Hairpin Boulders

This week was a special one because our old Team Tueday co-conspirator Tyler was back in town. I got to climb with him at Ventana last week and Silverbell on Monday, so it was great catching up and climbing with him again.

This Tuesday found us at the Hairpin Boulders after we got scared a little by the weather forecast. We had planned on heading out to Cochise Stronghold and doing some bouldering there, but the forecast didn't look too good for anywhere in Southern Arizona. So we decided to stay close, and not risk waking up extra early then driving an hour and a half and being rained out. IDIOTS! We woke up to perfectly clear skies and perfect temps. Oh well, off to Hairpin.

I've been to Hairpin a few times lately, but was excited to go back and take care of some business. First, I needed some pictures for the website, and a little more reconnaissance for making a topo of the area. I also needed to finish a project, the unfortunately named Cop Killa. This problem is a slightly contrived variation on the Hairpin Roof, but has outstanding moves. My last visit I got the moves worked out pretty quickly, but kept falling going for the last tiny incut crimp. I managed to send first go, but we didn't get any footage of it. Oh well. If you want to see Cop Killa and a few of the other harder problems at Hairpin, you can check out this video from the mutant strong Matt Fowls on vimeo. See if you can catch the cameo from Asher...

After Cop Killa, Dustin worked on Widowmaker, a cool but very committing problem over a pretty bad landing. It is a problem much scarier and a little harder if you are not tall, and scarier with just two pads. He'll get it for sure with a little more foam under him.

We then went to the other side of the roof, where there is a cool juggy, v1sh overhang. Having not climbed much this semester, Tyler tried valiantly to link this one together, but couldn't manage to send. Dustin and I worked on the low start, which supposedly has thwarted some strong climbers, but we figured it out pretty quickly. Then we made up a pretty sweet dyno we dubbed Archaeopteryx. This is a sweet dyno because it is not real far, but is very steep, requiring good technique and precision to nail the lip.

Check out some of the results of the day below:

Ventana Canyon

Here is a video from last Friday's Ventana Canyon session.

Winter Wonderland

Ahhh, winter in Tucson. While I keep seeing news updates about feet of snow covering parts of the country, we are still wearing shorts. The days are shorter, but the temps for climbing are perfect. Sunny and warm, with a cool breeze giving the air a crispness and the making friction excellent. This is a;so why the town also is filling up with snowbirds, escaping all those places getting hit with winter storms. Old folks rolling into town with Minnesota plates, stepping out of their Town Cars wearing shorts and sandals with socks. Welcome back!

We've been getting more done at Panther Peak, and there are close to 50 problems there now. Along with Panther, I've had a couple sessions out at Hairpin Boulders with kids in tow. Hairpin is about as good as it gets for bouldering with kids. Easy approach, big sandy areas for them to play, and plenty of kid-sized boulders for them to scramble around on. Asher has developed his own bouldering circuit near the Hairpin Roof, and Adelaide likes taking pictures of everyone. They get excited about going there, and have a blast being out there. Fortunately, everyone I've been out there with seems pretty patient and tolerant of them being out there.

Here are some photos from the last couple of weeks.

Panther Peak:

Hairpin Boulders:

Tomorrow we're heading out to Ventana Canyon, another spot with a bunch of new boulders. While Ventana doesn't have as many boulders as Panther, the quality/quantity ratio at Ventana is as high as anywhere in Tucson. More on that soon...

Happy holidays to everyone out there. And if winter weather is getting you down, you know where to come!

First and Last Ascents

Two years ago, on this day, I was in southern China making my way east to Yangshuo for the last bit of climbing on a 4 month backpacking trip with my brother. Two weeks later I would be flying out of Hong Kong, headed to Hawaii and then back to Arizona. I had only started climbing during the semester before embarking on this trip, but still managed to find room for my first pair of climbing shoes in my 28 liter backpack (actually they were usually stashed on the side, in the bottle-holders). After about two months of traveling we arrived in Ton Sai, Thailand, and climbing became our main concentration. We purchased a rope and a rack of draws the second or third day, and climbed pretty much every day there for the next month. But before Thailand we spent most of our time reading, eating, and visiting temples if we felt like actually doing something, and we only managed to climb one day.

That one day was spent at 15,000+ feet, bouldering some of the thousands of rocks blanketing the slope of a mountain overlooking the Lhasa river valley in Tibet.

Lhasa River

Lhasa

We took a ride in the back of a farmer's truck to get up on the foothills of the mountain, about a ten minute ride. Then we hiked through a six hundred-year-old maze of a monastery for around 30 minutes, the buildings getting older and less restored as we gained elevation.

Finally, we were rewarded with this:

The yellow square below is approximately what is shown above. And the Google image below is maybe 1/20th of what surrounds Lhasa.

Some of the boulders right above the monastery were over 40 feet tall. Unfortunately, rock around there are "sacred" so we hiked quite a bit higher, until the prayer flags thinned out.

I only climbed three short and easy lines out of potentially thousands. Grazing around us were hundreds of wild yaks, probably some of the corpses we saw later, skinned, decapitated and piled on the sidewalks during the evening. When we got up to where the above picture was taken the rocks shrunk a little smaller, along with the level of oxygen in the air. With spots in our eyes we decided to retreat back down to the monastery. We made it back at sunset, with bells ringing we assumed some sort of service was starting.

To get from the monastery down the hill to town, where we could take a taxi back to the hostel, we rode on the back of a Tibetan's motorcycle, one at a time. After getting up some speed, the man turned his bike off, including the lights, and coasted the winding road down the forested hillside at night, and I thought of Space-Mountain.

According to the last email I got from our embassy in China, foreign travel to Tibet has been stopped since September of this year. When we were there they only required a 40 dollar permit, which we managed to avoid getting. We also met a French dude who had been camping and hitchhiking throughout Tibet for three months without one. But needless to say, getting caught would be pretty unpleasant, and you'd be blacklisted from China. Hope for the autonomy of Tibet, the return of the Dalai Lama, is pretty much a dream, Lhasa is a military state, and I'm sure by now it is much worse than when we were there. It is beautiful though, and there is a ton of rock.

On a cheerier note:

From an artificial mountain in Beijing.

Japan, Rearry?

I leave you with a crazy ass Japanese toilet, and implore you to enlarge the image and check out the options on the armrest.

More Early Christmas Presents

Panther Rhetoric

Here at Team Tuesday the excitement is palpable. Panther is the word on every tongue. Everyone sees their own private masterpiece when they look at the Panther Boulders-- slick new lines, slick new videos, a view that stretches from Marana to Mexico... If Panther Rhetoric resides, as Jean Genet said, not in elegant discourse, but in strength of affirmation then here I present, as forcefully as I can, my own affirmation of all things Panther.

Some Much Work To Do

Today I went back out to the Panther Boulders for an afternoon sesh. Paco and I arrived at about 1:00 but didn't start climbing until around 2:00, we just wandered around checking everything out and picking out potential projects. There are still so many problems to be cleaned and sent, the task is kind of daunting. (I look forward to the day when we have enough problems to fill the pages of a guide, and when I can flip through it at the base of these boulders). We found too many options, and finally settled back at our starting spot: The Meatwad.

Standing at about 40 ft at the tallest point, the Meatwad is a monsterous block with steep walls on two sides. The parts that aren't steep are just barely slab, and are also the tallest faces. Its scary to look up at all the watermelon-size blocks that may or may not break while climbing them. Two new problems were born here today, but only one was sent. Mechanical Mannequin V0, is Paco's first FA, and is pretty damn fun (watch below) . Pocketmaster 3000, the project, is likely to weigh in around V5 and is painful (Video will come as soon as a send does).

Panther's New Groove from Dustin Payne on Vimeo.

Two Quick Panther Vids

Hmmm, can't figure out why these won't get smaller....but if you click on the videom it will pop up in youtube and you can watch with no problems.

Dustin on Zig Zag

FA of Righteous Beast

Team Tuesday vs The Panther

Team Tuesday posse was in full effect yesterday, and we put the smackdown at Panther Peak. 7 FA's, including a stellar new line put up by Dustin. Fat Hunk of Burning Love (v4) goes up the obvious overhanging prow that you walk under as you enter the HUB. This steep bulge is a striking and inviting line, at least until you spy the landing. A dynamic fall from up high could spell disaster, but Dustin held it together and sent his third try (his first try ended quickly when the lip of the starting pocket broke and Dustin fell six feet square on his back - watch the fall below).

There are about 25 established problems at Panther now, and a faint trail is beginning to form, so the approach is getting easier and easier. We've created a little momentum, now hopefully we'll get people coming out, climbing our problems and establishing new ones. There are more than enough new problems here for anyone willing to put in the effort. If you do happen to check out Panther, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the place.

In related news, I've started up a Tucson bouldering website. Inspired partially by a renewed enthusiasm for bouldering and the development of at least two quality new areas, I felt Tucson's climbing community and all the lonely, neglected boulders of Southern Arizona would benefit from such a site. I hope it will become a community effort, with anyone who is passionate about our sport free to contribute to the site however they they see fit. There isn't much content on the site currently, but feel free to check it out and let me know what you think, and check back later for more good stuff. BOULDERING TUCSON!

Here is some video from yesterdays throwdown:

Welcome to Panther Peak from Joe Kreidel on Vimeo.

Inside the Confessional

The fact that climbing has become the most important thing in my life is a problem. School has been unintentionally neglected. On homework, I just can't focus. You might think this is due to climbing too often (which, on second thought, seems impossible), but I've usually only climbed two days a week this semester. Compared to last semester that figure is about half.

What is it then?

Well, I'll tell you. It's only the prospect of climbing that has taken over my life. I am so enamored by rock that I spend the rest of the week just researching and daydreaming of it. In fact I'd go as far as to say that not climbing as much as made my work output less. You see, weekend trips are usually planned, and therefore able to taunt me, throughout the week. Whenever a browser is opened on my computer, to do homework mind you, my motivation gets derailed by Mountain Project, and all that energy gets drained into scanning through the thousands of Arizona rock climbing pictures, or checking on the development at the new Panther Peak boulders. Then, all of a sudden, its time to make dinner. I am addicted. And this semester is wasted.

Well, it could be worse, Mom.
It could be heroin, right?


Anyway, here are some photos from the Homestead 80's weekend that went down last month. I believe the last head count was somewhere around 25, which has got to be a record for that place. Enjoy.

Dick and Harry 5.10c FA.
See that horizontal crack there, you go to it with your left, match it, then move up to a really good ledge. The Crux: Move over to the right on the edge, get a high left foot jammed somewhere, and fire up left handed to a little, high-friction pinch. The real hard part is getting your feet up because the pinch and the next hold are so close to the lip.

Larry is on the left, he bolted Dick and Harry the day before, and he is watching me climb it now.

Underclinging the crack.

The baby we found, abandoned, up at Welcome Wall.

It's spandex, not leather.

The route on the right is Milk Bone, a three-bolt, 40-foot 5.10a at Bone Town. Imagine three limestone blocks stacked on top of eachother, each the size of two rubix cubes, and you'll have an idea of what the hold is like. For the unimaginative, just know that it is glorious.

All photos by Paco Galvan.

More From Panther

We opened up two good new lines today, and temporarily lost a great one. We also started to clean and work a short overhanging wall that will have at least six good problems.

A problem we started to work on Tuesday, in the cave below the finish of Righteous Beast, was dispatched pretty quickly, and is now Nautilus (v3, FA Chris Prewitt).

Nautilus from Joe Kreidel on Vimeo.

We then walked 100 feet downhill to the Monkey Skull:

Curious George (v3, FA MAtt Fowls) climbs the bulge of the right side of his mouth, topping out through his right eye. The problem is steeper than it looks, with your body at one point being dead horizontal. Some great moves and fun heel hooks on this problem.

Getting o work on a short overhang on the back side of the Pyramid:

And on Righteous Beast, the fantastic long roof I sent on Tuesday, we made the decision to clean of a large and important jug cobble. The cobble at first seemed super solid, but after repeated attempts on the problem, and lots of weight being put on it, it slowly started to flex more and more. Rather than risk this rugby ball-sized cobble breaking off in some ones face, and knowing it would eventually come out anyways, we decided to pry it off. The line is now more difficult for sure, but is even better than it was before. Instead of 20 feet of roof jugs to two hard moves, you now have twenty feet of jugs into a series of hard moves that could be considered a quality boulder problem unto itself. We worked out the beta, but no one could manage a send. This will be a proud and hard line, for sure.

Matt working out the beta on the lower sections of Righteous Beast:

When cleaning lines at this place (or anywhere), it is a thin and difficult line to walk when decided what stays, what goes, how best to clean, what to do about landings and vegetation, etc. It was a bit heartbreaking to see the large cobble go on Righteous Beast, as this was my proudest FA to date. And while it is not something I really like to see, and something I had wanted to avoid at this area, I have to admit I was quite tempted to reinforce the cobble with glue. But there is plenty of that already on Tucson's boulders, and really should be a practice of the past. So while it was hard to do, I went ahead and broke the cobble loose. The result is another stellar, proud FA up for grabs.