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:
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
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!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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.
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.
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:
I leave you with a crazy ass Japanese toilet, and implore you to enlarge the image and check out the options on the armrest.
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.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
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