Also this weekend I plan on finalizing travel plans to the Hueco Rock Rodeo and the Red Rock Rendezvous! Psyched to get to both event a few days early and get some climbing in.

Red Rocks blog post coming later today… finally learned how to compress 1280X720P for Vimeo without loosing too much Quality but keeping it under 500 MB… It’s hard when the vid is 8 mins long… screw iMovie! I need to learn to edit with FCP! Later

Now I will attempt to clear the cobwebs, knock the dust off and scrape the grime out of the crevasses… Hopefully there isn’t too much built up that it isn’t impossible to clean.

Since my last post I’ve completed my second semester of college! I took an Intro to Archaeology class with an amazing professor, Matthew Kennedy. I took a fun yet slightly stressful (because I kind of suck at it) Argumentation and Debate class with a funny and eloquent professor, Dr. Whalen. I took a very interesting Oceanography class with the knowledgeable, yet sometimes slightly misleading Robert Anima, and I took an elementary piano class with a super nice and patient instructor, Jim… can’t remember his last name… Mcfadden I think. I don’t mean to brag but, I got all A’s and a B in the Piano class! Even though it’s only junior collage and some of you smarty-pants’ out there might scoff at this, it’s a huge deal for me since I was never very good a school, especially high school! Even though it’s totally embarassing and I thought I did a pretty bad job, here is a really funny video a classmate posted of one of my debates in argumentation on the topic of reducing vs. not reducing the US’s nuclear arsenal: http://playphotovideo.com/debate/debate4.mov. Ugh… sorry to my debate partner and my apponents if you didn’t want anyone seeing this… oh man! Why am I posting this?!? Oh well. I also went to a rookie debate tounrnement with my debate partner for extra credit and paced fifth in the tourniment and got a little trouphy! Wooo hooo! So I’m pretty proud of myself for this one, I’ve got to say!

Speaking of that sin, Pride I mean, I’m also very proud of myself for making my first Magazine cover! So which one you ask? Climbing magazine, Rock and Ice, Urban climber, Alpanist for god’s sake? Nah my friend, nah. The magazine that I’m proud to be representing on the cover of, is this month’s issue of San Francisco! Being a SF native, born, raised and still residing in the city, I think it’s appropriate that my first (and possibly only?!?) cover be on my city’s namesake magazine. Here’s a link to their website: http://www.sanfranmag.com/ Go pick up a copy! The Photog who took the pics of Natasha and I is a great guy and a really professional photog, not to mention a photoshop wizard! His name is Rod McLean and his website is right here. The first day we went out to goat rock up in Sonoma which is a cool, fun little bouldering area but didn’t really offer anyphoto opportunities worthy of the cover, so a few days later we went out to the Endless Bummer/Surf Safari rock that hosts two really fun, short and photogenic climbs and I’m really glad we did because we scored some amazing images! I sent these two climbs in the same day way back when I was 15 on a day trip there with Kevin Jorgeson… when we went back out to get the shots I knew my shoulder wasn’t anywhere near in the shape it had to be in to actually repeat the route, but I was suprised at how doable the moves and everything on the route felt so early in my recovery. I think I could definitely send Endless bummer now, but surf safari would be sketchy considering the crux is a big throw with the left hand… but who knows!?! I’m going to the gym in a bit so we’ll see just how much of a gain I’ve made after the last few rest days.

The article that I was interviewed for is about alternative healers in the bay area and my PT’s (Jim Donak- www.divingbuddah.com) name and website ended up on the cover and in the article as well. One healer that I told the writer about that who’s info they didn’t end up using in the article but who deserves to be in there just as much is my good friend and body worker Mike Papciak. Mike is magical with his hands and as a climber (actually one of the strongest climbers in the bay area in the 90′s) he really knows how to find the knots and aches in climbers bodies and work them away. I don’t think he has a website yet (c’mon Mike!) but if you live in the bay area and are curios what a deep tissue/triggerpoint massage is like, shoot the man an email at mike.papciak@gmail.com!

So on to the next subject: shoulders (fucken a..)! So after about four months of rehabbing and stretching, I finally just got antsy and decided to try some super-easy climbing back in October. I started off doing 5.8s and 9s, basically with only my right arm and only using my left for balance. Little by little I ramped it up to the point where I was doing easy 12s about a month later, but still favoring my right arm alot. I can’t say that the grades I’ve climbed since then have gone up dramatically (I’ve done 13a and V7-8ish in the gym) since then, but I’m using my left arm a lot more now and I’ve made leaps and bounds of progress with it in the last couple months. I can finally dead hang on both arms again, do chin-ups and pull-ups and do some campusing on the campus board and on the ladder. Next I’m going to start putting some weight on the arm by it’s self, little by little of course. I think as soon as I can dead hang on it by it’s self then I’ll start to make leaps and bounds of progress in my climbing.

Since I started climbing again back in October, I’ve gone on some fun trips to Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne, Humboldt, Pinnacles National Monument and most recently Red Rocks. check out the blogs if you haven’t already! There are some pretty great “best of 2009″ blogs on Fiveten’s blog to whaste your time reading, and as always, there are some pretty great blogs from all the amazing Petzl athletes on their blog as well! It’s been really great to be outside again and just move over the rock. Just to feel the texture of the rock under my finger tips again has been magic. I’d be lying though if I said I didn’t care that much about climbing hard again, so I’m going to be training and pushing harder and harder in the next few months until I can do a one arm with the left arm (which is something I’ve never actually be able to do anyway, even with my arm was healthy). I have many climbing-related goals left to accomplish and I’ll be damned if I let a wee little surgery get in my way! Heck no!

As the list of climbers grow, I get more an more comforted that I’m not the only one out there who’s had shoulder problems and gotten the surgery, as messed up as that sounds (But I know they think the same thing about me). Beth Rodden, the poor girl, has recently had the labral surgery and has been documenting her recovery with some regularity here and here. The legendary comp climber Patxi Usobiaga also recently had the surgery just before Christmas! This is crazy for me tho think about since that guy always seemed so invincible to me, but I guess when you train that hard…something bad is bound to happen eventually. There are also a bunch of people from the bay area that have had, or have to get the surgery soon. Good luck to everybody that is facing this life-changing transformation and I wish you all a safe and speedy recovery! And trust me when I say that I know how you feel! One guy who doesn’t seem to need any luck to regain his prior strength is Chris Webb Parsons. He had the surgery about two months before me and just sent the Mandala the other day! Good on ya Mate! You are an inspiration!

What else is new… Not a whole lot really. Just kinda the same old sheeeit. Oh! I got back in the water and surfed for the first time last week! I went down to Linda Mar in Pacifica with a couple friends and went out with a long board! I was really nervous that I was going to wreck my shoulder but you really don’t have to paddle that hard on a long board and the waves were pretty mellow so I ended up catching a couple fun rides among the closeouts and stayed out for about an hour and a half! Wooo Hooo!

I start my spring semester at CCSF one week from today (eeeek!) so I’ll try to get a post up about my recent trip to Red Rocks before then with some pics and vids. I just got a new little point and shoot at best buy, a Canon SD780, to take on climbing trips so hopefully I’ll be able to take a bunch of pics and share ‘em with Y’all! Ok I’m going to get up off my lazy ass right now and go outside before the next rain comes!!! The good thing about the rain is that means snow for the Sierras this weekend!

Here are some recent pics:

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