A Great Decision

Some choices are very easy to make. I guess being easy to make means that they're not really choices at all, but logical courses of action. And so it happened, around 9:30 on a Wednesday night, me sitting, palms damp, biting my lip in between sends of pure and endless blocks, that I became very anxious and terribly upset. The problem (and normally this phrase would constitute heresy) was that I was drinking a beer, sitting in a nice, padded chair, and that the blocks being climbed were in Turkey, and finally that I was not climbing them. I was sitting as I said, in the Loft, watching the Tucson presentation of the Stone Alliance Film Tour, along with a healthy sample of the Tucson climbing community. With adrenaline and frustration mounting, the last film ended, leaving many of us with the kind of determination and gumption that simply can not be wasted. The logical course of action in this situation, in case you were wondering: Night Bouldering.

After first dispersing to gather gear (headlamps, beer, full-fledged film lighting kits, etc.) around 10 of us set out westward from the marmalade glow of the town, and headed over the Tucson Mountains, utterly determined to squeeze a few minutes of glory out of the night. Instead, we were flooded with the kind of glory normally reserved for fearless warriors...





Sorry about the ass shot Stefanie, but the spandex had to be shown.












After about four hours or so of climbing, our clocks struck 3:30 am, and our stomachs confirmed what our bodies had been screaming and our minds had been ignoring; we were hungry. And thus a second great and easy decision was made to go to the Taco Shop and eat burritos. The sky had turned blue above the crest of Mt. Lemmon by the time any of us were remotely close to our beds.

Night Bouldering Video

Yes indeed, welcome to the Team Tuesday Climbing Blog. 

To help kick things off I have created a short video of myself climbing a boulder problem at the Hairpin Turn on Mt. Lemmon. Keep in mind that this was shot at night, with a camera, and that this was my first ever attempt at editing a video. So while the end result is less than stellar, it helps illuminate what Team Tuesday and our blog is really all about - climbing moderately hard and spraying about it (we also spend a lot of time talking about tacos, but we'll try to avoid blogging about that).

The Hairpin Turn area on Mt. Lemmon is home to a bunch of quality routes in the 5.8 to 5.10 range. It is a popular climbing area due to the proximity to town and fairly easy approach. Just drive up Catalina Hwy., park at the Coronado National Forest sign at the first hairpin turn (hence the name) and hike the - typically dry - creekbed. Walking up the creek bed you come across many alluring boulders. So you put your shoes on, chalk up, grab a couple holds and....come sliding right off. Yeah, these boulders are WATER POLISHED. The same eroding forces that created many cool features and shapes in the rocks also made them very difficult to climb. That doesn't stop us, though, and here is a clip of one problem on the first boulder you come to on the trail. Full of extremely difficult roof problems and eliminates, fortunately the boulder also has a few easier lines. Here is one -