Somewhere In The Tucson Mountains....

Just Daydreamin'...

The life..... and I like things with production values.

Ahhh, Limestone

It dawned on me a few weeks ago that it had been well over a year since I had laid my hands on any limestone. Having started climbing in central Texas, where limestone abounds, I have always had a soft spot in my heart (and calluses on my fingers) for calcium-based rocks. Having just watched the Reel Rock flicks with footage of incredible Spanish limestone, I was jonesing for some limestone. Fortunately the stars aligned, and I was able to head out to Dry Canyon with some friends to sample the finest limestone in Southern Arizona.

We spent our day in the Spine Cave, home of some fantastic climbing, including the classics Spinal Twist and Loose Stools (both listed in John Baker's list of "Best Low 12's in Southern Arizona"). Christian and Dan worked the right side of the cave, while Ian and I worked on the left side. We started with some really nice - but difficult - 11's. The limestone here is actually pretty easy on the hands, with no sharp pockets or crimps. The rock is very features, with smooth and slopey ledges and nice incuts, facilitating great movement on both the vertical and steep sections of wall.

Dan on Loose Stools (12a, but not too steep):

Ian and I threw ourselves pretty hard at Spinal Twist (12b), but unfortunately after four tries each, neither of us managed a send. It's a very physical climb, but also requires real precision and technique, and is truly a classic climb. It has a bit of everything - gastons, pockets, heel hooks, toe cams, deadpoints, a tiered roof, and even a spine-shaped TUFA...

Ian on a burly gaston:

Moving into the roof:

Pulling the roof involves some unique an exciting moves, and took a bit of sussing to get the beta figured out. From a horizontal break below the first big tier, you reach your left hand way out to a small two finger edge. Using this for balance, you do the 'twist' - bringing your right foot up and in, and throwing a wicked drop knee, you slowly twist up into a good incut right hand. Matching the incut and then clipping, you still have two more powerful moves with decent edges but poor feet. The first long move was more difficult for Ian, but the second proved to be the crux for me, as I couldn't utilize the good feet Ian used. Instead I figured out a dropknee that gave me balance, but zero ability to generate momentum with my legs. And on my third an fourth attempts, just didn't have the juice left to pull that hard with my arms. Spinal Twist is now on top of my project list, and I think it should go fairly quickly next trip. Thankfully, it's early in the season, and we have all winter to get out there.

A ringtail who came to say hi:

New Wave

Harder climbs at Windy Point are definitely for the masochists among us. The granite there is crimptacular, and not just your run of the mill crimpers. These nasty guys have teeth - sharp and serrated rows of crystals that subsist on dermis and blood. We fed them well on Tuesday.

A large crew assembled at New Wave Wall, most of us with soft tips from a summer of climbing steep jug hauls high on the mountain. New Wave Wall is home to three classic climbs - Holey Moley (11d), Tsunami (12b) and New Wave (12c), as well as a few others. The wall is about 70 feet tall, slightly overhanging, and striped with white quartz bands all the way up. Feeling pretty good, I had sent Holey Moley and Tsunami on my first trip to New Wave the previous Thursday. My goal for this trip was to get on New Wave.

Holey Moley is one of the better 11+'s on the mountain, and a few people got on it today as a 'warmup'. Holey Moley starts with some sharp thin crimps up to a large hole, where you can get a real good rest. From the hole you move into the crux on - SURPRISE! - sharp little crimps. After you reach a horizontal break in the wall, you can get another shake, then follow easier but very good climbing to the top.

Holey Moley:

Tsunami saw a ton of action this day. Lots of people were working on it, and Ian managed to send first go after working the moves a previous trip. A fun and dynamic route, Tsunami is all business for the first 50 feet. Other than a jug to shake on right before the crux, none of the holds are too good, but none are too bad. You follow a series of crimps and sidepulls through technical and elegant sequences including a few deadpoints. After the one big jug and a slight rest, you are then faced with the biggest deadpoint of the climb, and using at least one hideously small and sharp crimp. For those that are familiar with Sentenced To Hang at Jailhouse, Tsunami climbs very similar to Sentenced, but Tsunami is maybe a touch harder and the rest isn't nearly as good (on the plus side, you aren't facing a 40 foot fall at the chains of Tsunami...).

Tsunami:

Unfortunately we got no pictures of New Wave, but continuing a strong week I managed to send on my third go. After trying hard on this three times, I had to come home and ask Kerry if her hospital does fingertip transplants. Unfortunately, they don't - better stock up in Climb On bar.

Here is a video of Dan, Christian and Ian climbing Tsunami:

Tsunami from Joe Kreidel on Vimeo.

What it's All About

Going hard, taking big falls, landing on pads, good spotters and fine boulders. That is what it's all about. Throw together a bomber crew and head for the hills. This is from Friday October 2, 2009. Enjoy.

Inspiration

This week the Reel Rock Film Tour rolled through the Old Pueblo. It happened that the tour hit town the same day as Jamie's birthday so Team Tuesday made it a two-fer punch and went for a sushi-stravaganza at Yoshimatsu washed down with sake and Sapphoro followed by more inspirational fare at The Loft. The place crawled with climbers. Every seat in the house had an ass in it and the air hung thick with the quintessential climber-musk-- chalk, body odor, and beer.

Sitting in the very front row I twisted in my chair and surveyed the theater filled with climbing-bums both familiar and unfamiliar. Joe, tanned and fresh back from road-tripping grinned. Nods were exchanged around the room and we all settled in, hands filled with beer, for an act of dirtbag communion.

It is a beautiful thing to see a climbing film on the big screen. A six-story IMAX screen would have been even better, but would have suffered the risk of causing massive brain hemorrhaging
in the audience. Six stories of watching Alex Honnold (in the Tour's first sequence) freaking out on a ledge two-thousand feet above the floor of Yosemite Valley without a rope might be too much. Only the cameraman breaking the illusion of Honnold's solitude up there brought me back from the edge of my own hysteria in the rather average-sized Loft Theater.

The moment with Honnold on the ledge sets the bar pretty high for the rest of the films in the tour. None of the other clips bring down quite the same pucker-factor, but the action moves along with lots of hard climbing, commitment, big falls, and wiry-thin climbing goons trying to elucidate upon what makes this sport so addicting. In this case, as with most climbing films, the images radiate this un-sayable aspect so perfectly that the words explaining them feel tedious and must be tolerated only for the progression of the narrative.

Yesterday, still jazzing from all the amazing climbing I'd seen on Wednesday, I took a crew to the Peanut Boulders a group of fine, highly textured granite blobs on Mount Lemmon just below Windy Point. Excitement from the Reel Rock Tour still pumped through all of our veins and we threw ourselves hard at everything we met. We all bled, at least a little bit, and our skin and blood will be out there soaking into the stone so that the next time we go there they will remember us. Personally, I took several cheese-grater belly-slides of the rounded tops of the blocks when my beached-whale routine didn't work for pulling over the last, slopey moves twelve feet off the deck. Putting my shirt on at the end of the day I looked down to see fifty or sixty little pinpricks of red welling up through the cotton. If I keep this up, I'll be leaving a whole damn nipple out there, one day.

A Team Tuesday video from the Peanut Boulders, Rose Canyon, and Hairpin Boulders will be coming soon, but until then, in the spirit of the Reel Rock Tour check out bouldering in Jordan, courtesy of Urban Climber TV.