"Not much blog activity. Getting out much?"
Good question. I haven't been too productive with internet output lately - on this blog and with the boulderingtucson.com website. Things have been busy, and while I have been climbing regularly, I haven't been able to squeeze in time to document it. I've been trying to find the time to add more to both sites, but with no luck. I know Dustin and Clayton have been super busy as well, so things have been a little slow here lately. So here is a quick and dirty run down of recent climbing exploits, and a couple sources of eye candy.
With all the recent rains we've had in Tucson, most of our stream beds have been pretty flooded, meaning most of our low elevation boulders are now islands. So for the time being I've switched back into sport climber mode, and have been mostly roping up lately. Have spent a lot of time at the Sun Spots Crag, a great winter crag with a good variety of challenging sport and hard trad lines. One exciting development there is a new line we have been toproping, with the intent of bolting it up next fall or early winter. The line follows a dead vertical, thin seam system for about 35 feet of DESPERATE climbing. It starts with a technical and very thin section, leads to a decent left layback, into a section of very powerful and tenuous right laybacks. The hands are good to decent, but the feet are nearly non-existent, forcing you into strenuous opposition moves up to a sharp, painful slot, and then to another section of hard, hard laybacking. Once you manage these moves, a fun section of 5.10 climbing leads you to the top. This route is probably the hardest vertical, technical climbing I have ever attempted, and will almost certainly be in the 5.13 range. I had tried it a few times without getting to psyched on it, then I discovered some really wild and cool beta that was much more fun, and am pretty excited to try it on lead next winter.
I've made a couple trips up to the Super Mega Secret Show And Tell Area (aka The Chessman), and have really enjoyed the routes up there. Two Kings and A Pawn might be the best 5.11 on the mountain, and Serf's Up is an incredibly fun 12a. I've got my eye on Kings Arete (5.13a), a beautiful green lichen streaked arete, but have so far not gotten on it.
We made a trip to The Helmet WAY too early in the season, and nearly got frostbite trying to do a 5.9 warm up. Once the sun hit us, we had a pretty good afternoon. I worked on No Climb For Old Men, I made progress, but I'm still not sure how old is too old. Do I need to get the redpoint before I turn 33? Apparently this amazing climb had not seen an FA, which I find odd, since it is such an inviting climb. 40 feet of 12a/b lead to the beginning of the business - 30 feet of pure horizontal roof climbing. Last year I tried the route a handful of times, but could never even get to the last draw and attempt the crux. This day I managed to figure out the beta for the difficult boulder problem at the end of the roof. Amazing movement and crazy exposure, I really want this route. It's so much fun, but having the endurance to do the last boulder problem after 25 feet of roof climbing is going to be difficult to build. Here are some photos Dustin took from that day: THE HELMET by DP
Dustin is becoming an extremely good climbing photographer, and also a super strong climber. After The Helmet, we headed up to the Matterhorn Boulder so he could try his hand at Jewel Thief. This is one of Tucsons most classic and difficult boulder problems, with a tall and intimidating crux way above the pads. Dustin has made quick work of deciphering the beta for this line, and was hoping to send. Unfortunately, his second try he fell making the last hard move, missed the pads, and jacked his ankle a bit. He will get this problem soon, though, and it will be a proud, proud ascent.
Lastly, I finally edited together some of the footage I took while in Hueco Tanks last month. I ran around North Mountain like a junkie in search of a fix, trying my hand at as many of Huecos classic problems as I could. My goal was to send one hard problem and then tick off as many 3 and 4 star problems as I could. I pretty quickly sent Daily Dick Dose (v7), which fulfilled my first goal. After that I tried a few more hard problems (namely Babyface, Baby Martini and Mexican Chicken), but mostly climbed moderate and easy classics, such as No One Here Gets Out Alive, T-Bone Shuffle, Lobster Claw and Melon Patch. Here is a short video:
Nice job on those climbs. Especially on DDD - that looked pretty thuggish. :)
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