One Cool Problem at Tanque Verde Falls

Someone else will fill you in later on all the juicy details from our Tuesday bouldering at Tanque Verde Falls. Here is a video of one of the problems we worked on, and where we spent a good amount of time and shoe rubber trying to get to the top of this devious boulder problem. This line is a "classic" problem in the sense that in many ways it embodies what bouldering is about. This gneiss boulder is found in the creekbed of Tanque Verde Wash, a short distance above the falls, and has an amazing display of striped quartz banding across its face. The problem is short and fairly straightforward, starting with two good handholds and bad, water polished feet. Throw right hand up to a high sidepull on an arete, and then try to reset your feet to throw for the lip. The excitement you get from sticking the lip quickly dissipating as you reach over and try to find some holds to topout with, only to grope around on frictionless slopers. This is a problem where the slightest differences in how you place your feet or shift your body weight are the difference between topping out or landing in the pads...again and again.  

Pena Blanca Pt. 2 -- Joe's Triumph

A few months, a terrible case of heartbreak over a lost camera, and perhaps a little procrastination-induced inspiration during these last few weeks of the semester, and finally, here you have it: a video of Pena Blanca.

Joe on Fear of Paralysis V5

Pena Blanca Pt.1-- Looming in the Darkness

Some few, special joys are diminished neither by time nor repetition. Homemade peanut-butter cookies and puppies are a couple of standout examples of this point. Another is arriving bleary-eyed in the long hours of the night at a place like Pena Blanca. This is a joy of anticipation and as such requires a kind of mild but protracted suffering that, in the end, is part and parcel to the enjoyment of the thing. Cutting down the rutted-out BLM roads with only the sickly glow of a pair of pre-millenial headlights to pierce the dark, drizzly night it is easy to give yourself over to imagination. In the darkness it is easy to feel the weight of all that rock and the massive power that shaped it and that, in some way, is still hidden inside. In the darkness, unbounded by the subtle, visual signifiers of black-on-black that you get even on a moonless night, the rock is free to swell in the imagination to such monstrous proportions that even the Very Strong and the Very Pure might find their hands sweating. Those of us who fall into neither category must simply find some reassuring mental image to cling to feverishly until the dawn.
This is how it happened for me, anyway, back in March when Team Tuesday took our all-singing, all-climbing ape-boy show on the road. Despite arriving at Pena Blanca well after midnight I was restless in my tent that night. It was my first proper climbing road trip in over three years and outside the drizzle continued to fall softly on the rain-fly. The prospect of being stuck in the middle of a two-day desert downpour after we'd finally gotten leave passes from our daily lives tortured me as much as the thought of climbing something new thrilled me. Anxiety and excitement make a bittersweet cocktail and with the powerful presence of the rock humming all us around it spiked my sleep with short tremulous dreams about climbing up beautiful, golden flakes of patina and then greasing off the huge holds on top and pitching backward into nothing but a startled wakefulness.
I was up early and the rain seemed to have declared an uneasy cease-fire over our particular location. To the east across the swaths of buffle-grass and creosote that stretched out toward El Paso I could see long, silky ribbons of rain unfurling from the gray skies. Joe and D slept late and I fried eggs and chorizo and gazed Westward at the Eastern tail of the Organ Mountains. Weird, gaping wormholes, caves, chutes and pillars stared back at me with a mottled orange, pink, gray, and rust-brown complexion. Put into their proper place and proportion the rocks looked as weirdly inviting as my imaginings of them in the night had been ominous.
It took more than the smell of chorizo and eggs to get the rest of Team Tuesday up and moving. I let Stella, the puppy, into the tent with D and then stood outside of Joe's tent with my guitar and made up a little good-morning song in Spanish which seemed to grease the wheels a little bit. Before long everyone was up. Joe brewed us tiny, Vietnamese-style espressos that somehow bridged the East/West taste gap and went perfectly with the enormous breakfast tacos that I had assembled from a pound and a half of chorizo and no less than one dozen eggs...

Here is a short slide-show chronicling what happens when you take a small group of dedicated climbers, send them to a top-secret and world-class bouldering destination, and feed them a breakfast of large quantities of highly unstable elements. Enjoy.

More on climbing Pena Blanca to follow.

-C-

Seeking Vengance in Molino Canyon

As documented in the inaugural post here, Clayton was visciously and savagely attacked by a bee on Tuesday. To add insult to injury, the attack occured seconds after completing a strenuous boulder problem. Justice had to be sought.

During the Team Tuesday initiation ceremony we lay our hands upon a copy of "Mountaineering : Freedom of the Hills" and make an oath to protect and defend our fellow team members. We vow to keep each other safe from rockfalls, ground falls, wild animals (BEES!), roving bands of ninja climbers and the chupacabra. Climbing is inherently dangerous, but even more so because of all these lurking dangers. With this in mind I planned a trip back to Molino Canyon, to avenge my puffy-lipped friend.

This mission was going to be too dangerous to risk taking another member of Team Tuesday, so instead I brought my wife along. She is small and an easy target, so should the bees attack, they would swarm her first, leaving me free to mount a counter-attack. Thanks, sweetheart! 

Kerry about to enter the canyon:

Descending into the canyon, we found the area serene and peaceful. Hummingbirds were flitting around, water beetles were swimming in mucky pools of ephemeral water, and frogs were seeking shade on all our handholds:

There were no bees in sight, so I asked Kerry to start climbing a little bit in the hopes of luring them out. 

Our thoughts slowly shifted from revenge to enjoying a beautiful day outside. This little bouldering area is in a shaded narrow canyon, with jumbled boulders all along the creekbed. These boulders have probably all tumbled down from much higher on the mountain, and in the course of their travels have been eroded and sculpted by rushing water, giving them many unique grooves, overhangs and other climbable features. One of the challenges of climbing here is the smoothness of these water polished stones, seemingly covered in a coat of slick gloss. Friction is your friend as a climber, and these rocks provide none of it. While it can be frustrating to climb on this style of rock, it can also make you a better climber. It forces you to focus on climbing very smoothly and slowly, and requires precise footwork - not just in placing your foot in just the right spot, but also in maintaining that exact foot placement as your body weight and center of gravity shift. I tend to climb quickly and dynamically, and being forced to climb in this more methodical style is good training.

Here are a few more problems from the area.

Walking out of the canyon, we realized we hadn't found the justice we entered the canyon seeking. We'll be back - both to finish some problems and to kill some bees. Next time I'm going to bring an extra pad to help with some of the landings, and for better bee bait....I'm thinking my kids might do the trick.

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 -

The Blogs and the Bees

I had been in Tucson almost a full year before I got mixed up with bees or blogging. Most of a year is a good run by anyone's standards when it comes to avoiding these two things and particularly so when it comes to climbers. Climbers seem to be born with the blogging instinct-- call it spray, call it 'beta' (make little quotation marks with your fingers when you say 'beta') or just sign your name fifteen times in a row on the Long's Peak summit register --anyway you slice it one of the great joys of climbing is swapping bullshit and thumping chests with other climbers. And that's the idea behind the Team Tuesday Climbing blog. We're here to crush on Tuesdays-- be it on the Lemmon, Milagrosa, or Gate's Pass. And we're here to talk it up and spray it around and have some fun on the days when we don't get to get out and crush.

Bees are as much a part of the Arizona experience as swapping bullshit is part of the climbing experience. In Tucson there are some things you can only avoid for so long-- rattlesnakes, jumping cholla, and bees among other things -- and this is what it looks like when the bill finally comes due:










The vicious little bastards lurk somewhere around this fine, little arete near the base of It Cliff. They are belligerent, rabidly anti-climber, and they have no compunction against flying into your mouth to brutalize your soft-tissues. My advice: terminate with extreme prejudice.

All this, of course, only after I blew two redpoint attempts on 'Armed Robbery' (5.11) at Jailhouse Rock. Joe, who Sent at Jailhouse Rock, barely even got a honey-scented fly-by when the swarm descended on me leading me to conclude that the smell of angst drives honeybees to a murderous rage while confidence, contentment, and self-satisfaction act as a kind of cloaking device that hides you from the bees' view. Sorry bees. Next time I'll Send.



I'll close with a couple of shots of Joe making short work of Dragon's Back (5.9/5.10-)

Welcome to Team Tuesday Climbing


-C-