Dream in Vertical

We've Moved!

2008-07-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Don't worry, we're still in SoCal (for now). It's just the blog that's moved. After struggling with some of the more annoying and frustrating aspects to having our blog on Blogger (including added photos always being placed in the beginning of the post and having to be dragged into position), we decided it was time to move on.

So you can now find us at our new home on Wordpress.

I was able to move everything over quite easily, including comments. Also, posts are now categorized as "News", "Notes", "Trip Reports", "Tips", and "Guest Blogs", in addition to having all the tags that we already had on Blogger. Hopefully this should make it easier for you to find a specific trip report (just in case anyone does that) if you want.

We're also now burning our feed on feedburner. Click here to check it out and subscribe.

So check it out, change your feed/bookmark, and enjoy the new site!

Lizzy

Being a Better Belayer

2008-07-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

So for many this may be old news, but a recent story has made me concerned about people misusing auto-locking belay devices like the Petzl GriGri or the Edelrid Eddy. A couple months ago, Splitter Choss and the Climbing Narc fostered some discussion about the "proper" way to use a GriGri. If you've not seen this video, created by Petzl, and you belay with a GriGri, I suggest you watch it:

The video shows 2 ways of lead belaying with the GriGri without taking your break hand off the rope. It also shows a 3rd method, which I think the majority of people I observe at sport crags generally use, where the break hand is taken off the rope to let out slack when the leader needs to make a clip. I think this was the way I was taught to lead belay with a GriGri and I have passed plenty of lead belay tests without being reprimanded, so my impression is that this is a generally accepted method of using the device.

The problem is that it isn't really an acceptable way to use the device. It fosters bad habits - I've seen plenty of belayers not returning their break hand to the rope, even when not letting out slack. It encourages the idea that it's ok not to hold on to the break rope, which is a bad habit to pick up if you also belay with a traditional (non-auto-locking) belay device or in the unlikely (but still possible) situation that the leader falls and the auto-locking belay device does not engage.

The reason I bring this up is that I recently heard of a bad climbing accident that occurred due to similar misuse of an Edelrid Eddy, which is an auto-locking belay device similar to the GriGri (it must be "pinched" so that the cam will not engage and slack can be let out). A climber was leading a sport route in Maple Canyon when he took a fall. The belayer did not have his break hand on the rope at the time. The Eddy did not catch on the relatively new 9.2mm rope and the belayer did not manually arrest the fall. The climber therefore took a 50-foot fall to the ground and suffered serious injuries, although luckily a full recovery is expected.

The moral of the story is clear: although auto-locking belay devices are great and make the life of a belayer much easier, they cannot be trusted absolutely to catch any fall. They do not grant the belayer the freedom to let go of the break rope.

When I encountered the discussion on the Climbing Narc's post, I was initially unsure that I even could change my method of belaying (I used to use the "bad" method, #3). I have quite small hands and I like to wear belay gloves, so I was unsure that the rope could still feed easily through my break hand while I was simultaneously pinching the belay device. However, Luke and I have both adopted method #2, which in fact works quite well, even with small hands and belay gloves. It requires a little more rope management so the rope will feed easily, but I think the increased safety is well worth this extra effort. I would never want to drop a leader because I was being a lazy belayer. I also think it's important, since I use a Reverso (just got the new one!!!) just as often as a GriGri, to foster good belay habits (i.e. not taking the break hand off the rope) rather than bad ones.

So to make a long story short, I wrote this post and brought up the video again because I think the biggest problem with auto-locking belay devices like the GriGri or the Eddy is a lack of knowledge. People just don't know that these devices are not a substitute for belay skills and safety. So now you know. Please think about the friends that you're belaying and make sure you're being a safe belayer.

Best,

Lizzy

Bringing a Little More Green to the World

2008-07-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

As you've already read, we were just out in New England for Adam and Kearah's wedding. Their wedding favors were pretty much the awesomest idea ever that I may just have to steal when my day comes around. Instead of silly, useless little gifts like "love spoons" (which Rebecca got as a favor at another wedding), they gave tree seedlings.

In case you didn't know, I LOVE TREES. I think they're pretty much the best thing ever. Apparently not everyone there loves trees quite as much as me, so a lot of the favors were left unclaimed. After already collecting my tree and Luke's tree, I decided to grab another two because I'd hate for these trees to go to waste (i.e. not get planted). I'm pretty sure I ended up with 3 western red cedars, my favorite tree ever and native to the wonderful Pacific Northwest. The 4th one is some sort of pine and it may have to grow a little larger before I can figure out what it is.

The main issue at hand: I live in SoCal. It gets to be over 100 degrees for several days in a row. It never rains. I don't think my Pacific Northwest cedars would appreciate this weather. So they're going to be indoor trees for now. I got each of them an 8-inch pot, filled it with soil, and arranged them in front of the window on my desk. Hopefully this should be good for them - moderate temperature inside my room, regular watering, and indirect sunlight.

And just so that my trees don't feel too out of place growing up in SoCal, I gave them names reminiscent of where I would find their wild relatives: 3 of my favorite PNW climbing towns for the cedars - Squamish, Index, and Mazama; and my new Washington home town for the fir, Poulsbo.

So hopefully I can keep my babies alive and plant them some day (when we live somewhere more appropriate).

Go hug a tree,

Lizzy

East Coast Crimping, a day in Rumney, NH

2008-07-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Rumney has to be one of my favorite sport climbing areas in the country. Beautiful rock tucked away in the rolling hills of New England. The various crags offer a variety of angles on interesting rock of many different colors. Climbing mid week we were able escape the Rumney scene that has developed in recent years.

It seems fitting that I returned to Rumney en route to my friend Adam's wedding for it was with him that I first visited Rumney. On my first and only other trip to Rumney Adam and I headed out for the 7+ hour drive from Bucknell on a Wednesday night. Some how we were both able to play hooky for a few days and wanted to get a bit of climbing in before the snow set in for the winter. We drove north through pouring rain too excited and stubborn to let the weather effect our mood. Despite almost two and half days of rain on a 4 day trip we had a blast, sent hard and vowed to come back to our unset projects.

This trip was to be my glorious return to Rumney and we sure had a blast. Lizzy and Rebecca had never been to Rumney and I was excited to show them the many fun climbs Adam and I had played on over a year previous. Our day started at Waimea and we had the cliff all to our self. The sun still hiding behind the rocks and we enjoyed to cool shade. The name sake climb and the easiest on the wall is Waimea 10d. This climb follows black water streaks up a vertical wall to a tricky crux on runnels and feet pointing the wrong direction.

Waimea sits next to some of the hardest routes at Rumney and while moderate in grade can be quite pumpy. In the second photo you can see Livin' Astro 14c, China Beach 14b, and Jaws II 15a. While not a great warm-up for those climbing 5.11 it was our only option. Lizzy was able to work through a trick top crux, ignoring my incorrect beta, and set despite a dizzying flash pump. Rebecca quickly worked her way up to the crux and could not figure out the sequence and took a nice clean lead fall. Working on her mental game she got back on the route and finished it up.

My main goal and unsent project from my last trip was Techno Surfing 12b. On my final burn last trip I had fallen post crux with only one draw between me and the anchors. While the technical crux is much lower there is one hard move right before the last bolt and then you are quite pumped making the final moves to the anchor. On my first try I wimped out at the crux and took. I was a bit out of my mental space and was not excited to see the same fixed draws on the route as the last time i had been on it almost a year and half earlier. I hung my way up the route and figured out all of the beta and lowered to rest. Lizzy was busy taking a nap recovering from our late night and day of travel so Rebecca went to work on Flyin’ Hawaiian (photo below). I had history with this line and was excited to see how it would feel. The start was quite bouldery with difficult moves over a rocky landing so we stick clipped the first two bolts. Rebecca worked through a good intro sequence but was falling off a strenuous left hand pinch. Lizzy woke up rested and excited to give it a go. She was able to refine the start beta and match the left pinch but could not keep body tension to get her feet up and make the next move. After many tries the ladies opted for some rest and I got back on Techno Surfing.

The first hard moves went well (photo below) and in no time I was resting below the crux bulge. I started off into the crux sequence and then the rope got stuck on my harness buckle while I was trying to clip. I dangled from the two handed jug and waved my legs around. Helpless to change it I heel hooked above my head and clipped. Energy sapped I forced my self to continue and made it through to the next ledge rest. Commitment and fast movement would be key for the last hard move. I crimped hard with my left hand committed and a few moves later found my self clipping the anchors.

Next I lead Flyin’ Hawaiian which was just as hard as I remembered and Lizzy and Rebecca top roped it. They both found it thuggish and fell at the tricky moves that gained the upper dihedral. Hoping to get in some more enjoyable for the girls we headed over to Orange Crush. This wall is steep at the top but offers some nice vertical lines in the middle of the cliff. I had hoped to link the full Black Mamba which Adam and I had done in two pitches but the top section was seeping. Technical moves on beautiful black rock make this route one of the best 5.11's at Rumney. The vertical small hold climbing allowed the girls to use their balance as they danced up this route. Rebecca enjoyed it so much she did it twice. Both Lizzy and Rebecca vowed to lead it when they return.I had time to finish up one more project and got on Captain Hook. It was a bit warmer and more humid at Orange Crush which was less than ideal for the small crimps on this route. After hanging the draws and remembering the beta I was able to send on my second try. The first crux deadpoint was much harder than I remembered but I was in control and only mildly pumped at the top crux. Also I found a left kneebar that allowed me to easily clip the anchors.

We were all tired and it was getting late so we got pizza in town. A nice treat after a long day of hard climbing! It was great to get back to Rumney and I cant wait to return!

- Luke

4 Reasons Why Alaska Rocks the Socks Off United

2008-07-16T07:54:00.001-07:00

Luke and my recent travel to the east coast has got me thinking about flying. In this day of airlines that are expensive, limiting on your baggage, and charging you for any "real" food, I think it's ok to play favorites. You've gotta hold on to those few things that still make flying a good experience (i.e. being happy that you're not flying another airline).

(1) Baggage.

United: It's surprising how often they lose them. Once when my family was traveling back to Seattle from Florida our bags ended up in New Jersey. New Jersey!!! I've also had to physically GO to the baggage office to pick my bag out of a pile because they couldn't seem to find it there.
Alaska: Has never lost my bags. (Knock on wood)

(2) Food.

United: There is none and when there was, it wasn't very good. Although this seems like an airline standard these days.
Alaska: When they gave real food, it was great (like a piece of good coffee cake on a 1hr flight from Seattle to Portland). Now, even though you don't get much, they do give you milk and a warm (yes, warm) cookie on later flights.

(3) Lateness.

United: Although the occasional flight is on time, everything else is almost always late. Flying through Chicago generally guarantees you will be late.
Alaska: More often than not, I arrive early. (Although I'm usually flying between SoCal and Seattle, which makes things a little easier.)

(4) Mechanical problems.

United: Over 50% of the United planes I get on are delayed at least a little by them fixing some mechanical problem. More than once I've had to get on and off multiple planes as they change their minds about whether or not they could fix them.
Alaska: Maybe once or twice. I've never had to get off a plane to use another one because they just couldn't fix it.

Moral to the story? When flying on the west coast, fly Alaska. When flying across the country, expect suffering. When flying to Australia, fly Qantas - you get your own video screen (in coach) with tons of movies, TV, and games; they feed you a LOT, including yummy things like chicken curry and a little snack bag for overnight; and the flight attendants have Aussie accents.

Lizzy

A Trip Back in Time: The Very Bad Day

2008-07-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

Although we've got plenty of stories to tell about our recent trip to New England for climbing, visiting, and Adam and Kearah's wedding, I wanted to take a moment to recount something that happened to us a couple years ago.

It happened on July 11, 2006, and it was The Very Bad Day.

Summer 2006, I was living in the house of my friends John and Olivia, who run a guiding service called Northwest Mountain School. At this point in my life, I was still keeping alive the dream of becoming a rock guide - I had plenty of experience from guiding students in my high school and being a camp counselor at Camp Sealth, and I had my WFR certification. So I was trying to live the dream, living in Leavenworth, hanging out with the guide crowd, and not working... Luke, meanwhile, had decided to take a job in Bellevue, so we were both in Washington for the summer! (Although we were 2+ hours apart, which seems to be a common element...) Luke had spent the weekend with me in Leavenworth and had gotten up early (5:30ish) on Monday morning to drive to work in Bellevue.

En route to Snoqualmie Pass, Luke had just driven over Blewett Pass when a deer ran out into the road. The collision of the deer and Luke's beloved Justy totalled the car. Via a variety of phone calls from passersby and a state trooper, I got the message that I needed to go pick up Luke because he'd had an accident. I didn't realize that he had no cell service where he was, so I was terrified that something really bad had happened.

So I drove up to Blewett Pass and picked up Luke, who was safe and uninjured if a little shaken. We headed back to J & O's place in Leavenworth so he could make some calls to his insurance company and his mom.

The Justy, post close encounter of the deer variety

A little later that day, we realized that we needed to head back to the Justy to retrieve a couple more things, including the stereo, which belonged to Hartley. So we headed up SR-97 again. I was following a stationwagon going a little below the speed limit about a mile before the pass, when the stationwagon swerved aggressively into the left uphill lane. Luke yelled "tire, tire, tire", and I had a split second view of something large and black rolling towards me before it hit us as I was trying to swerve left out of the way. The impact of the tire caused the airbags to go off, but the car continued left through the other uphill lane and the the downhill lane, rolling onto the passenger side and hitting the rock embankment.

I said, "This is a very bad day." Then Luke helped me push open the driver door and we climbed up and out (a weird thing to do indeed) of the car, with me shouting at Luke to take out the car keys (something I'd remembered you were supposed to do), triggered by the eerie sound of the CD player still playing Jason Mraz.

I don't really remember the order that the next series of events happened, but I know that we were trying to take everything (all my climbing stuff and some of Luke's climbing stuff) out of the car, I was sitting on the gravel on the side of the road, shocked and crying, and Luke and a series of helpful people were putting out my car (yes, the engine was on fire).

R.I.P. RAV...

What happened was this: the dualy drive tire (2 tires and connecting metal parts) of a semi-truck coming down the highway from Blewett Pass came off the truck and started rolling down the highway. After trying to run down his tire to nudge it off the road, the truck was out-speeded by the tire, so he pulled over. The car in front of me saw the tire, so he swerved. I had barely any time to react, so my car, going uphill at 55mph, collided with the tire, which was coming downhill at something like 70-80mph. The impact totalled the car.

Some important parts appear to be bent.

A lot of people were wonderful and stopped to help us. There was the Homeland Security guy who helped put the fire out before rushing back to his armored van (he just happened to be there, we think he was transporting a suspect or something), the other people with fire extinguishers, the lady who comforted me and used her analog cell service to call for help, the truck driver (whose truck the tire belonged to) who also donated his fire extinguisher and information, the EMTs who offered to give us a ride back to John and Olivia's in the ambulance since we no longer had any transportation, and Jeff and Kristen, who lent us their van to drive to Wenatchee to get Luke a rental car so he could get back to work.

Notably absent from this group of people was that car that swerved before me, which sped off after the accident. Maybe they thought it was their fault, but whoever you are, you lost a LOT of karma points that day.

So ended the wonderful service of Luke's Justy and my '97 RAV4. Although we were sad to use them, we also felt incredibly lucky to be alive and, even better, uninjured. Luke got a little piece of glass in his knee from the broken passenger window, but that was the only injury. To this day Luke still gets extremely nervous around deer and I still get probably even more nervous around semi-trucks, especially on hills. Apparently accidents like this are not rare - plenty of people have been killed by accidents caused by tires coming off semi trucks.

So I guess the moral to the story... beware of deer during the pre-sunrise and sunset witching hours and GO AHEAD AND PASS that slow stationwagon in front of you instead of trying to be conservative - it could save you and your car.

Safe driving, everyone.

Lizzy

Maine Wedding

2008-07-15T09:05:00.000-07:00

Adam, one of my best friends and climbing partner from Bucknell got married this past weekend. Lizzy and I flew out to the east coast for the ceremony and a bit of pre-wedding climbing.

We were able to see my mom in Boston on Wednesday for dinner and then drove up to Rumney Thursday morning with Rebecca who flew in from Detroit. A nice storm on Wednesday night dropped the temps about 20 degrees and made the summer a bit more bearable.

It was still a bit humid during our day in Rumney with a large helping of bugs. Regardless it was a great day of climbing and I was able to finish off some projects. More posts about that later once we get all the photos together.

The wedding up in rural Maine was spectacular and it was good to see many friends from Bucknell. We are scattered all over the country now and it is tricky to get everyone back together. From California to Texas, Maine to Michigan, Massachusetts to North Carolina, everyone has spread out from humble Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
I just wanted to give my best wishes to Adam and Kearah Donato who are off in Hawaii enjoying the Sun, Sea and Sand!

You two are great and I am sure the years to come will be amazing!

- Luke

More Fires in Cali

2008-07-07T14:17:00.000-07:00

At the Needles this past weekend, we could see smoke from a new fire (started since our last visit to Kern County) burning east of Lake Isabella. Below is a GoogleMaps image of the fire, thanks to Kern County Fire Department.

View Larger Map

It's pretty crazy to be so close to a fire - we could easily see the big plume of smoke to the south and I'm sure Margee at the fire lookout has been busy with updates.

In other news, the Brickyard, a popular bouldering area in Santa Barbara, is also burning. Hopefully the fire won't cause too much damage for the climbing up there.

Fourth of July at The Needles

2008-07-07T08:56:00.000-07:00

It's Monday again and we're again recovering from another trip to the Needles. This time, we headed out with Stein, Luke's friend from the gym, and Stein's visiting friend Traian. After a brutal 9+ hour drive from San Diego (complete with horrendous LA traffic) and a stop at Bakersfield's sketchiest grocery store and gas station, we arrived at the trailhead camping just before midnight. Luckily for us, Traian's friend Olivier, who had driven down from the Bay Area, had already arrived and staked out the last campsite for us.

The next morning, we packed up the gear and water and headed off on the long approach (the first hike is always the hardest because there are more hills on the way in and you have all the gear the first day). Luke and I left with a little headstart so we could rest and wait at the base of the Fire Lookout stairs.

Taking a break on the hike in.

After finally reaching the Charlatan/Witch notch, Luke and I racked up and walked up to the top of the Charlatan, where we rapped in to the base of Spooky, a classic, wild 5.9. Stein, Traian, and Olivier headed up the 3rd class approach to the base of the 2nd pitch of Airy Interlude, which they planned to do as a warm-up since their objective on the Sorcerer was still in the sun.

Luke at the base of Spooky.

Since we managed to rap to the base of Spooky in one 60m rappel, we figured we could probably climb it in a single pitch (although it's usually 2 pitches). Luke headed up the initial handcrack/layback corner, grunted up the offwidth, and had a blast on the money part of the pitch, wild climbing between granite tufas. I struggled on the offwidth, but still enjoyed the upper part - quite unusual climbing for granite.

Looking up at Spooky from the base.

Meanwhile, the trio made good time on Airy Interlude. We had a great (though distant) view of them from our position on the Charlatan. I was pretty tired from the approach hike and grunting past the Spooky offwidth, so we relaxed on the summit of the Charlatan for a bit to eat our sandwiches.

View of the Witch from the top of the Charlatan.

Chillin' atop the Charlatan after climbing Spooky.

Afterwards, we all met back in the notch and headed over to the east face of the Sorcerer to try 2 classic routes. Stein and crew planned on climbing the Don Juan Wall (5 pitches, 5.11b), which had a reputation for being challenging and sustained. Luke and I wanted to do Ice Pirates (2 pitches, 5.11b), a dead-end variation to Thin Ice, which we climbed last weekend with Gordon. The first pitches for both rope teams went well and Stein and Luke set off on their respective crux pitches. Stein powered and finessed his way through a pumpy layback for the send! Traian took a big whipper on the next pitch (pulling out a cam), but Olivier finished the lead for him. After this, the route took the trio around the corner, so they were out of view until summiting. Meanwhile, Luke was making good progress on the crux of Ice Pirates, managing the fiddly gear and balancey layback moves. However, near the top, the gear became sketchier and more spaced out (the flake becomes quite thin and fragile) and Luke became worried about falling and ripping pieces, so he pulled on cams a few moves until he could do the last move to the anchor, a crimpy sport-climbing-ish move. I was able to follow cleanly until this move, but fell here once before reaching the top. The route was definitely challenging and a little weird and intimidating (with tricky, questionable gear).

Olivier leading the first pitch of the Don Juan Wall.

Stein, Traian, and Olivier on top of the Sorcerer.

The Don Juan Wall was a much longer route, so Luke and I finished early than the other three. We waited for a while in the notch, which was getting quite cold, before attempting yell-o-phone communication with the other party that we were taking the car keys and hiking back so we could start cooking dinner (tofu and veggie stir-fry, one of my favorites!). It was a nice time to be hiking back - not too hot anymore and beautiful, pre-sunset views!

Beautiful view on the hike back to camp.

After struggling a bit on Ice Pirates, Luke and I decided to take an easier day on Saturday. We started the day with Witch Doctor (3 pitches, 5.10a), a route recommended by some other climbers we met. Although we were wishing we had brought our 70m rope, the pitches were fun and varied. Luke struggled a bit with route-finding on the last pitch, which wandered through crazy, often questionable rock. As we were summiting on the Witch, we saw Stein, Traian, and Olivier, who had left camp a little later than us that morning, topping out on the Wizard after climbing Yellow Brick Road, which is a classic 5.9.

On top of the Witch after climbing Witch Doctor.

Luke and I ate our sandwiches and headed back down to the notch to wait for the other three. Stein had gotten a look at the classic Tony Yaniro route Scirocco (5.12a) from the Don Juan Wall and had wanted to climb it with Luke while I took a midday break and photographed. However, when the trio finally reached the notch (they had decided to climb Spooky on their way back), Stein said he was too tired for Scirocco today. Since I had gotten a break and a short nap anyways while waiting, Luke and I decided to go for our planned 2nd route of the day, Fancy Free (3 pitches, 5.10b) on the Charlatan while the others squeezed in one last pitch (the first pitch of Thin Ice). Although the first pitch of Fancy Free was a little weird (there was some oozing at the base of the crack), the crux pitch was amazing! After a weird start, the pitch ascends a beautiful thin hands crack in a corner. The corner then changes (from left-facing to right-facing) and the crack shrinks to fingers (yellow and grey aliens, so big fingers for me) and powerful moves with only smears for feet lead to the anchor. My calves were so pumped from pushing on smears! It was definitely nice to climb a normal jam crack after doing so much laybacking on all the other routes in the Needles. The last pitch was a little weird, but it brought us to the summit just before sunset. As always in the Needles, it was beautiful.

View just before sunset from the top of the Charlatan.

Although tired, we were both psyched to have climbed such a cool route. We headed back towards camp with full packs and arrived exhausted. We were excited to find Traian and Olivier still awake, with warm dinner ready for us (returning the favor from the previous night). We enjoyed a relaxing morning of sleeping in on Sunday while Traian and Olivier woke early to hike out for one last route. Thankfully, the drive back was much less traffic-y, taking only 6 hours.

Overall, it was a pretty good weekend. I didn't end up doing any leading, which I think was due to me being especially tired from the altitude and the hiking and especially intimidated by the Needles (I do hate being so easily intimidated - I really need to work on this), but I had a lot of fun on the routes we did.

Also, I recently got a new camera to replace my dropped Olympus. I got a Canon Powershot SD1100 IS Digital Elph (in pink!!) and a sturdy waterproof and shockproof hard plastic case for it (the kind they make for kayakers). Although I still have some work getting used to the camera, we're pretty happy about the quality of the pictures we took. Hopefully this camera will accompany us on many adventures to come.

Best,

Lizzy

Speaking of Cameras...

2008-06-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

Due to the recent accidental dropping of my trusty Olympus Stylus 800, I may be in the market for a new, small digital camera to bring climbing (because we don't always want to bring Luke's larger DSLR to the crag and definitely not on multi-pitches). I'm looking for something not too expensive with a reasonable amount of optical zoom that's small and not too fragile (so it can survive a little abuse in my pack or on my harness, although within a case). Good battery life and features would be a plus (i.e. modes for shooting sunsets or through glass). Any suggestions?

Needles Trip Report

2008-06-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm just now starting to recover from the exhaustion of our recent weekend at the Needles, which was fun and challenging at times.

We started our trip Wednesday night, picking up Gordon at LAX around 9pm and heading straight towards the Needles. We stopped in Bakersfield for gas, somehow avoiding the terrible air quality that the fires up north have caused there (the smoke gets blown towards and trapped around Bakersfield). After a little bit of hallucinating on the Great Divide Highway (seeing deer or other small animals...), we finally reached the campground some time after 1:30am.

Needless to say, we were tired. So we took a more relaxing morning on Thursday, not worrying too much about sprinting out to the crag. After organizing and divying out gear, we headed out the 2.5 miles of hiker trail to the fire lookout.

At the fire lookout

We stopped on the climbers' trail between the Magician and the Charlatan to warm up on Poof, a 3-pitch 5.7 on the east face of the Magician.

Gordon follows the 2nd pitch of Poof

Luke and Gordon shared the leads, with fun moves and manageable, but still exciting, runouts. There were also tons of tiny reddish orange mites that we got squished all over our hands and feet.

West Face of the Sorcerer and Charlatan from the Magician. The air is hazy because of the fires.

After eating a late lunch, we headed up the fire tower stairs to chat with Margee for a while. Afterwards, we re-hiked the climbers' trail to our packs and continued to the notch between the Witch and the Charlatan, where we re-racked for an afternoon/evening ascent of the classic Airy Interlude (5.10a, 3 pitches). I got the first lead of a long (Luke and Gordon had to start climbing so I could reach the belay ledge and we were using 60's) 5.9 pitch that was marred by some intimidating moves above questionable gear and long-ish runouts near the top. This really tired me out, so I asked Luke to lead the crux "Airy Interlude" pitch, which was pumpy, wild, and fun. I definitely want to go back (skipping the first pitch via a 3rd class scramble) so I can lead it. I did lead the final pitch (5.9), which Luke and I had climbed before via Igor Unchained. It was fun, with interesting moves and nice fingerjams, much more fun and less stressful than the first pitch.

After successfully rappelling to the ground after sunset, we headed back to the campground (with the car keys, this time), arriving around 10:30pm to cook dinner - another late night.

Gordon leading the 3rd pitch of Poof

The next morning had another slightly late-ish start because of our late return on Thursday. However, armed with only our refilled camelbaks and more food (we stashed our packs at the Witch-Charlatan notch), the hike went much faster. Our plan was to climb Thin Ice, a classic 5.10b (3 pitches) on the Sorcerer, Fancy Free (5.10a, 3 pitches, on the Charlatan), and Spooky (another classic, 2 pitch 5.9 on the Charlatan).

Luke and I at a belay on Poof

Another party was just starting on Fancy Free, so we decided to start with Thin Ice. Luke headed up the tricky layback, rested on the ledge, and pulled through the powerful 10b crux sequence for jugs that lead to the anchor. As Gordon and I followed the pitch, my camera somehow unclipped from Gordon's harness and fell at least 40 feet to the ledge we'd started on. (R.I.P. camera... although it wasn't totally obliterated, the lens cap mechanism is broken and the compartment that holds the memory card was damaged). Oh well. I've always thought that one should never be really attached to anything that you clip to your harness, so I didn't let it stress me out.

Leading the 1st pitch (5.9) of Airy Interlude.

Gordon hasn't done quite as much crack and trad climbing as Luke and I have, so he found the steep cracks a little challenging, but still managed to make it up the pitch with only one fall. The second pitch started up an intimidating-looking flare. Luke thrutched his way up the flare before it yielded to easier moves. I had a size advantage on the pitch since my narrow shoulders allowed me to reach both hands and both feet into the finger and thin hand jams in the crack in the back of the flare, while Gordon's wider shoulders meant he had to use the insecure layback instead of the flare. The last pitch headed up some easier, though still awkward, corners to the top of the Sorcerer, where we relaxed for yet another late lunch. By the time we got to our packs, it was already past 5pm and we were pretty tired from the route, so we decided to call it a day early and get back to camp before dark.

Luke leading the 1st pitch (10b) of Thin Ice

We decided to try something a little easier for our last day so Gordon could lead more pitches, so we selected Magic Dragon, a 9ish pitch 5.8 that heads up the long southwest face of the Magician. Having re-stashed out packs in the saddle before the fire lookout, we had even less far to hike, which was nice. We managed to make our way to the base of the route without too much trouble. Luke lead up the first 2 pitches, which had a ton of loose rock on the belay ledges. He also nearly pulled off a torso-sized block at the top of the second pitch. Worrying that it would become dislodged on Gordon or I, he decided to trundle it (there were no parties below us). Although Gordon and I were out of the fall line of the block, I still got hit on the nose by a high-velocity ricochet fragment, which lead to a little cut and some bruising, but thankfully no broken nose. Gordon lead the next pitch to the base of a 5.4 slab. Although I had planned on leading this, I was getting a headache from my rockfall collision, so I asked Luke to lead it instead. With a little confusion about belay placements, we made our way onto the easy slabs on the upper part of the Magician and one final, fun pitch right up onto the fire lookout (to the surprise and pleasure of the tourists up there at the time). We stopped there to have lunch at 4pm (late again) before heading back to the campground for a final time.

Since we had some extra time (back at the campground by 5:30pm), we decided to take advantage of our location in Sequoia Nat'l Forest to go see some giant sequoias. We drove down the highway a bit to the "Walk of 100 Giants", where we saw a ton of HUGE trees.

Luke in front of a huge Sequoia

All of us inside one of the trees!

A final early morning on Sunday got us on the road back to LAX, with a few stops on the way, including a trip to In-N-Out to complete Gordon's California experience. It was a great trip!

More Fires in California

2008-06-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

The big news right now are all the fires up in northern and central California, many of which I believe were ignited by lightning strikes. Best of luck to the firefighters up there right now.

On our way back from our trip on Monday, we saw some evidence of fire down further south. This was the view from a gas station in Temecula (north of San Diego on the 15):

Pretty crazy, right? Apparently this was smoke from a small brush fire caused by "hot parts from a wheel assembly [coming] off and ignit[ing] the brush" on the 805 near La Jolla. It sounds like it was pretty small and was almost immediately contained, but still made plenty of smoke that we could see from pretty far north.

At least LA managed to make it through several days of 100+ weather without anything major burning... let's hope that luck lasts the rest of the summer.

Getting Psyched on Nevada Limestone

2008-06-25T14:11:00.001-07:00

With temperatures blazing in the 100s in the SoCal area last weekend, we headed out to Mt. Charleston, just north of Las Vegas, to beat the heat. Mt. Charleston rises above the glitz and garbage of the strip to over 10,000ft elevation - a tree-shaded, snow-covered (for part of the year) alpine oasis amid the southern Nevada desert.

This was our first extended experience sport climbing on limestone and we had some struggles with the many challenges presented by the rock - finding where the holds were, trusting the rock (especially when broken holds had not proven it particularly trustworthy), and (in some cases) dealing with the mental crux of distantly-spaced bolts.

By far the highlights of the trip for me were the campground we stayed at on Sunday night (Hilltop campground - absolutely beautiful) and the route I projected on Sunday, Los Banditos, 5.11c.

The campground was at fairly high elevation and our campsite was shaded by tons of somewhat stubby, twisted alpine trees - you could tell that they were covered in snow for part of the year. The views down into the desert, the sunset, and the sunrise were amazing. Quite a far cry from some of my less enjoyable campground experiences (Camp 4, I'm thinking of you here).

And then the rock climbing. On Saturday afternoon, after a morning at the Imagination Wall, we headed to Robbers Roost for a few more routes. After re-warming up, Luke onsighted Los Banditos (11c) and I headed up on toprope, climbing it clean first try and only feeling pumped after I'd been lowered to the ground, which was pretty sweet. The climb had a variety of fun moves over slightly overhanging rock that still allowed me to get several no-hands rests and a lot of balancey moves. This was a pleasant surprise since I worried from the ground about the route being a pure grunt-fest.

It was so much fun that I decided to go for the lead when we returned on Monday morning. At first I struggled with the crux clip, but on my second try, I overcame my fear and figured out a key heel hook to make the clip more doable, although I got stuck on the moves right afterwards and made it to the top after hanging once. I don't know what it was (maybe the altitude), but before my second try, I was feeling pretty exhausted. But after laying in the sun for a couple minutes and feeling the adrenaline of the second lead, I wanted a third go.

I made the crux clip without much trouble, although with a different (but better) sequence and launched into the last moves on bad holds before the series of jugs that led to the anchor (these are the most amazing jugs I've ever experienced outside - huge and wonderful). But my tiredness kicked in and I slipped from the last bad crimp below the jug - so close! I was a little disappointed, but also proud of myself because I had fully committed to the sequence and was pushing hard for the jug, above my last bolt, and took a small whipper when I fell. For a girl who has a tendency to downclimb instead of committing, this, I felt, was progress. Even as my hands shook, I was totally committed to the route, not thinking of falling or downclimbing once.

Also, this was the first sport climb of the grade that I've attempted. I've lead several 11a's and an 11b, but I'd never really felt confident enough to step up the grades, which is really something I need to start doing to progress in my climbing. It was great to feel motivated and excited enough to push my limits and bring some of the motivation of my Indian Creek crack climbing (where I attempted to lead my first 4 5.12s) into sport climbing. I'm hoping this will be a good sign as I start to push my limits harder and make some improvements.

In other news, tonight we're picking up Gordon, one of Luke's friends visiting us for a couple days, and heading out to the Needles! For the first time this season! I'm super excited and can't wait to get on the sharp end on some of that beautiful granite.

Best,

Lizzy

Alpine Retreat - Clipping bolts at Mt Charleston

2008-06-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

I needed to get out, I just wanted to leave, go somewhere, change the flow of things. But I am not a spontaneous person, I like to make plans and follow them. This balance always strikes me and I don’t know what to do, which furthers my problem. I like doing things, keeping busy and chugging forward. I enjoy keeping my schedule full so that when I do have some free time I enjoy it and truly relax.

Friday came around and plans for the weekend were far from settled. Lizzy had been spending time in her Air Conditioned room away from 100+ degree heat while I had been plugging along at work. Even climbing in the shade we would be met with 90+ degree weather and would likely melt before sending anything. Our drastic times called for drastic measures and I came up with a plethora of plans. This can easily become a problem as Lizzy and I try to sort between the nuisances of each possible climbing location. The common theme was high elevation and camping. We would need to spend the whole weekend out of LA and somewhere cool. Fearing the hoards and with a slight dislike of the granite of Big Bear we decided on Mt Charleston.

Gas these days I at a premium and adds new words to the American vocabulary like “Stay-cation” but honestly who the hell wants to do that. I want to explore the world, I want to journey to new places and I want to get out of here. NOW! Adjusting to meet the best temperatures I worked on Saturday and we left for Vegas on Saturday night. The five and half hour drive was traffic free but required constant AC as we made our way into the Vegas heat. After passing by the strip we headed north on the 95 out into the unknown. A small turn off and a sign for Mt Charleston signaled our rise to elevation and a retreat into cooler temperatures. Reservations were suggested but required three days of advanced notice for the Kyle Canyon Campgrounds.

With the two main campgrounds full we headed to the Mary Jane Area. This multiple abuse site, once home to a historical ski tow, was a gravel parking lot near the Mary Jane trailhead. All of the “spots” on the periphery were taken so we parked near the center and set up our tent. Bugs instantly flocked to our headlamps but the temperatures had dropped and we were quickly asleep. With the sun rising around 5am, I was excited and anxious to go climbing. Getting up to go to the bathroom at first light I had seen towering limestone walls and had a hard time going back to sleep.Unable to wait any longer, I roused Lizzy and we packed up and had breakfast by 6:30. After a bit of confused driving, undoubtedly caused by our mere 6 hours of sleep, we wound up hiking up the trail next to the ski tow. Our trail led us to the base of the north facing Imagination Wall, 500 feet of glorious limestone. At the base of our warm-up the rock was intimidating and devoid of familiar features. Sharp crimps and runnels dotted the face and without chalk the sequence was far from obvious. The base of the Imagination wall is slabby and the rock offers excellent friction, the climbing requires subtle body movement and a keen eye for “holds”. After warming up I jumped on a 10d that might make a good lead for Lizzy. This however was far from the truth. After breaking a foothold, stick clipping the second bolt and shakely climbing to the 3rd bolt at 40 feet I decided to bail. The next bolt was 15 feet higher and I was not yet confident on this type of climbing. I had fallen prey to the Exacto Blade (the route's name) and did not have the mental energy to complete this route that was undoubtedly bolted on lead.

Confidence shattered, we moved down the cliff to try a few of the other “moderate routes”. After bailing on three different variations of this 11a, I found passage on one of the harder neighboring routes. While not a clean lead I was finally able to make it to the top. The ending of this 11b had what I wanted, wonderful pinches and crimps, tricky footwork and tension moves, most importantly real HOLDS! Finally getting to climb after my flailathon Lizzy mad quick work of this balancey climb.

After one more fun 11b, evidently the good grade to climb at this wall, and a bit of heinous top roping we departed for Robbers Roost. The weather had been ideal and the wall was completely in the shade causing Lizzy to don all of our jackets. Even though we were a bit tired I convinced Lizzy that more climbing was in order and with the promise of a five minute approach we were on our way. The scene at Robbers Roost was the opposite of the solitude of the Imagination Wall. There were tourists and climbers sandwiched in the cave like venue. The walls were covered with fixed draws and chalk and most of the climbs were overhanging.

With some friendly advice from one of the locals we warmed up again and we did a few more climbs. While these routes had tricky cruxes they had nice holds and jugs and one even had a sit down rest. Excited by a more athletic style we decided to return the next day so Lizzy and I could work on some harder routes. Hilltop, the third campground in the area, was close by and we still needed a place to sleep. With showers and a toilet this was a big step up from the Mary Jane Area. Hiltop hade excellent views and is about 1000 feet higher than Kyle and Fletcher campgrounds. Since it was Sunday night we had no problem finding an excellent site in the shade. If you are ever there I suggest site number #21 despite not having a view it was fairly wind protected and had evening shade.

Monday we returned to the Roost and climb the namesake route (photo below). This climb, another lead bolted scare fest, was technical with bad falls on sharp rock. The movement and hold variety was classic limestone and excellent if you could move past a fear of falling. This climb had deep runnels and great pinches. I found the crux to be a tricky bit of stemming after a good rest about midway through the route. While this did not function as a good mental warm-up it got the blood moving and allowed me to focus on harder routes. First up was an onsight attempt on a route that had been occupied the previous day. After a bunch of tricky climbing I gave up a foot below a hidden jug. Lack of commitment and a bit of memory loss left me hanging but with no regrets as I made my way to the top I encountered a much more beta intensive crux that would have blown the onsight. Next go, much more relaxed, I sent Bubbleicous.

Lizzy was in the projecting mood and jumped on Los Banditos, an 11c that she had done clean first try on TR the day before. This would be her first of the grade and over the day she made excellent progress. Between my attempts on different routes she gave this route three good burns and on her final try fell one hold below jug at the end of the crux. She made good progress with each try and feeling fresh on our next visit I think this climb is within her reach.

I attempted some of the classic harder routes in the area but was stopped by tricky beta, fatigue and altitude. Leaving tired we made the journey back to San Diego happily avoiding Vegas rush hour. Despite a lack of hard sends I feel the weekend was quite satisfying and have a new respect for the complexity of limestone. I am excited to go back, since according to the locals you can climb there all summer.

- Luke

The Awesomeness of Yoga

2008-06-18T17:43:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of difficulties associated with being a Caltech student. The main one is an utter lack of free time during the academic year because there is just so much work to do. However, Caltech student-dom is not without its perks. For example, we get free membership to the gym and can go to as many of the aerobics and yoga classes as we want. Now that I'm free from the burden of having to constantly be doing homework, I finally have time to start going to yoga classes again, so I started this afternoon. At the REI used gear sale this past weekend, I nabbed a nice (originally $50), practically unused yoga mat for about $16 and was excited to start using it right away. REI also tells me that my new yoga mat is made from environmentally friendly rubber - how sweet! Take a look:I could feel the decrease in flexibility and strength since the last time I'd taken a yoga class (its been way too long), but stretching and relaxing felt amazing and my yoga mat has a cool, colorful pattern on it that's nice for staring at while breathing from downward dog.

I'm hoping that getting back into yoga will help me with the rest of my climbing training. I have found in the past that strengthening and stretching all your muscles, even those not directly related to climbing, can help one move more confidently and fluidly, which I think is an important thing to balance out all that power gained from bouldering in the climbing gym.

Namasthe,

Lizzy

Public Transportation Adventures, Part 2

2008-06-17T16:12:00.001-07:00

Gas is getting really expensive. I had my first >$60 fillup the other day. So it seemed like a good time to save some gas and ride the trains back from San Diego again.

The more I try to understand the Metrolink trains, the more confused and frustrated I get. As you may recall from my previous post on this subject, I thought I just needed to get on an earlier coaster to make an earlier Metrolink train. But, as I discovered last night as I was figuring out how early we needed to get up this morning, the latest Metrolink train from Oceanside that goes all the way to LA Union Station leaves at 6:41am. The first Coaster doesn't get to Oceanside until 7:33am. This is kind of a problem... so much for taking the trains in the morning. It turns out there is only one train after noon that goes all the way from Oceanside to LA. One.

As I discovered this strange phenomenon of utter disharmony between the San Diego (e.g. Coaster) and Metrolink train systems, I figured there MUST be some way that you can easily ride trains from San Diego to LA. I figured that maybe I just needed to catch a different train from an intermediate location (because more trains do leave Oceanside, they just don't reach LA). The trains leaving from Oceanside are all on the "Orange County Line" route. Most of them reach an intermediate station in Orange. This station is also on the "91 Line", which runs from San Bernardino (which is out east, for LA neophytes) to Union Station. Theoretically, one could catch one train to Orange and another to LA from the Orange Station. But the latest train one can take from Oceanside is the same 6:41am train that goes directly to Union Station. The same train that is too early to catch with a Coaster.

Ok, I could understand why maybe trains operated by different systems might not run in perfect harmony (e.g. Coaster and Metrolink trains). But even different Metrolink lines clash with each other. Here's a good example: Train 850 leaves Oceanside at 7:30am and arrives in Orange at 8:32am. Train 685 starts in Orange and heads for Union Station. Logic might have these trains leave and arrive at times so one could make the connection. But instead, Train 685 leaves Orange 10 minutes before Train 850 arrives. So if you were unlucky enough to get on Train 850 to Orange, you'd be stuck there until 4:38PM waiting for the next train to Union Station.

It just seems a little ridiculous to have a train system and not have it scheduled such that it's easy to use and transfer to different locations. It seems that in the future, I may just have to bite the bullet and buy Amtrak tickets. If I think I will be going back-and-forth enough, I can buy a 10-ride ticket for $150, which is a $7 discount per ride, with a $70 total savings. The only problem being that it's only valid for 45 days.

I can only hope that as (if) more people start to use public transportation as fuel prices are rising, they'll take another look at their infrastructure and improve a few things.

However, to avoid being totally negative, the LA Metro system, which includes 4 light rail lines and all the buses, is pretty good. The light rail lines run pretty often (often enough that I don't need to worry about the schedule) and serve a lot of the greater Los Angeles area. Too bad everything couldn't be this easy.

Best,

Lizzy

Climbing at Horse Flats and the Riverside Quarry

2008-06-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

Summer is here and we have been banished to the shade and the mountains. The sun quickly heats the rock and friction becomes non-existent. We spent Friday night camped out at REI to attend one of their Scratch and Dent sales. Despite arriving at 10pm there were 10 people ahead of us in line. Some arrived as early as 4pm. We managed to get a bit of sleep despite the random urban setting of Arcadia. The sale was fun but not very eventful. One of my friends, Hartley, from Santa Barbara was supposed to come down for the sale and an afternoon of bouldering at Stoney Point. A case of food poisoning kept him grounded in SB.

With my schedule free I decided to tag along with Lizzy and Julie who had been invited to go on a Mad Rock catalog shoot. One of the local climbers recruited these girls and was planning on a day of bouldering to get some shoe photos.

We headed up to Horse Flats which is in the Angeles forest in the hills just north of Pasadena. Windy roads and pretty scenery brought us up a few thousand feet to a granite boulder field. My last experience on granite had been less than fun and I was a bit skeptical of what this area had to offer. Fortunately the rock was highly featured metamorphosed granite. It has lots of crystals and despite being a bit flakey offered fun problems.

Josh Wagner, from the Arcadia Rock Gym, and I bouldered while the ladies played with new shoes and took photos. Josh gave me a tour of a few classics and showed me some problems that were not in the guidebook. After taking a look at a super-project we tackled a possibly unclimbed block. Crystals were still falling off at the base and showed no evidence of previous ascents. There was a steep holdless fin and that formed the right side of a dihedral. The angle and lack of holds prevented us from the obvious stemming solution.

Starting from a good right hand you could gain a small sharp two finger crystal with your left hand. Then you had to make a full span to a decent right hand pinch. The remaining moves to the top were less obvious. After reaching the pinch I could make not make any further progress. I shifted my focus to the arête on the left side of the dihedral. A span start and some tenuous smears on the arête allowed you to gain the same crystal as a gaston with the right hand. Using this to bump my left hand up the arête I was able to stand on a high crystal, bump to another sharp gaston and finally bump my left hand to a good hold around the top of the arête. Possibly a FA but most likely done by Wills Young back in the day. I needed a break after the send and went and check on Lizzy who had flashed a crimpy problem and was spotting while the other two girls tried it. Upon my return Josh had solved the right variation and was sitting on top of the boulder. A possible FA each within an hour, pretty good work :-D

My elbow, which has been hurting, needed a rest so I followed the girls around helping light the problems by holding a bounce card. The two bounce cards did an amazing job of adding directional light to the photos. I was super impressed and hopefully can get some in the next six months. I only saw a few of the photos but they looked pretty good and can be found on facebook! When we got back to Pasadena we crashed early with a serious lack of sleep and full day in the sun.

Sunday we got up early for some shady sport climbing at the Riverside Quarry. We had not been to the quarry in six months and it was fun to clip lots of bolts. Stein, my climbing partner from San Diego, met us with one of his friends for our early session. Stein is quite the quarry master and was excited to clip some bolts outside for a change. We have spent many more hours training on plastic than actually climbing routes. Stein helped me to get in a hard climbing mindset and put draws on a bunch of climbs for me.

After Lizzy and I warmed up we got on Salutations a nice 11c that Stein and George had just finished. The quarry is filled with boulder problems separated by good holds and hand free rests. This visit I embraced this style and had much more success. I flashed/onsighted (I saw a bit of beta) the first route and set up a TR for Lizzy. She cruised the starting moves but had to spend a bit of time figuring out the reachy crux. After finding a powerful sequence she pulled through the small holds and gained a good jug. After some slopey holds she finished off the route. The crux was definitely challenging. Focusing on the jug allowed me to commit to the 3 or 4 hard moves on the small crimps.

Stein had finished an impressive onsight of the neighboring Balrog 12b and I got to watch George as the top roped it. I got a sense of where some of the good holds were and what sections would prove difficult. There was an obvious high crux that I would need to save my energy for if I was to send. The first two bolts were simple with a fun mantle onto the slab seen in the first photo. The slopey holds in the second photo blew my confidence and I was insecure and overgripping. I made the third clip from a bad hold and was happy when I got the next hold which happened to be a jug. The next few bolts were easy until a tricky clip. Following this clip were more slopey holds and bad feet. I figured out a heel hook sequence that worked well but I was getting tired. I now was one bolt below the crux and was quite pumped and being unsure of the sequence I gave up. I figured out a way to set up for the clip below the crux but it was quite powerful and zapped my energy for the crux. I hung again and tried to figure out a good way to do the crux. A few more takes and I was through the crux and at the anchors.

Stein had enjoyed the route so much he ran another lap to get some mileage. I watched closely on the parts I had struggled on and figured out a better way to setup for the crux clip. After some rest I went up again making sure to stay relaxed and to flow through the moves. The crux was a tricky gaston cross over sequence right after a powerful clip. I got up to the clip and was able to make it but the next sequence Stein had used proved a bit too reachy and I could not get the same heel hook he had. Hands out of sequence I committed to a higher heal hook that I was able to perch on. This enabled me to rest a little and switch my hands to prepare for the crux. I got my high left foot and right gaston but it felt much worse than my last go. I grunted and fired left hand across to the next good hold. I stuck it and quickly move my feet up to the good holds on the right. A few more moves gave way to an ok rest. A few shakes and I set up for the final tricky move to a crack below the anchor. I trusted my smear and shot my right hand to the undercling crack. Two more adjustments and I was clipping the anchor! I was tired and my climbing was still a bit sloppy but I had committed at the crux and this was important mental progress!

Photos thanks to Lizzy!

- Luke

School's OUT

2008-06-12T17:19:00.000-07:00

I just finished the last final of my junior year at Caltech about 5 minutes ago!!! (It was, like all Caltech finals, a take home final, which is how I can be blogging about it already.) Which means that (hopefully) the most stressful year of my undergraduate career is over and it's all downhill from here.

I have very few requirements left for next year, which I'm hoping will give me more freedom to climb (in what may be my last year living in SoCal, yaaaaaay)! We'll see how things go with having to do grad school applications and possibly doing some research for a senior thesis.

Luke and I are planning on an REI used gear sale this weekend, but we'll definitely be doing some climbing, too. Hopefully it will be a good start to a new leaf (or returning to a previous, more in shape leaf) of my climbing career.

Best,

Lizzy

Good Numbers

2008-06-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

As climbers, we're pretty good (or bad?) at measuring our progress, success, etc. with numbers - whether you're working your way up towards 5.15 or battling through the V grades, like it or not, numbers at least claim to give us a feeling of how we are doing. How much stock we put in these numbers and how much we let them control us is a whole other issue.

Today, I took part in an entirely different, number-related measurement of my awesomeness, or lack thereof - the GRE, the required, slightly beefed up version of the SAT that you have to take to apply to grad schools. After a couple days of practicing and stressing (and trying to get some finals done as well), it was finally time for the test.

I definitely think my studying paid off. Although I only got 680 on the verbal section (honestly, my vocabulary is great compared to everyone I know at Caltech, but they just have to include words like jejune and saturnine that just aren't in my everyday lexicon - I studied these, although neither were on the test), I think I did well on my essays and I got an 800 on the math section!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I have proven that I am competent at tricky high-school level math!

So although I question how much this really will tell anyone about how qualified I actually am for grad school, it should at least tell them that I haven't gotten too much dumber (in fact, perhaps even better at math) since high school, which has got to be a good thing.

That's all for now,

Lizzy

An Idyllwild Weekend

2008-06-03T10:42:00.001-07:00

This past week I had my off Friday and due to some technology problems on Thursday I got to leave work early and get a pseudo 4 day weekend! With finals quickly approaching I surprised Lizzy by coming to LA on Thursday and we packed up and headed out on Friday to Idyllwild.

We made good time on the 10 and the 243 but got a bit confused about where the proper campground was. There are five campgrounds within 10 miles of Idyllwild. We were looking for the cheapest, Fern Glen, but could not at the time remember the name. We took the turn for the main group of campgrounds but the scenery looked all wrong. So we kept going expecting a turn on our way to Idyllwild but to no avail. Worried that the campground would be full we turned around and headed 6 windy miles back to explore the first set of campgrounds further. After driving around for a while on steep and switch backing roads we found managed to find the $10 campground. The cost per night was quite varied and we found $20, $15, $12 and $10 per night.

After sorting the rack we set off to suicide for some afternoon crack climbing. We still had two or three hours of daylight and though we could get a few cracks in before dark. After we parked our car we couldn't find Lizzy's approach shoes. They had vanished and the approach was not well suited to flip-flops. We turned the car inside out and could not find them. We both distinctly remembered her bringing them down to the lawn and setting them down when I was packing the car. However neither of us could remember her putting them in the car or ever seeing them in the car. Possibly we had left them one of the campgrounds so we went in search of her fairly new CTC's. With no luck and much time wasted we even tried to buy a new pair that night but the store was closed. Instead of climbing we explored Idyllwild and had dinner at the Idyllwild Pizza Company, which was quite tasty.We got up early the next day, picked up a new pair of shoes at Nomad Ventures and hustled up to the northern side of Suicide rock. We passed a few parties on the steep approach and Lizzy was happy to have shoes on her feet. We started with Flower of High Rank, shown above, which was supposed to be one of the best 5.9's in Idyllwild and in the state. I decided to lead the crack in one long 200 foot pitch using the harder right crack exit above the tree. The climb had a fun and varied finger crack that split at the tree and became a 3" wide crack on the right side leading up to a roof. The bottom of the climb was balancy and fun and the tree provided a nice rest before switching to the right crack. I got the roof quickly and was stumped by what I found. The crack above was quite flaring and without a good foothold would not yield easy passage to the slab above. After much struggling and going up and down I was able to use some face feet and reach to the left crack. This gave me enough balance to get my right foot over the roof and allowed me to climb the slabby grove. Fun large flakes lead to the top and after setting up a belay I brought Lizzy up. Full value for 5.9 but not necessarily one of the best I had ever done.

Next we headed around the corner to Johnny Quest. I had been told this climb was excellent and I am a big fan of finger cracks. I was expecting it to be a bit harder at 10b but the climb fit my style perfectly and it was my favorite of the weekend. We soloed 50 feet of 5.2 to belay at the tree by the base of this short beauty. A tricky opening dihedral gave way to some jugs and then a thin finger crack. Wonderful pinscars and constrictions with good feet gave way to a ledge 20 feet higher, which is too bad since I could have kept going since the crack was so fun!

I lowered from the bolted anchor and Lizzy gave it a burn on TR. Anxious to climb some more routes we both rapped off and made our way back around the corner. Feeling good on 10b I felt ready for the route of the day, Etude, 11a. It was longer and steeper but I was feeling good on the thin finger locks of Johnny Quest. As I made my way up to the piton protected crux I was shocked to find no holds. The crack was non existent and progress could only be made by stemming and crimping up two grooves for 10 feet before another hold and anther pin appeared. Unable to see a viable sequence and scared of a potential 20 foot fall onto an old fixed pin I precariously aided through the crux. Standing on the highest pin and using a marginal nut to make a blind 2 lobe placement. I was able to clip the high pin but had lost most of my lead mojo.

The final thin hand and finger crack to the anchor was easy once I got my feet up above the high pin and I set up a TR so Lizzy could give it ago. I had confidence that her slab skills and balance would allow her to find a way up the climb. Using tricky sequence with the arête she was able to alternate pulling on the left and the right grooves to slowly stem her feet up. Despite falling off she was able to link all of the different sections and made it to the top. Excited by her success I gave it a go and eked my way up the grooves. While I failed to exhibit her grace I was able to barely make it to the top without falling. Going back I am sure it would be an exciting lead.

We did a few more easer 250 foot slab climbs using the full extent of our 70m rope and a bit of simul climbing and then retreated to the tent. Below Lizzy points to Suicide rock from her high stance on Tahquitz.

Unsure of having to return to San Diego to work on Sunday we got up late and made our way to town to check voicemail. Still sore from all of the hiking and descending from the previous day we enjoyed some Raspberry pastry bread from the local grocer. After giving up on work we made our way up to Humber Park and started the steep hike up Tahquitz. The trail seemed better than we both remembered and we made good time to Lunch Rock.Veering left we set our sights on the bulge routes home to the Vampire and Super Pooper. The base of this area is super slabby and leads up to a series of ledges. We soloed up the first 100 feet of 3rd and 4th class and then Lizzy started leading up to our ledge. Unsure of the correct way to go we made it up to a good ledge right below the start of Super Pooper. Despite the suggestion of moving the belay up another 40 feet I decided that we had enough rope and I did not want to waste the time. The 40 feet was quite easy so I only placed 2 pieces so there was minimal rope drag.

I was not quite mentally ready for the bulges and took over an hour to lead this 200 ft pitch. The first crux was quite cool and involved a transition over one roof via a set of crimps and a crazy arête to a small ledge/jug. Protecting this was tricky and after psyching my self up I was able to get through it. After standing on this ledge for a while I summed the courage again to get through the crux bulge. An awkward sized crack with no feet below it allowed passage over the last bulge. Thruching through a work able sequence my foot popped mid way but I was able to stay in my jam. In the photo above Lizzy approaches the belay after the crux pitch.

I was able to link the next two pitches but since due to improper slinging and getting a rope stuck in a crack I had horrendous rope drag for the final slab. Standing on a ledge with decent prow 10 feet below, I pulled up 10 more feet of rope and smeared my way up the final slab, pulling more rope up from good stances. The angle quickly eased and we were at the top! We ate lunch and enjoyed the views. A superb climb with tricky movement and fun jamming.

Despite getting lost on the decent we made it back to the car and returned to San Diego. We had split up on the way down so that I could get our packs from the base of the route but we both managed to go to the same wrong way and met up after I got our packs. It was nice to be out in the woods and camping for a weekend! School is over for Lizzy soon and I hope we can get out more in the months to come!

Enjoy!

- Luke

A Public Transportation Adventure

2008-06-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

Gas prices just keep getting higher. And although my beloved RAV4 has pretty good gas mileage for how much stuff you can cram into it (~25 mpg), the cost of gas adds up with all the driving to and from climbing areas or San Diego.

There has got to be something better than sitting in traffic on I-5 burning up gas and not get any work done, right?

So this weekend Luke and I decided to experiment. He drove up here to Pasadena on Thursday afternoon because work got cancelled. Then we headed out together (in Luke's car) to Idyllwild for some high-elevation trad climbing (more on that it another blog), returning to San Diego on Sunday night.

Then, this morning (Monday), he dropped me off at the Coaster station in Sorrento Valley. The Coaster is a train that runs between San Diego and Oceanside along the coast. The ride was fairly short and cost $5 for a one-way ticket. In Oceanside, I had to navigate the transit center to try to get a Metrolink train to Union Station. Unfortunately, this was not as easy as the Coaster had been. There were only 2 ticket kiosks at the transit center and both were broken (there was no alternative method to buy Metrolink tickets). Furthermore, the schedule on the website had made it seem like one could ride most Amtrak trains with any Metrolink ticket, but in fact you need the nearly $400 monthly Metrolink pass to ride Amtrak trains.

So, I missed the earlier train due to general confusion and ended up buying a $22 ticket for the next Amtrak train (and waited for an hour). The next Metrolink train wasn't til after 3pm and the earlier one had been at 7:30am. So not great service.

However, once I got on the Amtrak train, the ride was fine - the seats were comfortable, the views were nice when we were on the coast.

Once I arrived in Union Station in LA, it was easy to find the platform for the Gold Line rail to Pasadena. A one-way ticket cost $1.25 and the ride was fast and easy. It left me a short walk from my house.

Overall, the trip coast $28.25, a bit more than gas for the one-way drive from San Diego, but less than if I had brought my car to Idyllwild and back in addition to Luke's car. I also got a ton of reading done, which was really useful. The Metrolink system seemed to be most lacking in terms of regularity of trains or ease of use (like, no way to buy a ticket...), but in the future (now understanding the schedule), I will hopefully be able to better plan around its challenges and lower the overall cost of the trip to $17.75, which, as gas prices increase, starts to be very economically favorable.

Wacky Weather Weekends

2008-05-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

The last two weekends we spent time exploring some areas that we had not been to. Our efforts were motivated by the crazy weather systems that have been moving through California and the rest of the country. One week of crazy hot weather was followed by the coldest temps we have had in two months. Traveling between the mountains and the desert we were able to get in a bit of climbing both last weekend and this weekend.

Last weekend were above 90 degrees in the Santa Monica Mountains so drove up to Big Bear Lake, home of the Holcomb Valley Pinnacles. Big Bear, sitting above 7000 feet is also home to a bunch of ski resorts that are very popular among the LA hoards.

With a late start and a long drive we were barely climbing by noon. Luckily the cliff had chosen was going into the shade and was fairly uncrowned. We enjoyed closely bolted sport climbs on well featured granite. The rock had fun holds but the quality was less than desirable. On one of my projects for the day I managed to make the start a bit harder when the hold under my foot flaked off the wall. The good right hand crimp used for the crux start sequence on Road Crew was now half the size. Luckily I was still able to do the move with the smaller hold.

We were able to climb almost all of the routes on the East face of orbit rock and determined that upon a return visit we would need to seek out some of the other crags in hope of better rock quality.

For Memorial Day weekend we had planned on taking a relaxing trip to the Needles. This would fit with the upward trend in the temps and it would nice to escape the crowds and enjoy some remote camping. This was not in the cards for us as the forecast showed plunging temps and possibly snow fall. How could it be 70 in the mountains one weekend and 30 the next? To make matters worse it seemed that the main gate to the road to the Needles was still closed which firmly pushed this plan from our minds. A rainy forecast for most of SoCal on Saturday kept us grounded in San Diego. A few of our brave friends, Jamie and Nikki ventured out to Idyllwild for some bouldering at Black Mountain. You can see in the photo above that they found fresh snow! Despite the wet and cold conditions Jamie reported that they had a great time!
On Sunday we made the short drive and long hike out to El Cajon Mountain. This crag was the crown jewel of San Diego sport climbing before one of the climbers became disgruntled and chopped a good number of the quality routes. He even went so far as to break holds on one route that had been rebolted after he had chopped it. Thanks to some information from some of the more knowledgeable locals we were able to sort out some climbs to do that were still fully bolted.
The day was still quite overcast and we though there were thunder claps on our hike in. Luckily for the resounding bangs were just echoes in the valley from some locals going at it with their rifle. We were the only ones at the main wall on Sunday but were assaulted with noises of gunshots for the first half of the day.
The granite of El Cajon Mountain is very featured and much more solid than what we found on Orbit Rock. There were wonderful patina crimpers and incut flakes studding the walls. We managed 7 pitches between 4 routes before the weather turned to cold to be multipitching. Our timing ended up working very well as we ran into two of the route developers on our way out. They had been climbing near by and were able to give us suggestions on good routes to do.

Monday the weather did not significantly improve so we headed south and east to the desert near the Mexican border. Our sights were set on another granite sport climbing crag called the Valley of the Moon. With the trusty Rav4 we hoped that we could make it in the 4wd road to the crag.
We managed the steep drive up the saddle that lead into the Valley and were just starting down the road when another Jeep came up behind us and suggested we scout the next section of road. This was slightly worrisome since we had just spent the last 10 minutes figuring out how to get the Rav4 through a set of large rocks on the road. The Rav is quite able with AWD but has fairly low clearance for a small SUV which is made worse by the large running boards.
We hopped out of the car so we could preview the "crux" section of the approach. We were greatly saddened to see a steep downhill studded with large ruts and boulders. Our first look revealed that we had no chance and we turned around. Even if we could have made it down without doing too much damage to our car it would be even more difficult to come back up and we were in the middle of no where. On our drive back out we got stopped by Board Patrol who check our car for immigrants. They were courteous and let us go on our way. The road goes practically all the way to the boarder and one of the cliffs is half in the US half in Mexico.

In the hope of salvaging the day and still doing a bit of climbing we went to the McCain valley which was on the way back to San Diego. We did not have a bouldering pad, which is what the valley is mainly known for so we headed to Lowenbrau Pinnacle which is the only leadable rock. With only quickdraws and a rope we managed to only do a bit of climbing. Despite blue skies and sunny weather constant wind made it quite cold expediting our return to San Diego.

I am excited for a bit more regularity in the weather so bring on the summer! All photos are from El Cajon Mountain.

- Luke

Climbing and Outdoor Blog Links!

2008-05-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

Below is the large list of blogs that I subscribe to through google reader.

You can subscribe directly to all of these or through my feed of them.

Many of the links below go directly to the RSS so you can get the feed for the site.

Not all of these blogs are still being updated and a few are redundant.

If you read my blog feel free to leave a comment with your blog info. If anyone has must read climbing and outdoors blogs let me know.

Enjoy,

Luke

8a.nu - News GLOBAL

A Purposeful Life – Jay Knower
A Year in the Life of a Climber: James Pearson
Adam Lincoln's Blog
Adrian Berry's Blog
Adventure 16 Blog
All Climbing Blog
Alpinist Mountain Standards
Alpinist Newswires
American Alpine Institute
Anatomy of Restlessness
As The Crow Flies

B3bouldering.com
Backcountry Blog
Backcountry.com: The Goat
Barefoot Among Czechs - The North Face Expedition
Being With Yoga
BetaBase
Beth Rodden
big UP blog
Bishop Bouldering Blog
Blackcore – Tim Kettering
BLIMP BOULDERING
Born to Breathe - Neil Berget
BS Productions Blog – Brian Solano
BS Productions - Old Blog

ChossMonkey.com
Climb Life - Matt Maddaloni
Climbing Bum – Carlo Traversi
Climbing Narcissist
Climbing Videos
Climbing Hold Review
Climbingwallindustry.org
ClubShed
Coletteloc.com – Collete McInery
Coppworks Blog – Jonny Copp
Creative Climbers Coalition
Crimped Climbing
CruxPhoto - Nate Young Photography

Dani Andrada
Dave MacLeod Climbing
Denver Bouldering
Do the move – Jason Pinto
Dream In Vertical – Our Blog
Drew's Adventures
Dropknee – Andy Mann

East Side Bouldering – Jeff Sillcox
Enlightened Chuffer
Eric Horst's Climbing and Training Blog
Ethan Pringle
Everything You Want To See – Scotty Gross

Gabor Szekely / Climber
GearFlogger
Getoutdoors.com Outdoor Blog
Girl vs. Wild
Gravsports – Will Gadd

Happiegrrrl Climbing
HARDCLIMBS – Chad Greedy
Hardwear Sessions – Mountain Hardwear
Hayden's Bouldering
High Places – Steph Davis
Hot Aches Productions

It Came from the Garage
joost.climbing.nl

Katie's blog – Katie Brown
kylmbing

La Sportiva Media Coverage
Lithic Loafing
Lord Caffeine
Los Angeles Bouldering
Lynn Hill

Metolius Media
Mike Doyle's Rants& Raves
Minnesotan Skin
Monkey Business
Moonclimbing.com / Moonblog
Motivación
Mountain Climbing News
Mountains and Water – Peter Beal
Movementfilms.com – Mike Call
Moving Mountains Magazine

Nicola Martinez - Rock Monkey
Nicolas Favresse
North East Climbing
Northwest Mountain School – John and Olivia

Once in a lifetime
Online Climbing Coach – Dave MacLeod
Outdoor Gear – Apeqs
Outside Blog

PEMBA SERVES
Petzl Team

Rawfingers
RAZA: The Blog
REI-OUTLET.com: Deal of the Day
RHODES to ADVENTURE
Rich Wheater
Rock and Ice Online News
Rock Climber Girl
Rock Climbing Topics - The New York Times
Rock Monkey Art – Renan Ozturk
Rocks are the skin of the earth – Kelly Mcbride
Routesetter.com
Roxanna Brock

Schmoubouldering's Weblog
Sender Films' Blog
Steepearth.com photo blog
Straight into yer face lam
Straight outta bedlam – Justin Jaegar

T h e R a n g e L i f e
The Adventures of Paul Robinson
The Cleanest Line – Patagonia
The Climbing Works Blog - UK
The diary of a [newbie] rock climber
The Gear Junkie
The Kind Chronicles – Joe Kinder
The Liminal Line Blog - Majka Burhardt
The Mountain Culture - Cloudveil
The Mountain World - Dougald MacDonald
The Thought – Alan Moore
Tidbits of Joy"
Tim Kemple Photo
TOJO RISEN

Vegas Bouldering
Vertical World – Rich Johnson
VooDoo Climbing Holds & Bouldering Gear

Wadedavid.com Blog
Western Colorado Climbing
What’s happening – Chris Lindner
Where the Wild Things Are
WiredNut - Mid-Atlantic Climbing News

Bishop Bouldering! April Edition

2008-05-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

In the middle of April a few of my friends from the East Coast flew out to LA to go sample the amazing bouldering of Bishop. Jackie, who I went to college at Bucknell, as well as her friends Joe and Bree from DC flew in on Thursday night so that we could have four days climbing before returning to LA on Monday night. Our group was joined my long time friend Jamie and his girl Nicole from Santa Barbara. Below Joe enjoys the view of the Buttermilks and the drifter boulder.
With all flights arriving more or less on time Lizzy and I packed up and met the east coast crew with their rental car at LAX. Leaving for bishop at 9pm is not really ideal but at least we missed traffic making it to the Pit just before 1:30 am. Jamie had reserved us a campsite so we quickly set up camp and passed out. The east coast crew woke us up early excited to go climbing and unable to sleep due to the time difference. Day one was to be at the buttermilks so we rolled out.
Above Lizzy warms up on the green wall. After paying our respects to the Mandala and we went to the Hunk and started warming up. The high boulder was a bit mental for a first climb so we hit up the beautiful but slick green wall. I quickly repeated green wall center and figured I was warm enough to start on my project for the day, High Plains Drifter.
I switched to taking photos and rested so I would be fresh for High Plains. Above Joe works on green wall center. The green wall is so glassy that it is nice place to warm up since it doesn’t hurt your skin. The only disadvantage is that it is really hard to make your feet to stick to anything. Excited to get back on High Plains I was nervous that my fitness had not increased enough for a send. The temps were pretty good and on my second attempt the top sloper felt perfect and I knew the send was going to be soon. Photo below is of me working on the start of High Plains Drifter.
The next try I hit the sloper and adjusted my feet and fired for the right knob. I had two spotters and a few more pads that allowed me to relax and commit. After the drifter move I set up and lunged right to the knob. Next I quickly got my feet back on the wall and fired left hand to the good knob. It was over and I climbed the positive crimps to the top of the boulder, relaxed now this classic was under my belt.
On the last trip I had run out of skin and energy before getting on Soul Slinger. Everyone seems to love this problem so I was eager to try it. Jamie had sent it on his previous trip and so I thought it was possible. I was able to sort an efficient sequence to get to the first bad pinch and was able to get to that high point a few times. Unfortunately the sun was beating down on the top holds and I was unable to move from them. Next time! (Photo below)

After spending some time down in the cave and at Ranger Rock we moved up to the Stained Glass area. Jamie and Nicole had met up with our crew and Jamie was excited to try Stained Glass. He was able to get the first move but I was unable to get off the ground. Around the corner was a super fun V1 that all of the girls flashed.
Jackie sending above and Nicole climbing below.

After almost everyone did this climb we headed over to the Ironman Traverse to finish off the day. There were many good efforts but no one sent. With tired arms and much less skin we all returned to the Pit for some burritos. (Joe sends below)
The next day Jamie and I were psyched to go out and work on Checkerboard which is supposed to be a classic and great for the grade. The boulder is all alone on a hill and does not offer any good problems to warm up on. The temps had dropped a little and it had become quite windy. My fingers were quite sore from the previous day and warming up on the steep crimps was painful.
Checkerboard offers a low start over an exciting landing that adds three or so moves making it a soft V8. The direct start, which goes at V7, avoids the bad landing but still goes through the same high crux. A difficult match on a gaston leads right to a small crimp and then a final hard stand up move to a high rail of crimps.

Jamie and I worked through the moves and I got shutdown by the match. My fingers were on fire and my feet seemed to be working against me. Jamie however was climbing very strong and after his second time matching the gaston he made the big move and topped it out.
Below Jamie presses out the move on Checkerboard!
After his send I gave it a few more tries but my fingers were done and Nicole and Lizzy had yet to climb. We met up with Jackie, Bree and Joe and headed over to the Pollen Grains. The wind had been picking up but the worst was yet to come. In the picture below Jamie is trying to show how windy it really was. We estimated that the gust were at least 40 MPH. Though evidently it was worse in the main buttermilk area.
We headed out to the Lidija Boulder and got blown around and worked by the problems. My tips were still quite sore and it was so windy that we had to tie down the pads and hold them while people would try to climb. Lizzy even started getting blown away while trying to keep the pad on the ground.
Above Nicole works on her project, Cindy Swank on the Honey Boulder. This problem was just her style and involved short throws between quite small holds. Jamie had sent this on his last trip and thought it was quite doable for Nicole and me. While Nicole was linking large sections of the problem I was struggling to get off the ground. The holds were very small and required precise body position. I was able to figure out some weird toe hook beta and was able to get through to the top crux. Both Nicole and I were unable to unlock the sequence through the top out slopers and went home without sending.

We spent the next day at the Happy boulders in an attempt to escape the wind. After falling off Toxic Avenger, Jamie made an impressive flash of Mr. Witty. I struggled with the small holds and was still unable to make the last move to the lip. Jamie and Nicole had to go back to SB so we bid them farewell and eventually made our way to Heavenly Path. This is one of the classic easy high balls at the Happy Boulders.

I was able to repeat the line and I convinced Lizzy that she had to try it. Evidently this was a good climb for Lizzy to push her limit and she calmly sent it first try! This was the first of a few easy highballs that Lizzy sent this trip. Notice the confidence below as she gets a no hands rest.

After a few more climbs and a bit of exploring we called it a day and headed back to camp to recover. The previous night had been so windy that Joe and Jackie's tents had blown away. Luckily some people had piled rocks on them to keep them from any further damage. We were anxious to return and were greeted by all of our tents still standing.

Jackie gets airborne after sending one of the mantle problems on the flying disc.

The next day we went to the Sad Boulders which I had never been to. The canyon at first seemed quite similar to the happies but lacked a central flat region. The sads were a jumble of stacked blocks and caves that made for exciting climbing over less than ideal landings. After a short warm-up we went to Rio's Crack, which Lizzy is trying in the photo below.

After struggling with the sequence for the first few moves I was able to find some workable beta and was able to stick to the bad feet and send. It was nice to have a bit more skin and energy and this was quite a fun problem.

Next we made our way through some caves and found Los Locos, which I had spotted on the way in. This problem is very pretty and has big moves on crazy features. The start is down in a cave which kept the holds nice and cool and it traverses left to exit over an exciting landing. The start sequence was technical and involved sweet body positions while using fairly big holds. We were struggling to unlock a sequence and I wasted a lot of energy going the wrong way.
After finding a way through the start of the problem I was unable to keep my tension and popped off. I was unable to regain my high point and we moved on to Molly. After a few tries each on Molly, Jackie Lizzy and I had to head back to LA so Jackie could make her flight back to DC. Joe and Bree spent a few more days in bishop with other friends before heading back home. It was an amazing trip and I am motivated to get a bit stronger and go back to the Sads to send Los Locos!
Enjoy,

Luke

April Madness - A Brief Recap

2008-05-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

The past month has flown by and I barely know what happened. It seems that just the other day was tax day. Our last post reflects this lost time as the weeks and weekends have passed so quickly.

So far the spring has been a bit strange out here in California. A week of perfect weather has been followed by a scorching weekend, causing us to retreat to the shade and higher altitudes. Two weeks back it was over 100 in LA County and a few fires have flared up.

April featured a trip to Bishop with some east coast friends that flew out to enjoy our spring weather. The temps in Bishop were perfect but on the second day of the trip the Buttermilks and Pollen Grains were getting 40 + MPH gusts. Not only did this bring a chill but it was hard to climb and scary to do anything tall since you could be blown off. We accidently did a bit of pad surfing as the crash pads went airborne even with people sitting on top of them.

The weekend after returning from Bishop we went to Black Mountain to avoid the heat and to continue with our bouldering bug. While the temps were nice and the setting was pristine I was not a fan of the problems. My skin was still tender from Bishop and most of the problems were lacking in either hand holds or foot holds. I enjoyed taking photos of my friends climbing and trying to learn how to deal with harsh light. My favorite problem was the Green Meanie slab which I had to start from atop my crash pad and a two foot pile of snow.

At the Boulder Basin camp ground area we were able to find a hand full of fun problems to finish off the day. These were more concentrated and easier to find since we did not have to fight through thick brush and trees. Due to the longer drive and spread out nature of majority of the problems I think that Tramway a better area. Tram now has an excellent guidebook, that Black Mountain lacks, and will stay cooler longer into the summer.

While I was psyched to get into a bouldering mindset for a little while but I am happy that we were able to go sport climbing this weekend. A short trip to Malibu Creek helped me put my fitness into perspective. Climbing routes in the gym has helped keep me in shape and my endurance was adequate for the short routes. Since I haven’t lead anything hard outside in months I had to push to keep climbing while redpointing Urban Struggle. I kept it together and was happy to lead my first 5.12 since October.

I hope that this will be a good start to my sport climbing season and I am excited to go to Clark Mountain and Mt Charleston this summer! After a taste of limestone near Vegas in February I am excited to try some harder and steeper routes.

All photos are from Black Mountain.

Cheers,

Luke

Heat Wave!

2008-04-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

It was quite toasty here in SoCal last weekend - temps jumped up to the 90s without much warning.
Due to my landlords suddenly deciding not to renew the lease with my housemates and I in Pasadena and some frisbee drama leaving my feelings pretty bruised, we decided to take a more relaxing weekend plan. We slept in Saturday morning and Luke went to the gym to set some routes while I stayed home and did a little homework and some apartment searching.

On Sunday, we headed out to Woodson in the morning to get some climbing in before it got unbearably hot. We went to Hard as Nails first to try to boulder the line, which we both previously did clean on TR. Head games were very much in play as it suddenly seemed a lot harder to do the thin moves without a rope. It's going to take some more work to do this one.

Then we headed to Hear My Train a'Comin, where we set up a TR so Luke could try the whole line, which he sent after a couple false starts! I was glad that he was on toprope and not soloing it (not that he wasn't awesome, but it's pretty long!). I didn't get as far, but I was improving on my beta and getting a move further than I had been getting last time we worked on Train. Luke thinks the moves will just keep getting harder because the fingerjams are on the big side for him.

We finished up by working a little on AIDS Victim on TR, which follows a thin seem with a couple of very necessary crimps to either side. Luke re-worked the beta and sent it clean on TR, while I worked through the first crimpy move (last time I tried I couldn't even pull on the crimp - this time it felt pretty good, so a good improvement there) and got to the top with a couple of falls. My fingers were suffering from the abuses of Train, so I decided to stop after my one try. I did, however, get an awesome perfect thumbstack in one of the pods. Yay learning stuff in Indian Creek!

Overall, a good session - it's always fun to go to Woodson to work on hard cracks - each one requires something new and different.

We'll be leaving tomorrow night for a long weekend in Bishop. We'll be going with a couple other friends, so hopefully we'll come back with some sweet photos!

Pushing the Limits - Reflections on IC

2008-04-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

Things have been so busy since we got back to Indian Creek that I've only now begun to reflect on my experiences and think about all the things we learned.

Speaking of learning, here is the top 5 things I learned in IC:

(1) Thumbstacks and ringlocks (does this size not exist in granite cracks or something????)
(2) Cams can be really freaking hard to clip (the carabiner is facing a different direction than a quickdraw clipped into a bolt).
(3) Sandstone hurts. You think it'd feel nice and soft compared to granite, but in fact the consistent and sustained nature of the splitters means you wear the same place on your skin over and over and over again. Result? Lot's more oozing than I usually get from granite.
(4) Footwork. It really matters once the crack starts getting small (thin hands and smaller). Getting blood blisters under your toenails and trying to jam thin hands/thumbstacks is a bad idea.
(5) Endurance. I gained a new appreciation for the thank-god jugs and ledges that granite tends to form.

By far one of the coolest parts of my Indian Creek experience was getting to try my hand at so many hard routes that I would normally consider way above my ability. The splitter cracks are pretty safe to protect (not that hard - just put in the right size of cam) so I was really able to push my limits more than I ever have before. Over the week, I tried several 5.12 cracks, which all offered a completely different experience:

Digital Readout (5.12) - This was the one that really killed my fingers because, even though the top and bottom of the crack were perfect fingers for me, it went to off-fingers in the middle (which is perfect fingers for Luke), which was really hard. I really learned how big a difference subtle variations in crack size could make, as well as how much harder it is to lead something than just TR it - placing the cams, clipping them, and then having to climb around them definitely adds another level of difficulty. This stuff ain't no sport climbing...

Swedin-Ringle (5.12-) - This route was really cool! The bottom section was challenging because the crack was the wrong size so I had to do a little sport climbing up the face holds to the side before getting down to business. My first try I fell trying to clip a cam off a thumbstack - it was only the 2nd day of the trip and I hadn't had much practice. The coolest thing about coming back and trying again on the end of the trip was how much better the stacks felt when I got to them - I think I clipped two cams off stacks. It was mostly my feet and the lack of skin on my fingers that were keeping me back. It was awesome to feel so close to sending something this hard.

Slice and Dice (5.12) - This line is gorgeous! It was pretty thin - definitely would involve some stacks mixed in with the thin hands. Unfortunately, I realized I had a blood blister under my toenail that was making it excruciatingly painful to put my left foot in those thin foot jams. Definitely want to try it again when my toes are functional.

Way Rambo (5.12-) - We all tried this on toprope. I was surprised at how hard and sporty it was at the top! Definitely a more challenging lead because after a certain point, you just have to gun it to the anchors because placing too much gear will just make you more likely to fall. A lot less sustained than the other hard cracks we tried because it's enjoyable straightforward hand jams up until the crux, which was not just jamming like most of the other routes were.

Coyne Crack (5.12-) - This is now 5.11+ in the guidebook, but I thought getting off the ground was harder than most of the moves on the other routes we did. Luke thinks I will need to layback the first few feet until I can get a handjam, but I'd hope to be good enough at thin hands/stacks and crappy thin footjams that I could jam it. It was definitely disappointing to be turned around so close to the ground (I think I got 2 cams in...), but I also didn't want to resort to cam jugging just to do the upper part. It's such a beautiful climb that I want to be ready for it.

The Inflictor (5.12-) - A lot of thin moves on to way more stacks than I ever thought I would have to do on a "thin finger crack". This one might be hard to lead because of fiddly gear placements down low, but it was fun to try on toprope.

The craziest thing about this experience was the fact that I was trying 5.12 crack climbs when I generally feel I'm not at all ready for that grade on sport climbs (or maybe I am, but I'm just holding myself back). It was crazy to be able to push my limits and learn new skills all on lead. It's something I hope to apply to sport climbing and trad climbing on more typical (a.k.a. granite) cracks. I know I can expect most "normal" 5.12 climbs I attempt to be a little harder - more varied skills, less straightforward gear (on trad climbs), pumpier (sport climbs), but at least I've made a step forward mentally - gaining the confidence to push myself on lead and try harder routes.

(Like equinox :-D )

Chillin' in JTree

2008-04-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

We tend to be pretty non-stop down here in SoCal - what with my school and ultimate frisbee, Luke's work, and our constant chasing of "The Right Season" at all our local climbing areas, we're pretty much busy every single weekend.

But we did have the weekdays to "rest" (haha, school=rest, yeah right...) after our Indian Creek trip, which if nothing else did help my knuckles heal a bit and stop oozing whenever I touched something.

The agenda for this weekend was to take my sister Maddy to do some fun outside rock climbing, as she was visiting for a couple days after her junior year college tour trip with my dad. She's stuck in the gym most of the time up there in Bremerton, so visiting SoCal at this time was a perfect opportunity to return to JTree, which she'd been to a couple years ago (3?).

We were going to drive out and camp on Friday night, but when we left at 7:30, traffic going out of Pasadena still seemed a little heavy and Luke and I were worried about reliving our previous Friday night experience - small campsite wedged between very noisy neighbors. So we went back home, watched a movie, and resolved to get up early (5:30am) the next morning.

We did manage to get up, so we arrived at the Split Rocks parking lot at around 8am. We walked out to the Future Games Wall to climb Bendix Claws (5.11a), which Luke and I had both done on TR before. Everyone toproped it - Luke and I were both thinking about going for the lead, which I didn't because I wasn't quite feeling my granite mojo after a week on IC sandstone. Luke, however, did go for the lead and got the redpoint! A cool route for sure - I still want to redpoint it some day.

Then we headed out to a boulder problem we'd seen walking back from Equinox last time - Slashface (V3) - a tall, nice-looking problem with a series of horizontal crimp rails (that look like slashes) running across it. Luke sent the problem, while Maddy and I struggled with the crux - a long reach off a pretty crappy crimp.

Maddy and Luke working Slashface:

After this we went over to the Rusty Wall so I could try to onsight Wangerbanger (5.11c). Unfortunately, there were a bunch of people already over there, with the route in question occupied for several more climbers. Luke and Maddy TRed O'Kelley's Crack (5.10c) and then we decided to go work on Gunsmoke since it seemed silly to waste Maddy's singular day in JTree waiting in line for a route I could come back and do any time.

So, to Gunsmoke we went. Luke did some laps, Maddy fought with the short person crux (she's a little shorter than me, so she was trying some different beta) and I got the closest to sending I've ever been. I got through the short person crux and to the corner (before jumping off to save energy) after starting not at the beginning, then linked the short person crux through the normal crux before falling - so close to the send! But by then I was getting tired, so the send will have to wait for another day.

On Sunday, I had to go play in a frisbee tournament with my team, so Luke and Maddy went to Stoney Point with Julie to do some more bouldering. I think they had a lot of fun and I hope Maddy enjoyed the taste of SoCal climbing that we were able to give her in the short time she was here.

Maddy and Julie bouldering at Stoney Point

Next weekend will probably find us in Tahquitz climbing some more granite cracks!

Indian Creeeeeeeek!

2008-04-02T17:21:00.001-07:00

Indian Creek! What is IC? It is hard, sunny, sandy pure crack climbing. You won’t find jugs, crimps or normal hand holds at the Creek. Never ending splitters of all sizes guaranteed to have at least one stretch of your worst size. There are off-with pods, threatening fist cracks and my personal nemesis the ever dreaded finger stacks. We had a small crew of three for this trip with quite the assortment of body types and hand sizes. From Lizzy's tiny fingers to Lucasz's immense height. I sat in the middle with average proportions but evidently smaller that normal hands for a guy. This was funny though because even my pinky has a bigger diameter than Lizzy's biggest finger, excluding her thumb. Here hands were so small that she would often have to jam up to her elbows on my "hand" cracks.
Lucasz was the only person that we could recruit to come and visit IC. To many a crack climbing Mecca just has too much crack climbing. The climbing was a new style to all of us and we had a big learning curve with the smooth and parallel cracks. The climbs were relentless between 80 and 160 feet in length and usually dead vertical. Our first day held one of my most memorable climbs. Big Guy, one of the easier offwidths at the Creek was to be my training for future punishment in the big sizes. I had my full assortment of large cams that I had been collecting for such a challenge. The climbing was super strenuous once I got out of the fist jams. I was able to get really good hand stacks but without having a knee in it was impossible to make progress. After 50 feet of struggling I gave in and hung on the rope the effort instantly overwhelmed me and I hung there for 20 minutes fighting the urge to hurl. About 5 feet of struggling later I was able to get my knee in but got it promptly got it stuck and had to hang on a cam and wiggle it out. After putting my left knee in the crack I was able to work through the hand stacks into the hand fist stacks and eventually got to the anchor. What an experience I had no idea how much effort offwidths take!
Indian creek offers all sizes of cracks from super thin tips jamming to the gaping offwidths. A person’s hand size can greatly affect the difficulty of a climb. Lizzy would climb most of the small cracks, I would get the hand cracks and Lucasz tackled many large hand climbs. Above Lizzy warms up for her attempt of Digital Readout. This super thin climb, featured below, ranks in at around 12b making it the hardest thing Lizzy has ever lead!! She cruised the initial thin fingers section before getting super pumped and losing a ton of skin on the off fingers middle. It’s funny to say that the middle is off fingers for her since it is yellow alien/TCU with a few bigger pods in the grey alien range which were perfect finger locks for me. The start, that Lizzy cruised, started at blue alien, and widened to green alien at the first roof. This was my crux and I was lunging between pinky locks to get off the ground. It was quite intense until I could get the first foot hold and finally get my fingers into the crack at the roof. I need to go back and try and lead it and I know Lizzy would love to redpoint it with a bit more skin.After watching Paralleljams for Return 2 Sender and cruising around MP.com we made a tick list and tried to do a bunch of the classics. On my birthday, the 23rd, I got on Think Pink. It was an easy corner up to a steep hand crack. Or at least I thought it was a hand crack from the video I had seen of Jim Donini climbing it. He climbed it easily and made it look super fun and secure. Well he sure sand bagged me as I got up to the steep section to find that my #2 camalots were quite tipped out and I would be placing tight #3's. This made it too small for fist jams so I had a long battle with lots of grunting while learning how to do steep cupped hands. I managed to send first go and it was super nice when the top section narrowed back down to #2's. I was really pumped and it was another big fight!
Lucasz flew up the climb on TR and came back later in the trip and lead it first try! Damn those big hands!!

We took a half rest day to get food and water in Moab and then headed out to Way Rambo. Below Lizzy is starting up Slice and Dice. This climb is super hard for us big handed folks who have to finger stack in the sharp crack. She cruised up the initial moves but a blood blister under a toe prevented any more thin foot jams so she had to back off. I am sure that next time Lizzy will fly up this.

At the Cat Wall I ended up donating a bunch of skin and blood to Johnny Cat. This beautiful off fingers (.5 camalot) has feet for three quarters of the route and has a nice rest in the middle. I learned how to do ring locks and got within 10 feet of the anchors on my onsight. This last section has five or six hard moves on bad off finger locks with only the crack for feet. You are unable to place gear but luckily get a good foot for clipping the chains. After a few efforts I was able to get through the last feet to the chains. After a rest I gave it another lead go but was stopped short at the top again. While I was not nearly as pumped as my onsight go I was unable to get my locks to stick. I later realized my hands were out of sequence which due to the slight offset of the crack made left jams very difficult.After the Cat Wall got too hot we went to the Reservoir wall where I lead the new wider Slot Machine and Pente. Slot Machine was quite an endurance test at 160 feet and it was super tiring. Lizzy made it through the first half of Pente before running out of gear and having me finish the lead. It was fun but not quite as classic as I expected. I thought the Incredible Hand crack, which we had lead the day prior was much more fun.
After taking a much needed rest day we headed to Broken Tooth. There were a ton of cars in the parking lot but they were all at the Fin which is quite close. We had a great day and shared the main three splitters with a two guys from Colorado, Hayden and Johan. First I lead Rock Lobster which was super cruiser until the last 20 feet where it turned from thin hands into the dreaded finger stacks. Unable to trust my feet I took on the gear before finally trusting the gear and punching it to the anchors. While Lizzy and Lucasz top roped Rock Lobster Hayden gave me a ride on their TR of Polygrip.Polygrip, seen in the photo above is a 3 part climb with a no hands rest after the first part. I was able to do it first try on TR and it was super fun. A section of offset poddy thin hands leads to the rest followed by an excellent perfect fingers corner. There is a bad rest before the crux off fingers roof. Once over the roof you luckily get a nice rest pod and then with a few more moves an almost no hands rest before the final spring to the anchors. I tried to lead this climb later in the day but ran out gas before the roof. The roof proved much more difficult to do on lead. Lucasz lead an unnamed long hand crack to the left of the main wall. It was pretty weird and had an exciting layback finish. We finished the day by Top roping the Inflictor. No one was able to climb it clean due to a tricky crux and a pumpy finish that was off fingers for Lizzy. On our last day we went to two different crags to tick our last few climbs we wanted to do. Above I am onsighting Scarface which was super fun. A few hard moves off the ground led to thin hands which became perfect hands where I am in the picture.
Lizzy red pointed Scarface, above, and then we moved to Battle of the Bulge Buttress so she could try Swedin-Ringle again. She did well on her onsight go making it 15 feet below the anchors. On our last day she did a bit better besting her high point by one more cam! I was able to TR the route clean first try and then did it again mock lead style placing gear. I think next time I will try to lead it! Swedin-Ringle is in both of the photos below. We also did a bunch of other climbs besides the ones featured in the pictures. Highlights were Disco Machine Gun, Supercrack, and Way Rambo. Everyone learned a ton and we want to go back for sure. I struggled a bunch with my lead head. I was really pushing my physical limit trad climbing 5.11 and 11+ and was scared to try anything 5.12 trad. After doing a bunch of 5.12 cracks clean on TR I knew that I had the power and the skill and that if I could increase my endurance to place the gear I should try to lead 5.12 next time we go to the creek!

For more pictures go to Picasa online.

Enjoy,

Luke

Getting Psyched for Indian Creek!

2008-03-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

I finished my last final of the term yesterday, which was pretty awesome. It's always a huge relief to get even a brief reprieve from the work and stress of the term. This one was especially stressful at times with a certain neuro class that had WAY more work than the units I'm receiving for it. But that's over now - back to English classes next term!

Anyways, we're leaving on Friday morning to head out to Indian Creek! So while Luke still has to work through Thursday, I get the coveted task of taking some time off to relax and getting all our stuff ready to go. That and wrapping Luke's birthday presents (it's his birthday on Sunday, but we're opening stuff early so we don't have to cart it all the way to Utah). So it should be a pretty nice next two days.

We're definitely really excited about this trip and have a HUGE list of routes we want to climb, but we could always use more suggestions (favorite IC route, anyone?) or ideas of places to go/things to see if we take a rest day. A friend has already suggested hiking to Druid Arch in the Canyonlands as a sweet activity.

And finally, a little update about this past weekend (sorry, no photos!). We went to Mt. Woodson on Saturday, initially planning on heading up to Crucible and the Test Tube, but upon arriving, we decided we were a little tired to walk all the way up the hill, plus the weather didn't look super stable, so we decided to focus our attentions on two routes lower down on the hill - Hard as Nails and Hear My Train a 'Comin. We went to Hard as Nails first. It's a beautiful splitter thin finger crack, so a very different experience for Luke and I. We both toproped it twice with some resting for our fingers in between. I struggled with my feet the first time, wearing my still fairly new Cobras, but the second time, wearing the Katanas instead, was much easier - it never ceases to amaze just how good those shoes can be.

On our way back to the road, Luke decided he wanted to try Right Long's Crack (an offwidth) so we headed up to that. Although he didn't send, he definitely made some progress, figuring out that he needed to execute a kick-over move to be able to move his hand-stacks up the crack. It was pretty fun to watch (as the belayer :-D ).

Finally, we stopped by Hear My Train a'Comin on the way down, by way of Blackfinger, which Luke sent twice. The funny thing about Train is that each of us requires a completely different sequence since the locks are so finger size dependent - Luke makes a long reach from his second lock to a crappy one above, which he has to trust to get to the jug, but I have to start out with a jab for a lock Luke didn't even think existed (using a different foot on the starting foothold) and need to trust that to keep moving up, which I didn't really manage to do that day. Luke, however, was successful in finally reaching the jug, so next time we can put up a toprope so he can climb the whole thing.

Sunday was my birthday, so we took a day off and did some fun normal-person stuff. We headed to downtown San Diego to "Extraordinary Desserts" which is pretty much the best dessert place EVER and had an amazing piece of cake, then went out to a movie - Vantage Point - which was pretty good, followed by a trip to the San Diego Zoo (which was fun! we hadn't been in a long time), and back home to make dinner - attempting a recipe for homemade stuffed pasta using won-ton wrappers, which was only somewhat successful.

We'll hopefully have tons of stories and photos when we come back from our trip!

Relaxing in JT

2008-03-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

Luke and I recently realized that before this last weekend, we had traveled at least 5 hours away for 4 weekends in a row. Needless to say, this has been pretty exhausting and we agreed that a relaxing weekend (including some rock climbing) was in order.

So we headed out to JT on Friday night. We got in a little late, around 10pm, to find that Hidden Valley and Ryan campgrounds were already full. So we kept driving on to Jumbo Rocks and cruised around until we spotted an unoccupied campsite wedged between several other filled campsites. It wasn't exactly ideal. We were near 2 groups of people who found it necessary to have loud conversations while most likely high and drunk, so it was hard to sleep, even though we were both exhausted. Then, in the morning, our other neighbors watched TV at 7am. TV while camping?!?! We really didn't get that.

But we got up anyways and headed out to go climbing. I'd forgotten the guidebook in Pasadena, so we went to Intersection Rock to find someone with a guidebook to get directions to Perpetual Motion, which was our first goal of the day. We headed out Geology Tour Road and hiked off in search of the route with a little map scratched onto a scrap of paper. But we went the wrong way, apparently.

After wandering around for a while, we decided we should just go to our real objective of the day, Equinox (which, in case you didn't read my last post about it, is the the most beautiful crack in Joshua Tree). So we headed over there. It was just as beautiful and striking as I remembered it.

We climbed it on toprope since we're still not awesome enough to try to lead it. We both worked on figuring out the right sequences and jams and I think we both made some good progress. We both managed to climb from the ground up into the steep section without falling!

On Sunday, after a late start, we went to climb Coarse and Buggy (5.11b), although we had to wait for a party that was toproping it to finish. Luke onsighted the route and we both followed it. I thought the steep exit moves were the hardest part, mostly because they were very awkward. Also, the climb and belay had gone into the shade by the time we got to start, so the belay was really cold!

Since the weekend was about relaxing, we decided to head home for dinner and a movie. We ended up watching a movie called Brick, which was very good.

Next weekend we'll be headed to Mt. Woodson to do some more jamming before our big Indian Creek trip.

What is Trad?

2008-03-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

In late February Beth Rodden redpointed a new 5.14 in Yosemite. This 70 foot line is called Meltdown and features a thin finger crack that leads to discontinuous seams. Rodden placed all of her gear on lead after a winter of work on the line. Many think this is the hardest “trad” climb done by a woman and is quite an amazing send. The Alpinist has some info but better pictures and history about the route can big found on the BigUP blog. Beth will be featured climbing Meltdown and a few other hard climbs in Dosage V.

A Supertopo thread about Beth spurred a discussion about what is “Trad” and how you relate Trad to the rest of the categories of climbing. Does Trad imply that the ascent is done ground-up or does it just specify the style of gear used to protect a redpoint? While these markers of style are not essential to our sport it is interesting to see how they are interpreted. Does trad mean that there are no bolts on the line that are used for lead protection? I think that the meaning of trad has evolved since the original use of the word. I think that these days trad is most commonly used to mean something that is not a Sport climb. To me a trad climb simply implies you must place your own protection.

This makes me wonder where does mixed climbing falls? I mean mixed protection climbing which is not to be confused with mixed climbing that refers to a combination of rock and ice climbing where ice tools and crampons are used. A mixed route that offers both cams and bolts is some times referred to as a trad route since one must place some of your own protection. A good example of “Trad” climbing where bolts are used is seen in Red Rocks. Many of the climbs in Red Rocks have the ocational bolt when natural protection can not be found. I think of these as trad climbs despite the use of an occasional bolt for protection. These bolts are used when traditional protection can not be found and to keep the routes fairly safe. The safety issue comes in direct contrast to the bold bolt-free climbing style. In Red Rocks there is also an issue with some climbs that have been over bolted so that they are more accessible.

Beyond the type of gear used to protect a climb it is interesting that “Trad” can refer to the style of the ascent. Some say that a major distinction between Sport and Trad is whether the climb is done ground up or top down. “Traditional climbing means starting at the bottom and going to the top, without weighting pro. That, I put forth, is the traditional mindset.” This means that could you could climb a sport route in traditional style by sending ground up as opposed to rappelling it and inspecting it or hangdoging it and then redpointing it later. This seems a bit odd to me but it can make sense in the way climbs were established. A sport climb could have the bolts drilled on lead for a ground up ascent. I believe this was common practice before climbers started bolting on rappel. By establishing a climb top down you would eliminate the adventure by figuring out sequences in advance. I image this is why hang dogging was such heresy back when yo-yoing was the common practice.

Put in perspective of a traditional ground up ethic yo-yoing makes a bit more sense. By having to lower to the ground after a fall you would still have to be onsighting the upper most moves. Hangdoging allowed a climber to start from anywhere on a climb and slighted the ground up style. I can now see why there was so much debate on style and what is acceptable. If you fully believe in the Traditional spirt of climbing ground up without bolts then hangdogging while sport climbing (with bolts) is very much out of the question.

On Supertopo John Bachar goes on to specify the difference between Onsight and Onsight Flash. This was a distinction that I had never heard of and is way old school. In a way it does make sense in a world where when you fall you lower all the way to the ground (Yo-Yo style). Thus even though you have fallen you will eventually Onsight a climb since every move you will have at one point had to do for the first time until your eventual “Redpoint”. This seems strange in the current use of the word that is used to say that you did the climb first try all the way to the top without any beta.

It is odd that the distinction between Onsight and Onsight Flash seen above does not mention beta at all. I think this is a more interesting discussion. At what point do we cross the line from a Onsight to a Flash, in the modern sense of the words. Since climbing is just a type of game it is interesting that different people play by different rules. What I think is important is that you are honest about the style. If you call a send an Onsight but you had someone tell you about the climb then just be honest that your friend told you beta.

Style is important but it is more important to have fun and let everyone make their choices. We do not want to have anyone chipping routes or placing bolts right next to perfect natural protection. What has worked over the years is to allow different areas to feature their own set of rules and style of climbing. This can be a result of both the kind of rock and the mindset of the locals. So try to think outside the box and respect the traditions at the crags you frequent.

- Luke

Guest Blog: Visiting Vegas!

2008-03-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

It was a dark and potentially stormy night when Luke and Lizzy picked me up at the Vegas airport. After we calmed from the inital joy of reuniting friends, and successfully picked up my checked bag, Lizzy fearlessly negotiated her way through the grotesque neon signs of downtown Vegas (and past one gorgeous In and Out sign) to the Red Rocks campground. To my utter delight, Luke surprised me at the campsite with two bottles of Diet Coke!!! True friendship. Inspired by the outline of the mountains in the darkness, we quickly went to sleep in preparation for a long day of climbing.

The next morning, we jumped from our sleeping bags into the extremely cold but sunny mountain scenery. To a girl from flat Michigan the tops of the mountain spires making a jagged horizion were awe-inspiring. Nothing can be more energizing than naked rock cutting across a clear, blue sky. As we sped through breakfast, I was greatly relieved to find that Lizzy had brought sourdough bagels from Noah's! How some people can suffer through an oatmeal breakfast (without any cookies crumbled into it, even!), I'll never know.

We packed the car and drove to the trailhead. It was a very fast hike in, with my short 5' 2" (total height) legs moving as fast as they would hike. If someone was to describe the morning/hike as slow/leasuirely, I would not be in agreement with him. This girl was moving! Exhausted, I arrived at the base of Birdland. Thankfully, Lizzy was to lead the first pitches of this climb, and I got a chance to rest.

The rock was a gorgeous myriad of cracks, plates, and pockets. Climbing was especially fun due to the fact that we were using doubles. After Lizzy gracefully led to the belay, Luke and I followed and had the fun of carrying on a conversation while climbing a very easy pitch. Not a typical climbing experience, but very fun all the same! After Lizzy led a few pitches, I got a chance to lead! To my utter amazement and surprise, I found that I was not the least bit scared to be climbing. Usually there is a little bit of anxiety or fear, especially when on lead. However, somewhere along the way, 5.6 became incredibly easy and not fear-inspiring in the least. Due to this fact, I only placed 3 pieces of gear on the entire pitch. I was having so much fun climbing that stopping to place gear seemed quite unnecessary. Though, it must be said, that the nuts I did place were “bomber.” (straight from the mouth of the “climbing-god” himself!) I will choose not to comment on my cam placements at this time. Lizzy effortlessly led the rest of the pitches, and we rappelled down with only one small set-back when a rope became stuck. Luke climbed to the rescue, saved the rope, and down-climbed on lead to top it off!

Another, thank goodness shorter, hike led us to Cat in the Hat. With an awesome mastery of mental and emotional control, I climbed past a blank section at the beginning and proceeded to link the first two pitches. The third pitch of the route proved to be the crux pitch. However, after some confusion was sorted out between interpreting a 5.5 unprotected 8 ft section of rock as a V5 boulder problem (that would be 5.Fun, right?!), this pitch was completed with relative ease. The fourth pitch was somewhat of a mental game, as it was getting quite dark by then, and I was very tired. I climbed past a necessary traverse, and had to downclimb to get back to it, which shook me up pretty well. But I toiled on and reached a ledge where I thought the anchors were. However, to my great surprise, when I got there no bolts could be found! After a shouting match with the wind, I managed to communicate my troubles to Luke, who yelled up that I might in fact have to climb higher to reach the belay point. Yet again, Luke's wisdom proves to be invaluable. I climbed 6 ft higher and immediately saw my goal! After making an anchor, Luke quickly climbed to meet me and we rappelled, met Lizzy, and continued on to the base of the climb. Yet another hike was needed in order to reach the car. Good heavens, I’m not in shape enough for this!

As this is already getting fairly long, I’ll leave it to Luke’s good description to paint the picture of what our Friday was like. I will only pause to add that we also stopped off at Von’s to pick up additional cookies. We had already managed to put a serious dent in the first batch of cookies, and the Chewy Chocolate ones from Von’s were really necessary.

That night was a restless one, filled with fears of rain that might bar us from climbing Solar Slab. However, upon waking in the morning, we decided that we would go for it! We packed the car (and if I thought the first day was fast, it was nothing compared to the speed with which we moved on Solar Slab Day!), and ate breakfast in the parking lot at the trailhead. After double-time, heel-toeing it to the base of the climb, we quickly harnessed up. Lizzy beautifully led all three pitches of Johnny Vegas without any trouble. And then, the challenge began.
During Cam Lessons the previous day, Luke and Lizzy had decided it was necessary to strike the Fear of God into me about gear placements. All sorts of gruesome and grotesque images were floating in front of my mind as to what may happen as a result of bad placements or no placements at all. It was with great trepidation that I began the first pitch of Solar Slab. I scrambled up the 5.4 slab. I attained the first crack. I traversed left. I gained the second crack. I hand-jammed. I crimped. I swore. …And I placed gear.

With the Fear of God weighing on my mind, this 5.6 was not nearly as easy as the first climbs. It was with shaking hands that I placed cams, evaluated, readjusted, switched sizes (also dropped Luke’s yellow Camalot…oi), and finally secured a piece. This happened (with the exception of dropping the cam. That only happened once) about every 8 ft. Luke and Lizzy have the patience of saints. With crazy rope drag, I did run it out about the last 15 ft to the bolts. There, I made an anchor and belayed Luke and Lizzy up. My efforts had paid off when Luke pronounced my placements “much improved!” Even my cams (most of them) would probably have held in the event of a fall!

After Luke linked the next two pairs of pitches, I led another pitch where I got to back up a one-bolt anchor with a nut and a cam. To my great sense of gratification, both Luke and Lizzy trusted my anchor and climbed up immediately after me! With assurances that I had placed gear “very well,” Luke led our final pitch of the route. At the top of that pitch, we took pictures, ate a few Cliff bars, and turned our attentions downward. As he successfully (for the first time ever!) pulled the rope without any snags over the rappel of all the pitches of Solar Slab and Johnny Vegas, Luke proved himself a master rope-puller.

Upon gaining the ground, we celebrated with We-Made-It-Down-Alive cookies and began the trek back to Lizzy’s car. With a delicious stir-fry and more Diet Coke, we pronounced the day a success! Sadly, the next day we had to pack up. We climbed some more sport limestone (which left a very painful puncture wound in my palm), and among other climbs, Luke led (and I TR’d) an awesome 11a. Lots of side-pulls and angled holds. Very exciting.

Upon leaving climbing, we stopped at REI to secure a patch for my poofy which had ripped on the airplane ride out. It was a touch-and-go operation, but both my poofy and I have survived the patching procedure and are recovering tolerably well. At Panera’s we had a delicious lunch and discussed the relative risks of BASE jumping vs. rappelling. It was an arduous debate, but rappelling won out for most dangerous.

With a heavy heart, I said goodbye to Luke and Lizzy. What can be better than spending long days outside, climbing with good friends?! I spent the little bit of a wait for my flight talking to a few other friends from school, planning our next trip (Easter weekend anyone? The Red?). After all, the best way to end a climbing trip is to start planning the next! Red Rocks today, Owens River Gorge tomorrow!!!!(or, well, next year…but I’m excited all the same! :-) )
- Rebecca

Rebecca's Red Rocks Romp

2008-02-29T13:50:00.000-08:00

Two weekends ago one of my friends from college came west for a bit of climbing and a long weekend. Lizzy and I met Rebecca at the Las Vegas airport Wednesday night and took her to the 13 mile campground. We had driven out earlier that day from LA and had set up the tents and went food shopping. Luckily her flight from Detroit, which connected through the notorious Denver, was on time and we were asleep by midnight. It had rained a bunch on Wednesday but the night proved clear which we hope would give the rock some time to dry. A bit of a slow morning lead us to the loop road and on our way to Pine Creek Canyon. We choose Birdland for our first climb since it had decent sun exposure and was about the grade we were looking for. Lizzy got harassed by the climbing ranger warning of wet rock and danger conditions when she tried to apply for a late exit pass. Despite the warning we went forward to our sunny route which worked out really well.
Our aim for the day was to do Birdland 5.7+ six pitches and then rap the route and do Cat in the Hat 5.6 six pitches. We were looking for moderate climbs so that Rebecca could work on her trad placements and get to lead while multi-pitching. The hike to Birdland was nice and short and the wall seemed pretty dry despite mud on the approach. Lizzy lead the first pitch and our multi-pitch adventure began! Rebecca seconded and cleaned all the gear to give her a better feel for placements. I followed at roughly the same time since we were using double ropes. Lizzy linked the next two pitches, which featured a cruxy traverse that she led brilliantly, despite heinous rope drag from one of the ropes being stuck in a crack.

Next was Rebecca’s lead which traversed across the headwall (photo below) to a belay below the final and crux pitch. Rebecca was a natural at placing nuts and managed to find a few cam spots in the discontinuous cracks on her pitch. I linked the next pitch into the loose final pitch to lead us to the top of the climb. To save time and avoid the loose rock above we rapped the route instead of summiting the formation. Rapping provided more excitement than anticipated when we got a rope stuck on the second rappel. I had to re-lead and then down climb part of on of the pitch to retrieve the rope. Fortunately we were able to make it in only three rappels with 10 feet of down-climbing at the base. After lunch, and packing up all the gear, we hiked over to the base of Cat in the Hat to start our second route. Due to relaxed start and our trouble rapping it was a bit later than we had hoped. 3:30 pm mean that we did not have much time to climb but we decided to go up anyways. An earlier party was just finishing rapping the route and a local was rope soling the start to try to remove a cam. This added a bit more delay and confusion to the situation but worked out in the end. Rebecca opted to lead as much as she could and started climbing up the tricky first pitch. It had lots of fun water holds but was a bit polished from all the traffic. She linked the first 2 pitches in no time which brought us up to a big terrace.

We moved the belay and she climbed up to the 5.5 boulder problem. There was a bit of excitement despair and confusion when Rebecca initially thought it was a V5 problem. Yikes… wouldn’t that be a surprise when you are already 100 feet off the ground! After sending with little hesitation she raced up the rest of the 3rd pitch to a tree belay. Despite climbing quickly thus far it was starting to get a bit darker and the temps were dropping. The next pitch, Rebecca’s hardest yet, would chill us completely as the sun went down while Rebecca was searching for the belay boulder. In order to save time I climbed the pitch with numb fingers leaving Lizzy my vest to stay warm at the belay. We quickly rapped and luckily had no stuck ropes in the dark. The heat from repelling was quite welcome by my hands and when we reached the base I was warm again. A nice hike from the Mescalito led us to the car and then the campground. Sadly rain started falling right before we reached the car and it rained the rest of the night.
We got a late and soggy start on Friday bummed by the rain which had canceled our hopes of doing solar slab. After chilling in the gear shop we headed to the movies to kill some time in the hope that the rain would stop and the rock would dry by late afternoon. We saw Jumper which was hollow yet quite entertaining and almost opted for a double feature before getting the cold stare from the movie attendant. We decided to check on the Red Rocks weather since it was bright and sunny at the movie theater. A short drive and we were back cruzing around the loop road. We went to Willow Springs to check out Ragged Edges and show Rebecca some cam placments. We opted for this area due to the short approach but were punished for choosing an upcanyon location. After intermittent rain a serious cloud came in that dropped a ton of hail. We crunched under a small roof (photo above) to wait until the cloud passed. We then ran back to the car, soaked in our jackets, from all the stormy weather.
After our inability to find dry rock or sun in Red Rocks we turned our hope to the local limestone crags. We had been told to go to either the gun show or urban crag by gear shop dude and thought we might as well try. When we showed up at Urban Crag we saw a max exodus of people and so we just kept driving to the Gun Show. The Gun Show was clearly wet so with no more hope we drove back to the Urban Crag and hiked up to the rock. The rock was dry and Lizzy found a quickdraw so we deceived to go back to the car and get our gear. We did this one pokey route (photo above) that was fun and funky and then I top roped a much harder one the left. Rebecca tried it as the sun went down and we bailed soon after. We needed to get some sleep in the hope that the next day was sunny.
The next day was beautiful so we got up and got out to try and climb Solar Slab. We were a bit late starting and didn’t leave the parking lot at the Oak Creek Canyon pullout until nearly 8am. We got to the wall and had the place to our selves. Lizzy cruised up Johnny Vegas and we started seeing people show up at the base. We lounged in the sun giving the upper pitches more time to dry and Rebecca racked up for the first pitch of solar slab. In the photo above solar slab is the long white slab on the left side of the large formation.

Rebecca had a great lead with some tricky pro and she greatly improved her placements. Since I encouraged her to take some extra time and care we allowed a party of two to pass us at the big ledge after the first pitch. They had moved quite quickly up solar slab gully and did the first pitch of Sunflower/Heliotrope. They were a couple of guys who were from SLC and since they planned on topping out it seemed ok to let them pass. (Photo below is of Lizzy and I at the top of Johnny Vegas)
I was to lead next and get the two weird pitches out of the way. There was a bunch of hail on one ledge and a nice water streak down the face and in the crack I was supposed to climb. They guys from SLC did not link the pitches so we had some extra time to relax and eat some lunch. We were going a bit slower than we wanted but I did not want to crowd the next belay. After food I linked my pitches and set up a belay on some shrubs to the left of the bolts. The water streak had soaked the bolts and was coming out of the crack for the next pitch. Once Lizzy and Rebecca reached the belay I started climbing again linking the next two pitches and ending at a nice ledge with a puddle on it. To avoid the wet crack at the start I climbed patina off to the side which was not to hard and quite fun. These two pitches were very nice and I really enjoyed a full 60m of climbing.
We were getting pretty close to the top and Rebecca wanted to get in some more pitches. She led next up a long crack that was not to her liking. Unfamiliar with jamming techniques Rebecca carefully took her time making her way up the pitch. At one point she was supposed to traverse right to a bolted anchor but I gave her the wrong instructions and urged her to keep going. She had to build an anchor next to a bolt in order to belay us up. I had gotten confused by the way the previous party had gone and insisted she keep climbing past the correct traverse. Lizzy and I were quite cold at this point since we had been in the shade for a long time so I took back the lead. 2 more pitches, which I linked, lead to the last rappel station which was our summit.
I was able to get the girls on belay quickly and they raced to the summit, eager to get warm. We didn’t idle at all since we didn’t want to have to rap in the dark and I started my way down. Eight rappels led us all the way to the ground with a bit of walking to get to the Johnny Vegas rappels. We were super lucky and didn’t get the rope stuck and only had to our last rap in the dark! The hike back to camp was easy and Rebecca was super stoked for such a long day of climbing. It rained on and off Sunday morning and we did a bit of limestone climbing at the Gun Show. After a relaxing lunch at Pantera and some shopping we dropped Rebecca off at the Vegas airport and made our way home. It was a great bunch of climbing despite all the bad weather and I am sure Rebecca is psyched for some more trad climbing!

- Luke

Rope Management 101

2008-02-26T17:27:00.000-08:00

Multipitching is a great thing to do - climb lots of pitches in a row, get way high off the deck, push your mental and physical limits. Awesome, right? But one thing I know that is not awesome about multipitching is rope spaghetti - that mess of ropes and slip knots and having to step in, around, through little loops of rope just to be able to start leading again, only to get shortroped because the rope is hopelessly tangled down at the belay. But do not despair, you can fight this evil! I've compiled some basic tips garnered from Luke's and my experiences on long routes trying to fight the tangle.

Rope spaghetti in action:

The Basics

(1) It's almost always worth the extra time to organize your ropes. The time saved not having to undo a knotted rope is important.

(2) When you have 2 followers (especially if you're belaying both on a reverso), separate the ropes as you bring them up. Whoever has to lead next with both ropes will thank you for not getting short-roped the entire pitch.

(3) Take care to keep your leash (clove-hitched end of the rope and/or your daisy chain - basically your attachment point to the anchor) away from the ropes you pull up and the leashes of your follower(s). You don't need to put to much brainpower into belaying, so as you do, think about where to direct your follower(s) when he/she/they arrive. Usually you want your leash(es) to be on top of everything and the followers to be underneath everything.

The Giant Ledge Belay

This is the easiest situation - you have a nice, big ledge with plenty of room to flake your rope(s) onto the ledge. If you have 2 ropes, put them in separate piles. If you are leading the next pitch, remember to "pancake flip" the rope pile(s) - just pick up the whole thing and flip it upside down.

Alex Pelman and I enjoying a huge ledge low on North Early Winter Spire (North Cascades - Washington Pass):

The Small Ledge

This starts to get complicated. Sometimes you reach the anchor and you have a ledge, but a small one. Sure, you could just flake the rope onto the ledge on top of your feet, but what if you have 2 ropes? And then where are the follower(s) going to stand? This is where the stacked lap coils come in. Luke and I use this all the time and it works really well. It deserves it's own section, so keep reading to find out more!

Alex Pelman and I keeping the ropes organized on this small ledge on North Early Winter Spire:

The Small Stance

As the area you have to stand on gets smaller, you have to be even more careful about where to direct your follower(s) so as not to get the rope(s) twisted.

The Dreaded Hanging Belay

The hanging belay can be pretty uncomfortable, but it does have the advantage of actually making lap coils a little easier because you can make longer coils (since for most hanging belays the coils will just dangle below you).

And now... (drum roll)...

Stacked Lap Coils
Unfortunately I don't have a picture of this technique (I guess the belay stance isn't exactly the most exciting image of the climb...) so I'll try to describe it the best I can. The basic idea is to use your leashes to make lap coils of the ropes as you belay them up (this is mostly for having 2 followers or just using double ropes). I usually connect my daisy chain at it's greatest length and then adjust the length of my clove-hitched rope to the anchor such that it's either about 1 foot longer or shorter than my daisy chain. Then I pull the ropes up one by one and coil each onto either my rope leash or my daisy chain. I continue to coil the ropes like this as I belay the followers up. That way you get each rope in a separate (hopefully neat!) coil so they will be relatively unknotted for whoever leads next. In order for this to work, you probably need to be using a Reverso or equivalent auto-locking device that allows you to have your hands available to keep your 2 coils neat as you go.

There is a little strategy you can use in your coils to make you life even easier. For example, if one of your followers is leading the next pitch, you should start your coil with longer loops and gradually shorten the length of the loops as you go, such that when you belay from the coil, the loops won't catch each other and make slip-knots. If you're leading the next pitch, you should try to make the coils about the same length (because you'll have to pull loops from the bottom of the coil and it gets messy if you try to go small --> large loops).

And as a bonus, here's some handy rope management for the descent (especially good in Red Rocks!)

The Rappel

Red Rocks can really show you exactly how much a rock can want to grab your rope and not let go. Although you mostly just have to be good at pulling the rope and positioning it while rappelling with good technique and a lot of luck to not get it stuck on the pull, there is something you can do to keep from having to swing all over the place to fix stuck rocks just to get to the next rap station. You can coil one (or both, if you have them) ropes and wrap a sling around each one (clipping the ends of the sling into the same carabiner. You don't want it to to be wrapped too tight or else it won't feed well while rappelling. Clip your rap device on the rope and you're ready to go. No more stuck ropes (or, at least, one less).

Luke demonstrates on the rap off Solar Slab (Red Rocks):

That's all for now, so good luck everyone with managing the rope spaghetti! I may write another blog or two about rope drag or fast leader change-overs if anyone's interested (or I get bored...)

Lizzy

ABS Nationals Recap

2008-02-25T15:58:00.000-08:00

February has been a crazy month and our three day trip to Boulder was no exception. Lizzy and I flew out of San Diego Friday morning so that we could compete in the Citizens comp at CATS that night. With only carry on baggage and an on time flight we were able to make our bus to Boulder from the Denver airport. One transfer lead us to within a mile of The Spot and CATS, what an amazing transit system! We grabbed lunch and walked with all our stuff to CATS. Snow on the ground was a drastic change and we exchanged flip flops and t-shirts for shoes and a down jacket.

CATS is small and was uncrowded since we arrived there with plenty of time to spare. The climbing section of this gymnastic facility has a lot of very cool angles in a very small amount of space. The walls were freshly painted but the gloss paint provided horrible friction. As well the finish holds were all odd configurations of 2 X 4’s and were not to friendly. The shortcomings in the facility were made up for by the friendliness of the staff and the quality of the problems. The various angles provided a variety of styles and the climbs were set very well. Lizzy and I had fun and her family arrived a bit after we started climbing since they had a later flight.

After tiring ourselves out we got dropped off at the Spot for our judging meeting. Lizzy and I volunteered to judge the qualifiers and the finals for the Youth section of the comp. It gave us something to do and I was happy to be involved in such a high caliber climbing event. We got to see some of the routes set on Friday night and had a lot of exposure to some of the up and coming climbing talent. For our judging duty we got an early start Saturday morning and were at the gym for almost 12 hours including our time watching the open finals. Our judging jobs were easy since the majority of the kids flashed our problems and we got to go to finals for free. Another benefit was getting to watch some of our friends and Lizzy’s sister climb up close.

The open finals were quite packed and it was great to see all the strong climbers. Video can be found at MomentumVM.com shot by Andy Mann and others. Susánica Tam, an LA local who we saw at regionals, also made a great slideshow of the event. Paul Robinson beat out Chris Sharma and the show was spectacular. The routes were more of a challenge this year for the climbers and the 4th final problem remained unsent during the comp. This is much different than last year’s nationals in Maryland. A report can be found at routesetter.com about how the field was much stronger than expected. During open finals four guys and seven girls flashed all of the problems. As well when they set a super finals problem 3 of the 4 guys flashed that as well causing the tie to be broken by the qualifiers. Paul Robinson, this year’s winner, only flashed one of the three problems he completed.

Sunday was the Youth finals and Lizzy and I got moved up a problem in the lineup so that we had more falls and more excitement. Lizzy even had one of her climbers top-out early over an out of bounds line causing the head judge to step in and confirm the ruling. I had the younger kids again, Youth D, and my problem was a bit easy for the field. It saw a majority of flashes with another three or so sends 2nd try. Three or less kids were unable to send the problem.

Boulder was a ton of fun and it was good to meet new people, including the Climbing Narc, and see some old friends. The Spot was very cool and helped expand my mind in terms of what people want in a climbing gym. It was quite small and had only 2 free standing boulders but it featured tall walls with interesting angles. I ended up winning Men’s Advanced at the Citizen’s comp which means I will have to do open next year. I hope to visit boulder again and get on some of the real rock in the area!

Cheers,

Luke

ABS Nationals and Red Rocks!

2008-02-14T13:44:00.001-08:00

ABS nationals is this weekend and we are flying out to boulder to compete and to help judge the Youth event. Lizzy’s sister is competing and so is Dan Beall, one of my friends from San Diego. We will also be seeing the ClimbingNarc and his team out from Wisconsin. Lizzy and I will be competing at the late Friday session at CATS for the citizen’s comp. It looks to be a small comp but it should be fun regardless and Lizzy is excited since Bobbi Bensman is going to be in our session.

Saturday we will be up early to help out with the Youth qualifiers which will be a new experience. It is just the experience I want since I would like to learn how to run comps and what makes good comps. Saturday night will be Open finals where we will see a crazy showdown of the top men and women from the US! There is extra pressure this year due to the upcoming Bouldeing World Cup in Vail, CO. It is pretty crazy that both Chris Sharma and Lisa Rands are coming back to compete. It will be great to see how the new generation does against these two super stars.

Sunday we will be judging Youth finals and then heading back to San Diego that night. Lizzy will be sticking around since she has the day off even though I have to work. After only two and half days of working we will be off on another trip to Red Rocks. Rebecca, one of my friends from college, will be flying out for an exciting four day multi-pitch extravaganza.

I did a bit of prep for this trip by going to Red Rocks last weekend. Lizzy was playing Frisbee in Vegas so one of her friends, Sean, and I took to the rocks with a vengeance. The gorgeous weather at Red Rocks allowed us to climb all day Friday and Saturday. Friday was moderate climbing with nothing over 5.9+ so we were able to do~ 1800 feet of climbing. We simuled Johnny Vegas to get to the upper tier of solar slab. From here we started with Sundog which was a fun 5 pitches with a funky 5.9+ bolted bulging groove. After rapping the route and resting our feet we decided to try to keep to our goals and climb Sunflower. This climb was a good bit harder and had a great finger crack and a run out crux friction pitch. After many repels, the last 4 in the dark, we got safely back to the ground.

The next day, with sore feet, we decided on the long hike to the Eagle wall. We set our eyes on Eagle’s Dance and were prepared for a bit harder climbing. Taking a more direct approach allowed us to cut 45 mins of the previous time I went to the Eagle wall. With perfect weather it was amazing that we had the wall practically to our selves the whole day. Our only visitor was a Peregrine Falcon that would occasionally dive past us. The climbing on this route was very sustained with only two of the nine pitches below 5.10. With a bunch of linking we were able to cut the route down to five pitches of mainly bolted climbing. The crux came after a short bolt ladder in the form of difficult stemming. The first section, supposedly only 10b was quite tricky and it took me a good while to believe that I should start climbing and leave the belay. After getting to good jams in the crack there was a rest on a slab and another crux section. This part was even more fierce and had amazing palming and laybacking in a slabby groove. I got buzzed by the falcon while I was placing gear and nearly popped off.

This was the last pitch and a relief for Sean who had been suffering from 20+ pitches of climbing in fairly new shoes. You could see the grimaces of pain each time he moved up on this footwork intensive route. We decided to take Sunday off and enjoy the sun and watch our girlfriends play ultimate. It was a great trip and I am really excited to go back!

A few weeks ago I got a tip from SpliterChoss about a 2 for 1 special and picked up a few guidebooks for paces I want to visit. In addition to the good price and they also had a drawing from those that bought books for a new rope. Magically I won!!! So I will be getting a new Stearling rope in addition too two cool guidebooks. I had been looking at Stearling ropes recently and was interested in seeing how they climb.

This has been a great month of climbing and it seems to only be getting better as we approach March and our week long Indian Creek Trip!!

Ciao!

- Luke

Hard Boulder Problems in California

2008-02-11T15:14:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a discussion on ClimbingNarc I decided to try to start a list of all problems in California V12 or harder. This list is not complete so if you have any info on more problems or about FA’s let me know. This is similar to a list of hard climbs in Colorado and an older list of problems in New England. BetaBase also keeps an online list of all the problems in Yosemite.

Grade	Name	First Ascent	Area
V15?	Rasta Man Vibration Sit	TBD	Buttermilks
V14	The Manadala SDS	Tony Lamiche	Buttermilks
V14	The Mandala Direct SDS	Paul Robinson	Buttermilks
V14	Goldfish Trombone	Sam Edwards	Happies

V13/14	The Swarm	Matt Birch	Beehive Boulders
V13/14	Iron Resolution	Chris Sharma	Joshua Tree
V13/14	Somewhere in Time	Matt Birch	Tramway

V13	The Beautiful and the Dammed	Kevin Jorgenson	Bardini Boulders
V13	Black Mamba	Dan Mills	Tramway
V13	Dominated	Chris Sharma	Yosemite
V13	Spectre	Dave Graham	Pollen Grains
V13	True North	Sean McColl	Buttermilks
V13	The Oracle	Sean McColl	Buttermilks
V13	Direction	Shawn Diamond	Buttermilks
V13	The Buttermilker SDS		Buttermilks

V12	Sharma’s Traverse	Chris Sharma	Happies
V12	Kill On Sight	Sean McColl	Happies
V12	Bubba Lobotomy	Dan Mills	Happies
V12	The Buttermilker	Chris Sharma	Buttermilks
V12	Xavier's Roof	Tony Lamiche	Buttermilks
V12	Rastaman Vibration	Jared Roth	Buttermilks
V12	Evilution	Jason Kehl	Buttermilks
V12?	Haroun and the Sea of Stories	Matt Wilder	Buttermilks
V12	A Maze of Death	Dave Graham	Buttermilks
V12	Baburre	Fred Nicole	Buttermilks
V12	The Mystery	Shawn Diamond	Buttermilks
V12	Form Destroyer	Dave Graham	Beehive Boulders
V12	A Scanner Darkly	Dave Graham	Get Carter
V12	Michael Caine SDS		Get Carter
V12	The Mandala	Chris Sharma	Buttermilks
V12	The Mandala Direct	Jeff Sillcox	Buttermilks
V12	Yabo Roof	Tommy Caldwell	Yosemite
V12	Dominator	Jerry Moffatt	Yosemite
V12	Chimera	Paul Barraza	Yosemite
V12	Scissors for Lefty	Randy Puro	Yosemite
V12	Stick It, Static	Randy Puro	Yosemite
V12	Park Life	Tim Clifford	Yosemite
V12	Shadow Warrior	Matt Wilder	Yosemite
V12	The Creeping Wingate		Mt Baldy
V12	Devil's Dance		Tramway
V12	Roasted and Raw		Joshua Tree
V12?	Rain Dance	Dan Beall	Mt. Woodson

Enjoy,

Luke

Jaws!!!

2008-02-04T21:59:00.000-08:00

Despite the continued rain-on-the-weekend trend in SoCal this past weekend, Luke and I managed to catch some dry weather on Mt. Woodson on Saturday!

I was feeling a little under the weather from the day before and the ridiculous week I had (ultimate frisbee has been the bane of my existence recently), so I chilled on the crashpads wearing all the jackets for the first couple minutes while Luke warmed up on Baby Robbins and Jaws. Then I felt better and warmed up by climbing Baby Robbins twice, and it was time to throw myself at Jaws. On my first serious attempt, I made it to the top, although I started about 4 feet up on top of the stacked crashpads. I was shaking when I made it to the top, but it did feel really good. Something just clicked and the jams felt way better than they ever had before. I took a break before trying again and on the very next try I sent it from the ground up.

So there goes the first major step towards becoming a more awesome trad climber (and eventually climbing equinox!!!) Luke mentioned that he was excited to go spend some time working on equinox, so hopefully we can do that our next free weekend!

After Jaws, we walked up to the top of the hill and headed down the other side to look for some new cracks. We found Test Tube and the Crucible, which we definitely want to try next time. With no new cracks in sight and the wind and clouds making the weather more questionable, we decided to head back to the car. On the way, we stopped at the "cave area" and Luke played around with the steep holds before we continued down to the car. (Photos above are of Jaws, photo below of Equinox)

Luke also climbed Jaws without the crashpads a couple times, which was pretty awesome, too!

Lizzy

Climbing Community and the Roots of Motivation

2008-02-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

What is it about climbing that is just so inviting? What part of this crazy lifestyle drives us to keep on training? Why do we want to be outside pulling on rocks?

One of the things that I really love about climbing is the community. People all over the world take part in rock climbing. While there are many different crag, types of rock and styles of climbing we all share a certain drive.

Within the climbing community I especially enjoy the common topic of climbing routes and problems. It is very fun to share tales of a route with other people who have also done the same climb Climbing offers such crazy and different experiences but we can some how manage to relate to each other. People are many different heights and have a variety of climbing strengths yet overcome the same climbing challenges. A given problem may be sent with many different sequences inspirited by the past experience of the climber but each climber must eventually reach the summit.

Traveling different places and climbing the classic routes motivates me to climb harder and learn better technique. I don’t want to be specialist, on one rock type or in a single area, I want to be able to relate to lots of different types of climbers and climb a variety of routes. I want to see climbing areas and think of the problems that I have done there. A great part of climbing for me is reliving the memories of climbs and thinking of all the beautiful places climbing has brought me.

A recent post by Jamie Emerson about Horse Pens 40 inspired this nostalgia. I really enjoy climbing at HP40 and it got me thinking about all of the great problems there. I made various trips to HP40 while I was in college. It was worth the 10 hour drive and I sent my first V5, V6 and V7 on the wonderful southern sandstone. It was the first real outdoor bouldering destination that I had ever been to. Until college I had been a route climber, far to week to do any real outdoor bouldering.

College also led me to the Red River Gorge where I quickly fell in love with overhanging sport climbing. The strength gained from bouldering at our gym in college led to my first 11’s and 12’s at the Red. My junior year I took a semester and traveled to Australia to study Computer Science and work on my trad climbing. There I redpointed my first 22 trad route (11b) and struggled with ethics when pinkpointing two other 11b routes. My desire to push my physical limits hit up against the idea of getting hurt by being too bold. My fear was that a fall on improperly placed gear would result in a ground fall. My only solution to leading these hard, yet beautiful, routes was to pre-protect them so that they could be lead more safely.

My trip down under also included some sport climbing with my first flash of a 23/24 (11c) and on a trip to New Zealand my first 24 redpoint (11d). These routes stick in my mind and I can still remember some of the holds and moves from these routes three years later. Motivation and belief as well as fitness led to my success on these routes. I was pushing my limits and keeping my mind open.

As always I have been thinking about how to climb at my limit and this article about Kevin Jorgenson is pretty interesting. While in Hueco he did the first ascent of a V8 and a V10 highball. Besides just being tall these problems both had bad landings where falling was pretty much out of the question. The Duel, V10, was climbed headpoint style so that Kevin could suss out the high crux without bad fall potential. This style of climbing allows for an exchange of ground-up ethics for safety. On his send he climbed very calmly and really crushed the problem. It seemed that he was in full control even though he was climbing a hard problem. This type of control in hard climbing is what I would like to find.

With rain and no really climbing last weekend I am really psyched for this weekend! If the weather holds we will be doing a bit of muilt-pitch sport on Saturday and some crack training at Mt Woodson on Sunday.

Cheers!

- Luke

congrats, Maddy, on making it to Nationals!

2008-01-28T13:26:00.000-08:00

So my sister, Maddy, competed in the youth ABS regionals in Oregon a couple weeks ago and did well enough to get invited to ABS nationals in Boulder, CO.

Because I'm an awesome sister and love to travel, Luke and I will be joining my parents and one of Maddy's teammates in Boulder over nationals weekend, Feb 15-17, to cheer, volunteer, compete in the citizen's comp, and hopefully get lots of free stuff. When I went to nationals last year, I ended up standing on the same chair as Michael Reardon (RIP), so I have high hopes for meeting some more awesome climbers this year.

Anyways, congrats to Maddy and all the others who've qualified for youth nationals and we'll see you there!

btw, here is some footage of team vertical world competing at regionals in Oregon:

Lizzy

Queen Creek Canyon

2008-01-23T12:29:00.000-08:00

For the long MLK weekend we ventured east for warm temps and to visit a new climbing area. Rebecca, one of my friend's from Bucknell, was visiting Phoenix for work and a climbing trip was born. We picked her up from the airport on Friday night after driving over from San Diego. Highway 8 is pretty desolate and we ran out of gas since the only service station in 80 miles was closed. We almost made it to the next one but ran out of gas just 10 miles short.
A night in Phoneix meant an hour drive in the morning to the crag. When we arrived at the parking lot at 10am it was bitterly cold and windy. The crag could be seen, 200 feet above the road, on the side of the canyon. The cliffs were all south facing and were baking in the sun which was quite a bit warmer than the shady parking lot. We had chosen Queen Creek for this exact reason and it worked out perfectly.
A quick hike up the trail and some 3rd class yielded access to the climbing. We were the fourth group at the crag and that number quickly grew throughout the day. The weather was perfect and you could easily wear T-shirts when you were climbing.
The rock was a type of tuff that is formed out of solidified ash. The climbing was mainly vertical with lots of small pockets and crimps. There was not a lot of chalk on the routes which made finding the next hold a constant challenge.

Kyle, Rebecca, Lizzy and I had a ton of fun on the routes before lunch and had a few routes mostly to ourselves. We went around the corner to some longer routes and found quite the crowd of people. We ate lunch and waited for climbs to become free. Kyle, my climbing partner from SD, did a short climb and established a self belay on a pedestal so that he could take pictures of the nearby routes. The climb in the picture above was the coolest we did all trip. At 11b it had thin technical climbing up a seam to a good rest followed by a bit of easy climbing which led to the technical crux. A zig-zag traverse and then a bit of thin pocket pulling brought one to the anchors. The group climbing this route before us was a talented group of women accompanied by John Sherman. I had no idea that he sport climbed but he floated up this route. He also taught me that Guiness only has 10 calories per ounce, amazing right? Lizzy, enjoying the slabby small hold climbing this route offered, flashed the route which was her second of the grade. Kyle, in the photo above, and I also flashed the route with each of the three of us using different beta for both cruxes. Our second day we went to investigate the Looner crags in the Mine area. The climbs were on worse rock and were sparsely bolted. If you weren't near a crux there was no bolt. The climbing was still fun even though it was not as cool as the previous day.
In preparation for her upcoming visit to Red Rocks, Rebecca lead a bunch of routes this trip. It was great to see her really push her limits on lead. She was climbing really strong and excelled on the sharp end.
While Queen Creek is not a destination climbing area it was fun to be able to climb in such great weather in the winter time. Perhaps if we are visit phoenix again in the winter we will drop by.
Cheers,

Luke

ABS Southwest Regionals

2008-01-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

This past weekend the citizens’ ABS southwest Regionals was hosted at Vertical Heaven in Ventura, CA. I really enjoying going to big comps because you get to see some big name climbers come and crush. It’s really motivational and it makes me think that I am part of the big community.

Chris Danielson was there to set routes along with Paul Dusatko. An interview with Chris can be found on the E-Grips site. Vertical Heaven is the home gym for Halo Holds and they had quite a few amazing features on their routes such as the B.A.H. This giant volcano hold, whose acronym likely means Bad Ass Hold, is perfect for roof climbing and heel toe cams and was featured on the Men’s #4 final problem.

Five Ten had a booth at the comp and I was able to try on a pair of the 5X which were first seen at the Summer OR Market. They fit well and had the new 5.10 heel cup which is matched perfectly with the zipper and Velcro closure. One of my friends got a pair of the new Jet7’s for the comp and really loved them. He said they have super sticky rubber and fit great. The only complaint was that they are sized quite differently and he had to go 1.5 sizes down from what he wears in the new Dragons. This weekend is the Winter OR Market in SLC and I will be interested to see if any new sweet gear is on the horizon.

There were a lot of top athletes at this comp including Lisa Rands and Alex Puccio. It was amazing to see Lisa climb and I had got to chat with her husband, Wills Young, who was really chill. Ethan Pringle showed up at the comp and climbed a few problems but didn’t really compete. He was there to sign posters since he was still recovering from a fall from the Mandala. In December he had been working the Sit Start and landed badly on his heel putting him in crutches.

Carlo Traversi was also at this comp hailing all the way from Colorado. It was pretty cool to see him climb after reading his blog. Recently he has been sending hard with the 2nd ascent of Thrice. His ascent of the climb likely sparked new interest in this Holloway test piece since it is now up to its 6th repeat after sends by Jamie Emerson, James Pearson, Daniel Woods and Dave Graham. Carlo won the ABS 9 regionals with a few flashes and a strong showing on Men’s #4 which stumped all other competitors. He was able to make it to the 2nd to last hold which was 2 holds further than any other climber. After the comp ended he got back on the climb and sent the problem!

Woods has also been busy with the 2nd ascent of Ty Landman’s Midnight Express. You can see a video of the FA here courtesy of the MoonClimbing. The video of Daniel’s ascent can be found on MomentumVM.com. As well Daniel established Epochalypse which according to Chip Phillips from 8a.nu “links Reverse UCT (RUCT) -> Trice or 10+ moves of ~7C/7C+ traversing into 8A+”.

After sending Trice on January 10th Dave Graham went to work on Midnight Express. On his fifth day of effort he managed the third ascent in freezing conditions. So far snow and ice seem like routine conditions for those working on this boulder. These two sends put Dave back in the lead of the combined 8a global ranking. This spot, which he has held on and off for the last 6 years, was momentarily stolen by Ethan Pringle.

Cheers,

Luke

Plastic and Cracks!

2008-01-14T12:36:00.001-08:00

The past weekend saw a lot of rock climbing and even more sore muscles.

After fueling with pasta and cheesecake in Pasadena on Friday night, we headed up to Ventura on Saturday morning to compete in the citizen's ABS Regionals comp at Vertical Heaven. When we arrived in Ventura and got out of the car, the air smelled disgusting - I was concerned about having to breath it all day, but amazingly I either got accustomed to it or it smelled better inside the gym. We checked in and got some free stuff in a Mad Rock bag and sweet T-shirts.

The comp itself was 3 hours long, with 60 problems, 15 each in Rec, Intermediate, Advanced, and Open categories. It being my 2nd comp ever, I struggled a bit. I tried basically all of the the intermediate problems, flashing 2 and making good progress on a lot of others, although I didn't end up sending them. Luke was climbing in the Advanced category and did pretty awesome, winning 2nd (a free headlamp). We were able to garner some more free stuff - lots of t-shirts, stickers, and a chalkbag via a raffle and them randomly throwing free stuff to the crowd before the finals.

We were a little surprised at how few really good climbers were there, but apparently the comp didn't really matter for people who wanted to go to Nationals. Lisa Rands and Alex Puccio were the strong women, placing 1st and 2nd in the women's open category. It was really cool to see Lisa climb AND she put her bag next to my bag on the floor so I ran into her a lot. There were some pretty crazy problems, too - including one involving a jumpstart to campus moves to a bat hang to an upside down dyno... a little ridiculous but a crowd pleaser for sure.

We had dinner with Hartley, Jamie, and Nicole, and headed back down to San Diego, sore but stoked for a day at Woodson on Sunday.

It was a great day for climbing - sunny and warm (although a bit chilly in the wind atop Robbins boulder). We climbed Robbins Crack first - I soloed it for the 2nd time and felt a lot less freaked out than the first time, which was good. Then after doing some easier cracks that our companions could actually climb, we managed to find California Night for the first time! Luke sent this and I was making pretty good progress, but wanted to save some energy for my nemesis, Jaws. I also made the stupid mistake of running a track workout in too-small shoes last week and my big toe has been painful and oozing a little blood since, so I couldn't fit my right foot into my smaller shoes.

Then the boys enjoyed some time climbing steeper routes in a cool cave area before we headed to Jaws to finish the day. Luke and I soloed Baby Robbins and relaxed in the afternoon sun on the top - by this time we were both pretty worked from all the climbing we'd done this weekend. Luke's left arm was really hurting and my tips were worn down practically to bleeding!

Then it was time to throw ourselves at Jaws. Luke sent it first try, which was pretty awesome. I got pretty close to the top on my first try, but fell as one of my off-jams slipped out. But it felt pretty good. The next couple tries felt awkward for me and I never made it as high as my first go... maybe next time when I'm less tired it'll happen. Then I just have to keep sending it to get ready for IC...

I'm pretty sore still today, but luckily its a rest day for me - just classes and homework, so hopefully I can recover before this coming weekend. I'm also feeling pretty motivated to work hard at my Tuesday/Thursday ARC bouldering sessions so that I can climb better at the next comp we go to, whenever that may be.

That's it for now,

Lizzy

New Years at Cochise Stronghold

2008-01-10T15:43:00.001-08:00

This New Years we decided to go on a mini road trip and check out the climbing in Arizona. The predicted weather for the Tucson area was temps in the 60's and sunny. This seemed perfect and neither Lizzy nor I had climbed in AZ before.

So off we went to the Cochise Stronghold for a few quick days of climbing. Hope you enjoy the Trip Report; I tried to offset all the talk with some pictures from our trip since I usually write too much and leave out the pictures.

The steep approach combined with the warm sun allowed us to wear t-shirts even though we had to hike over ice. It was quite amazing to be so warm in the last week of December!
For our first climb we chose to do the classic What's My Line. For some added mileage and a bit harder grade we did the direct start. We set off up the steep canyon to locate Cochise dome so that we could climb What’s My Line. I guess the direct start rarely gets climbed because we found a cam, a nut, a belay device and a biner on our way to the stance below the first pitch.

I was able to link the two pitches of the direct start and ended my lead at the first set of anchors of the regular route. Lizzy, happy to be climbing after the windy belay, zoomed up to my stance and got ready to lead the next pitches. She also linked pitches brining us to a tree belay just below the summit.
The climbing was quite fun and the weather was great despite being a bit windy. In the photo on the right you can see a sea of chicken heads that served as both hand holds and protection.

With most of the gear already on my harness I lead the last 30 feet to the rappel anchors. A team that we had caught up to allowed us to rappel on their rope which helped us quicken the decent and get back to the campground before dark. On the decent we stashed our gear for the next day so that we would not have to do the steep approach again with our ropes and rack.

The next day we headed back up the canyon but this time to the Rockafeller Group. We were hoping to do a few climbs on the south side of the end pinnacle. With light packs filled only with food and water we made great time getting back up the steep approach. We got to our climb early and it was still all in the shade. Based on the orientation of the two climbs we wanted to do we chose Days of Future Passed as our first route. While this route ended up being much more serious than we expected it was a good choice.

After three serious pitches of run out climbing we made it to a spacious sunny ledge. This was a most welcome change from the past two hanging belays. The climbing on the first two pitches followed a large crack system that had a numerous chickeheads along the way. when the crack ended there was one pitch of exciting run out face climbing.

After a bit of food we chose the easier path to the summit and I climbed past around ten bolts to the summit. This was more than three times as many bolts as the previous pitch which was of comparable length. After reaching the summit we snapped some photos and made our way over to the rap station. Three crazy rappels through a chimney and a crawl through a hole beneath a chockstone lead us to the ground.

After packing up all of our gear we determined that we were far to tired and it was much too late for another climb. We hike all our gear back to the camp site and made a tasty dinner in celebration of New Years Eve.

This trip was a lot of fun and it taught me a bunch about traditional ethics and run out climbing. Why do you need gear when you will not fall? Bolts are not the immediate solution but the last resort. The climbing was scary and physical and expanded my mind. Most of all it really makes me appreciate all of the climbers of the last generation. While they may be a bunch of old die hard traddies they really have a lot of balls.

Cheers!

- Luke

Vacation is over, back to work!

2008-01-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Lizzy and I are now back at school and work respectively. We had a good time learning and exploring Arizona. Cochise Stronghold was quite the experience and has made me really think about traditional climbing ethics. In many ways it was a wake up call to how climbing used to be. It was a lot of fun and I will be posting a long trip report at some point this week.

Now that vacation is over it is time to get back in a routine and start training for the spring. I hope to keep better track of my climbing so I can figure out what works and what is a waste of time. One of my New Years’ resolutions was to start a training log. I think this will help me and give me a nice think to look back upon in the years to come.

On the horizon for next weekend is the ABS regional for the Southwest. Even though I was never serious enough to compete at the regional’s out east I became familiar with a good number of the comp climbers. It will be interesting to see all of the people that show up. The comp will be held at Vertical Heaven on January 12th. I don’t expect to do well since this winter has been quite light on training and comp climbing but I hope to take some photos and cheer on my friends. For sure it will be a good time and I have heard great things about the host gym.

Over the last year Lynn Hill has been writing quite a lot of blogs for findyourdetour.com. Sadly her stay is over and she will now only be blogging for Patagonia. I really enjoyed all of her writing and the various subjects and I hope she keeps it up over at Cleanest Line. Writing is a powerful tool and it has been a great motivator to be able to read thoughts from such a talented climber, thanks to Lynn!

In other news US climbers have been tearing it up. As reported by Climbing Narc and many others Paul Robinson flashed Nagual, V13 and did the 2nd Ascent of Terremer V15. Additionally Dave Graham has been on a sending spree at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch (HCR). He repeated many hard climbs including Sharma’s King Lion V12/13 and has established four climbs V12 or harder.

Vacation!

2007-12-22T09:39:00.000-08:00

It certainly seems that Luke has been doing most of the blogging recently, which is mostly that I've been so ridiculously busy with school that I've barely had time to do anything except schoolwork and sleep.

But now, finally, I've reached the Holiday break (actually, I started it about a week ago, but was busy climbing in JTree with Luke and doing all the Christmas wrapping here at home). Home, however, is now Poulsbo, Washington (not far from Bainbridge Island or the Navy base in Bremerton, if you're familiar with the area). So even though I have free time, it's pretty much been raining outside the entire time I've been home, which makes it a little hard to do any climbing outside. Hopefully today I'll get my act together and go running in the rain.

Whatever I do, I'm pretty happy to have this opportunity to catch up on life - do some research into grad schools, which I'll probably be applying to next fall, go running, chill out with the doggies, read a book for fun (Wicked by Gregory Maguire)! Hopefully I can regain some of my motivation for climbing, too. School can tend to make me so stressed out in general, that even climbing becomes stressful. It's so frustrating! It's been really hard to balance everything and to really believe I'm giving everything what it deserves (school, climbing, frisbee, and Luke, in no particular order). I'm hoping that a new term at school and a new (very exciting) geology research project can help me get my crazy life under control. Next term will also mark the beginning of the Ultimate Frisbee tournament season, meaning that although several weekends will be dedicated to frisbee, our coach will resume running our practices, which takes a big load off myself and my co-captain.

For now, though, I'm just excited for our New Year's trip to Arizona - new climbing areas (BASALT!!! hopefully), a new state to visit, and hopefully some sweet crack climbing to kick me back into gear to prepare for Indian Creek in March. So many 5.11's and 5.12's to send!

For now, hope everyone's having a great holiday season (maybe enjoying some fresh powder?)!

Happy Holidays

2007-12-21T12:12:00.001-08:00

2007 has been an amazing year for climbing and this will most likely be my last post of the year. Moving to a new place has allowed me to climb more often and at a whole bunch of amazing areas. I look forward to 2008 and many months of exploration and climbing! I thought I would add some photos to for a bit of spice, hope you enjoy!

Lizzy is already in Seattle for Christmas and I will be flying up there tomorrow. We will be in Seattle until the 28th visiting family and friends.

Climbing has been winding down recently as the temps have been a bit colder. Our only trip in the last three weeks was to Joshua Tree this past weekend. We had some really warm weather which was nice and unexpected! We did a bit of trad, sport, bouldering and multi-pitch. The mix of everything was nice and I even hopped on Iron Resolution (photo above/right) which was really cool despite the fact that it is way too hard! We also got to climb the Headstone at sunset which was fun(photo below). I had never lead before in my down jacket and it ended up being a good decision. It probably dropped 20 degrees in the hour and a half before sunset.

We are going to try to head to Arizona for a short New Years climbing trip. I will be posting up a trip report when we get back.

Thanks to everyone that reads our blog. It has been a great experience writing these blogs!

If anyone has questions or topics there are interested in let us know via comment or email. DreamInVertical at rockclimbing.com

Cheers!

- Luke

Climbing Shoes

2007-12-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

So the recent news is that the V10’s are going to be discontinued by Five Ten. This super aggressive slipper is going to be replaced by the brand New Jet7. As far as I know RockCreek has exclusive distribution of the Jet7 until 2008 and they have a limited stock. I heard that Paul Robinson climbed in the Jet7 during the Triple Crown. Despite crushing at this comp he has created a petition to bring back the V10.

I think that people should not be worried about the V10 yet. It was almost 3 years from the first initial news of the cobra being replaced until La Sportiva stopped selling it. The same was true of the old Five Ten dragons. The new dragons are being worn by lots of super strong climbers proving that change can be a good thing. While a replacement slipper may not be in the works for this year perhaps Five Ten is going to bring a new slipper to market in late 2008. Hopefully I can do some research and find out. Edit: See the comments for more discussion on the V10.

The Climbing Narc had a post a while ago about shoes and how many shoes people have. I know most people only have a few pairs of shoes but I own or have worn out about 25 pairs of shoes or so. This has been a product of many years of climbing and a desire to experiment with different models of shoes. A large reason for the number of pairs of shoes is that I can usually get a new pair cheaper than I could get an old pair resoled. I think there is something amazing about a shoe right after it breaks in.

Over the last 5 years I have climbed between two and five days a week for the majority of the year. I would climb more in the summer and at least half of those days were in the gym. I like to savor my climbing shoes and I don’t usually mix between outdoor shoes and indoors shoes. Once a shoe became worn down it would get delegated to indoor duty. Thus I end up doing most of my climbing on plastic in blown out pairs of shoes

For the majority of my climbing I like a sensitive flat shoe that is tight to put on but becomes useable with a bit of warmth and sweat. I am currently on my 6th pair of cobras which were my favorite shoe for the longest time. They jam well, are easy to take off and are very sensitive. As well they smear really well; the biggest problem is they don’t make them any more and they don’t resole well. Because of this I rarely use my remaining pair of cobras. After these shoes stopped being produced I “discovered” the Muira after much prodding by my girlfriend. I now have 4 pairs of these shoes and use them for almost everything. They have an amazing heel cup and are a great all around shoe.

The one thing that both the Muria’s and the Cobra’s lack is a down-turned toe. This can be essential to small edging and steep boulder problems. I have one pair of Testarossa’s that I use exclusively for this type of climb. They are really tight and I only wear them when I am trying to send a project or I need to pull extra hard with my toes. The aggressive curve of the rand on the Testarossa’s is amazing and it gives a lot of power that the Muria’s lack. I really think that different shoes make a significant difference on certain climbs. It may just be the mindset that my feet can stick to anything, but I usually send harder wearing the Testarossa’s.

Each person will have a different preference for climbing shoes and the fit of your foot should be the biggest consideration. It is also important to make sure that the shoe is designed for what you plan on using it for. If you plan on steep heelhooking it might not be the best thing to buy a slipper. You don’t want your toes curled too much for crack climbing and velcro shoes can be problematic with jamming in hand cracks and larger. If you get a shoe that is too tight or down-turned it can be very difficult to smear.

This year I hope to get a pair of the Es Pontas and the new Anasazi 2.0. I wish that more US climbing shops would stock the Scarpa climbing shoes since they look very cool. I don’t know how they size their shoes and with the addition of Mad Rock and Evolv it is almost impossible to know what size climbing shoes you should buy.

That’s all for now,

Luke

Projects and Goals

2007-12-07T16:27:00.000-08:00

I dream about rock climbing all the time, the routes I want to do, the places I have been and the people I have climbed with. Climbing is so much more than an extreme sport or a test of physical prowess it really is a lifestyle. My climbing lifestyle is motivated by the places I read about and the routes that I want to go out and climb. I train, go to the gym and work on getting stronger so that I can climb all of these projects. To be able to travel the world and sample the best routes at a given area is my ultimate goal.

There are just so many places to climb in the world and so many stunning routes. From simple boulder problems at Bishop to the tall granite walls of Yosemite. Because I want to be able to climb them all the majority of my goals revolve around being a well rounded climber. My list of projects varies in both style of climbing and global location. While there is a clear focus on long hard traditional routes I also enjoy single pitch sport climbing and bouldering.

Motivation is very important for training and a key element in a day to day climbing routine. It can be hard to keep doing those sit ups every week or those hang board sessions when you don’t have some goal to shoot for. I find that medium term goals are very important so that I can stay excited about climbing. Even though a medium term goal may not be your dream route it will keep you positive about climbing. Going all out when training can be problematic since you have to make sure to pay attention to your body and avoid injury. If a climber sets there short or medium term goals too high it can be hard when you can not meet your expectations. It is much better to be honest and set a moderate goal before worrying about finding a really difficult project for a long term goal.

When attempting a new project it can be necessary to gain new skills and fitness in order to succeed. To determine where you need to focus your training energy it can help to break the climb down and compare it to your strengths and weaknesses. One of my project routes is Romantic Warrior 12b. This is an eight pitch route on the Southwest face of the Warlock in the Needles. It includes four hard pitches one 11d, two 12a and one 12b. While I might aspire to onsight this route it will most likely take me multiple visits so I will get a feeling of the climb before I send it. In order to train for this climb I know that I need to elevate my endurance so I can handle leading so many hard trad pitches. As well the 12b and 11d pitches involve tricky stemming and RP’s. This has motivated me to find other routes with similar characteristics of lower grades to provide a ramp up. These medium term routes will help me gauge my fitness and let me know when I am ready to go try to climb Romantic Warrior.

This fall Lizzy and I traveled out to the Red River Gorge for the Petzl Roc Trip. This was a very motivational trip for the both of us and we spent a lot of time doing specific training in preparation. Instead of doing a jumble of bouldering, trad climbing and sport climbing we focused on clipping bolts and training endurance. With all of the work we put in we were really excited for the trip and both climbed very well and pushed our limits. The trip was an excellent motivator and gave us a time line to train and get into the proper shape for hard sport climbing.

Projects and Goals are really important as we come into winter. This weekend looks like all rain and last weekend was a bust as well. The temps are dropping and climbing must be done inside to maintain fitness. Many people don’t enjoy the gym but if you can find a way to make it fun it will greatly help you ability get back on projects in the spring. Training hard all winter has helped many climbers push the grades much harder than if they had just stayed home.

If you have a big list of routes to do it can put a lot of pressure on you since there is so much to do. It is important to remember that there is a lot of time and that you do the best at climbs that you train for. At the Red I excelled on crimpers since that had been what I was training on. When I did a slopey route I had a lot of trouble since I had not been climbing on slopely holds. So take one goal at a time and maximize your skill level for the climb you are focusing on. Pressure while climbing will only distract you and keep you from pushing to the limit. Remember Climbing is FUN!!

Here is a list of climbs that I want to do in my lifetime. I would like to do most them in the next five years or so but its tricky to know where I will be. This list comes from reading climbing magazines, chatting to other climbers and reading guidebooks. Many climbs are area classics or are very aesthetically pleasing. Desire for many climbs has stemmed from a really nice photo of the climb. Enjoy!

- Luke

Squamish:
Freeway
Grand Wall

The Needles:
Romantic Warrior
Scirocco

Yosemite:
Steck - Salathe
Astroman
The Rostrum

NW face of Half Dome
Nose in a day
Free Rider

Toulumne Meadows:
Bachar – Yerian
Lucky Streaks

Red Rocks:
Cloud Tower
Original Route, Rainbow Wall

The Gift

Smith Rocks:
Astro Monkey
Chain Reaction
Heinous Cling

Joshua Tree:
Equinox

Indian Creek:
Ruby’s Café
Way Rambo

Red River Gorge:
Kaleidoscope
No Redemption
Table of Colors Direct

Rumney:
Technosurfing
Suburban

Australia:
Trojan
Birdman from Alcatraz
Mr. Joshua
The Totem Pole

Climbing Style – Effects of Traveling and Road Trips

2007-11-29T14:32:00.000-08:00

Climbing well is more complex than just being strong and pulling down hard. Climbing is about being in touch with your body and understanding the style of movement required for a particular ascent. As climbers we travel for many reasons beyond the simple pursuit of cranking in new places. I enjoy the different scenery, rock texture and challenges provided by new areas. As well I am excited to climb local classics and learn a new style of movement. Traveling can allow a climber to increase their repertoire of moves as well as their fitness.

All over the world there are destination climbing areas and each has a bit of specialized style that allows a climber to excel in that area. Some skills are more easily translated between areas but others must be learned. Many people try to split climbing into three simple categories of bouldering, trad and sport each having a different style of movement. I think there are more subtle attributes to climbing than these divisions. The way a climber moves on routes at the red river gorge is very different than how they would at maple canyon, even though both are sport climbing areas. It comes down to the fact that steep cobbles provide an alternate challenge to pockets and sloping rails. Each of these styles requires different strengths and will teach climbers a specific skill.

While most areas provide a variety of hold types there are some where locals have clear advantage. Areas such as Horsepens have a very distinct style and can be very tricky for the traveling climber. Slopers the size and grain of horsepens are rare and require subtle movement and squeezing that has to be learned in order to send the local test pieces. Being able to spend many days figuring out the intricate of southern slopers will allow a climber to push themselves harder.

I have never been a true local at any climbing area. I have been a weekend warrior and sent all of my hardest climbs on road trips. Near the end of a stay at a climbing area I would have tailored my skills to fit the demands of the given rock type. Learning how to pull on the holds or how to keep the pump at bay would allow me to take the next step. Beyond just adapting to the style of the rock an extended trip would allow my body to flow better over rock. Constantly climbing for even a few days can give a climber a better awareness of how to pull and move their body.

The problem is that mentally it can be hard to climb at your limit if you keep mixing up the style you climb in. Bouldering one weekend on granite the next on sandstone and then sport climbing on limestone can put a person out of touch with how to move. A climber needs to balance variety so that they can still benefit from different challenges. It can be really annoying to switch rock types when you have finally dialed your footwork in one style. I think the key is to take something from each experience and try to apply it to the next; sometimes it will work even though other times it will be a step backwards.

When I started leading I was a sport climber and to this day I probably still am. I started trad leading a year or so later and it made convinced me that the Yosemite Decimal System could not relate bolted climbs to those where you had to place cams and nuts. There was no way I should get spanked so badly by a 5.9 crack when I could clip up 5.11.

Trad climbing came to me slowly and I started going through the grades. As I placed more gear and cam sizes became obvious I realized that it wasn’t trad climbing it self that could be more difficult but rather the type of routes that one would place gear on. Certain rock types and climbing areas lend them selves to particular types of routes. It wasn’t the gear placement that made the trad climb harder as much as the expectations of the route and the style of movement.

This past weekend, climbing out in Red Rocks, I found my self in a new situation. The end of the day yielded an onsight of both an 11a crack and an 11a face route but which had been more difficult? In recent times I have been trying to remove doubt I have had about falling while trad climbing. While I have not taken more than an eight foot fall on a cam I have been able to push my self to trust the gear more than when I first started. While I had to place gear on the crack I did this weekend I found the climb slightly easier than the face route. The jamming was slightly insecure but the line and sequence was more obvious and faster to decipher. For once it seemed that with the right mindset I could keep pushing into the next level for trad climbing.

With trad climbing and sport climbing, granite and sandstone, it is important to keep an open mind and keep learning. Don’t take bolts for granted and don’t forget how to place cams. Take each jamming experience and relate it to your latest crimpy test piece. While I believe that it may be beneficial to specialize in a style of climbing there is much more to gain from being an all around climber. It allows one to travel all over the world and climb classic routes without having to worry about bolts or hold types. Whatever way you take it go on a road trip and test your self in a new area!

- Luke

Hesitation and Commitment

2007-11-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

'I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.'

- Bene Gesserit "Litany Against Fear" from Dune by Frank Herbert

A climber’s mental attitude has everything to do with how he or she is going to perform on a climb. While hesitation and commitment can be lumped in with motivation I want to explore these mental elements as they effect the moment. The thoughts that are rushing through your head as you climb above your last piece or try to top out a boulder problem are very insightful. How can a climber improve their mental game so that the negative self talk can be reduced or eliminated?

When climbing a route or problem I think that climbers exert varied amounts effort throughout the duration. While the amount of physical exertion may be easy to gage the amount of mental effort can be harder to comprehend. Some times on a climb it can be very important to keep the right mindset even when the difficulty eases. A climb may be runout, have serious fall potential or a bad landing where hesitation could cause an unsafe fall. Keeping focus all the way to the top will help to insure success.

Comprehension about the gravity of a situation can have large consequences on the ability for a person to perform the needed actions. Many times a climber can deal with runouts and dangerous situations because they are not fully aware of the potential consequences. A climber can be unnerved when their belayer warns of ground fall danger or other possible problems that the climber thought they had under control. This mental insecurity can easily translate into a bigger problem if the climber starts over gripping or making bad decisions.

There are different mindsets that I think can be very helpful when climbing in order to be more successful. Pressure to send a route can be problematic when it causes a climber to be tentative or worrisome. Being able to be in the moment and distance ones self from expectation and pressure can be quite helpful. Many climbers do not recall the details from hard sends because they were fully engaged in the moment.

Being in the zone does not solve everything; being able to have control over your emotions can be as powerful if not more so than the zone. A problem with climbing in the zone can come when you snap out of it when the climbing becomes more difficult than expected and you are not properly prepared. Willingness to commit to difficult movement can be necessary and mental toughness is necessary. A mind set that allows commitment without taking difficulty for granted is very powerful.

Expectations of a route can have varied effects on a climber. Some climbers are easily intimidated by cruxy routes while others fail to maintain mental energy through sustained climbs. Knowing where a crux is on a route should give the climber an advantage because it allows them to mentally prepare for the complex or difficult sequence. A climber can make sure that they are rested and willing to give 100% to the next section of rock. We as climbers must strive to conquer our fears and hesitation and give a genuine effort.

As the act of climbing becomes more challenging I find my self more engaged in the movement. Clipping bolts and placing gear become integrated into the climbing motion and I am not overly worried about fall potential. Many times when I fail to assume the right mind set or am worried about falling I will dwell on the gear or bolts. The action of clipping a bolt does not help a climber recover lost energy but it often helps bolster a climber’s confidence. Many times I will feel much better after placing a cam even though the difficult of the climbing has not eased.

Looking at how climbing changes our mental state will ultimate lead to both a better understanding of ourselves and a break through in our climbing. Climbing highballs out at bishop this past weekend really made me think about how mental climbing really is. I would be perfectly able to do all of the moves on a climb but my body would not allow me to continue when I would climb far off the ground. Conquering this fear would open a new realm of climbing and it will be interesting to see how I can deal with fear in the future.

- Luke

Levitation 29 part 2 - Dealing With Fear.

2007-11-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

Climbing routes recently has been a mental push for me. I don’t know if it has to do with a low level of motivation or just being disconnected from the zone. I have been feeling a larger than normal amount of uncertainty with my climbing. Perhaps it has been all of the sport climbing and the disconnect from the do not fall mentality. Maybe climbing at my limit more often has given me more doubt. I don’t exactly know the cause but I hope to fight through it and figure out how to climb more confidently.

Doubting my ability comes into play when I climb because I am in the middle of a burn and I struggle to keep climbing, since I don’t feel I can do it. It has been a bit frustrating to have all of this doubt when there is no obvious cause. There seem to be a few different mind sets that I encounter when I am climbing. They range from a relaxing send, free from doubt, to a fearful onsight where I struggle to commit to every move. I think what is happening to me is that I am hesitating and unable to commit because I am afraid of failure. I am tied to the success related to sending the route and unable to fully commit my self because of fear.

My hardest trad onsight to date came on a tricky finger crack in Squamish called Crime of the Century. It was much harder than anything I had tried to onsight before. The lack of precedence allowed me to give everything. Even though it was very difficult I was less worried about failing to onsight the climb. This disconnect from having to send allowed me to be less hesitant and through a lot of grunting and hard work I got to the top.

This all relates to Levitation 29 because it is a route that has been in my mind for over a year now. The goal was to onsight the route and when the time came to go out and try the route this weekend there was a lot of intimidation. I was afraid that I would not be strong enough; I would be too tired after the long approach or that I would just fall/fail.

I had recently been training on longer sport routes but nothing would compare to a nine pitch route. Almost half of the pitches were 11a or harder and I would be leading all the hard pitches. While the crux fifth pitch would stand out as the technical crux of the route I would have to make sure to keep it together to the top.

The first hard pitch was the 2nd which I linked to the first. The climbing was fun and complex to a difficult crux. It seems height dependant as there are good holds but they were too far away for me to reach. This lead to some easier pitches which I followed and then the 5th pitch. The plan had been to skip bolts and link this to the next pitch for 150 feet of fun. As I started climbing up the climbing was harder than expected and I knew I would have to climb the pitches separately.

The crux of the 5th pitch started from a good 2 foot long hand jam sized pod. It moved from there up a few moves of laybacking into a fist pod with some bad face holds inside and a decent left hand crimp. You had good feet for the clip but had to move up to smears for the next move. This move, my crux, was a reach from either a bad fist jam(for my hands) or from the small but positive left crimp. I watched my right fist sliding out of the jam as I stabbed for the next finger lock. I got it and moved up to the next clip but I was physically and mentally fried.

I had spent so much time trying to find a better sequence through the crux that I was now really tired. The pitch did not ease up for many more clips so I really had to fight for the onsight. I wanted to send this route so bad and I knew that I could do it. This quote from this Steph Davis Blog was in the back of my mind as I kept refusing to let go.

“I’ve done all my groundwork. I am totally capable of doing this, and I know it for a fact, because I trained, practiced, meditated, and I am absolutely prepared to pull this off.”

I still climbed slowly and hesitantly through the pitch but I managed to make it to the anchors without falling. The next pitches were less difficult but I was still quite tired. I wonder if climbing the crux pitch faster would have been successful and saved me energy. I am still trying to figure out the best strategy for climbing onsight. I have to learn to work through my trust issues and climb with more certainty.

This climb was an amazing experience and I would be excited to go back and do it again. It pushed me both physically and mentally and I am still reflecting on the experience and learning lessons.

- Luke

Equinox!

2007-11-07T08:39:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to post up a couple exciting Equinox-related links.
Current thread on SuperTopo about the Equinox FA
I love this part:

"Largo first showed me that crack. He said" Ho man, you gotta see this thing". We thought he was nuts but Richard Harrison knew about it too. He gave me the look and said " yep" and off we went.

Long also brought this young girl with us out there. She just started climbing and could only do 5.10c on a toprope. Anyway when we finally got there my jaw dropped.

We set up a top rope and Harrison asked the girl if she thought she could do this thing. She said, "Oh yeah, no problem". She went first and started laybacking the initial fingercrack section and actually made past the first crux! Our eyes popped out. She actually laybacked the slightly offset finger crack start. Her name was Lynn.

Anyway, I remember we all tried it and I top roped it that day"

-Bachar

Also, check out this video of Kevin Jorgenson sending it... his first week of trad climbing... (how ridiculous):

Levitation 29

2007-11-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

So we just got back from Las Vegas and the ever-impressive Red Rocks. Overall it was a really successful weekend.

On Friday morning we drove out to Vegas and after picking up the 2 new guidebooks (both of which are excellent and highly recommended!) and procuring a campsite (which was good because the campground was full when we got back that night) we headed out to Black Velvet Canyon. We've done a couple routes out here before - Prince of Darkness (5.10c, 6 pitches, lots of bolts) and Epinephrine (5.9, 13 pitches, lots of chimneys, we topped out after dark and nearly epic-ed the descent with tricky cairn-finding in the dark). So the approach was no big surprise. We finally got to climb Dream of Wild Turkeys (5.10a, 7 pitches), which was super fun. I followed the last pitch in semi-dark and we rapped and got back to the car safely, where we had some yummy breakfast burritos for dinner in the parking lot.

After passing out before 10pm on Friday night, we awoke early on Saturday morning to head out to Levitation 29. We left the Oak Creek Canyon parking lot at about 6:45am after lots of repacking of bags, breakfast, and the several miles of loop road preceding the parking lot. I've climbed Johnny Vegas, Solar Slab, and Black Orpheus before, so the first bit of the approach was already familiar to me. We made really good time hiking up the wash to the Black Orpheus approach, although we still had tons of wash to hike up. We had hoped to take a shortcut (approximately following the Black Orpheus descent I think), but due to a misunderstanding ended up hiking the standard (long) approach that goes up the wash to the really big pine trees. But it was ok because we were the first to the base of the route and actually had Eagle Wall entirely to ourselves save for two guys who climbed part of Eagle Dance.

Luke linked the first 2 pitches into one and I followed, unfortunately falling at the 5.11b roof crux. I lead the next two easier pitches (5.8, 5.10b) which were really fun, getting us to the base of the crux pitch, which Luke lead brilliantly :-D I fell once at the crux of this pitch, struggling with a wide pod that I couldn't even fist jam. The pitch was surprisingly sustained and I was really tired after following it. The next pitch was a little less steep, but still quite hard with many small crimps (which were very common on the route). This was followed by a weird, hard pitch with some rather crappy-quality white rock. I fell near the top of this pitch at some strenuous layback moves - my hands were cramping so badly I was losing motor control of my fingers - not able to keep holding on. Then there were just 2 more pitches, which Luke lead for me (and linked) to the top featuring some more sketchy rock. Hoping to use the remaining light to get back to the wash the faster way, we rapped immediately from the top of the 9th pitch (where we saw some climbers topping out Black Orpheus). We got to the ground with some light to spare, and started working our way down the wash. We ended up at some sketchy steep downslabbing in the dark, but found a rap station and rapped/bushwhacked our way back into the wash, making it back to the car by 8pm.

It was a great experience and a huge challenge for me and for us. The hiking took us about 2.5 hours each way, which added to the challenge of the route due to the shortness of the November days. The hard pitches of the route were a lot more challenging than I might have expected and I really struggled with keeping up my energy throughout the day. We left our sandwiches at the base to be lighter, so I ended up doing most of the climb on a package of shot blocks, a gu, and a clif bar, which considering the difficulty of the route was probably nowhere near enough food. We also only brought 2.5 liters of water, so I think both of us were also pretty dehydrated, which contributed to both of us getting cramps in our hands (which had never happened to me before). It's made me think a lot about how we could have addressed this problem better - different food, more food, supplementing our water with some gatorade, or maybe even a potassium supplement to fight the cramps. These are really important things to consider and learn about because as we push ourselves more it's only going to become more critical to be adequately hydrated and fed to be able to function and achieve at a higher level.

I do think all our efforts to improve our efficiency did help us out, though, because our belay transfers were in general fairly efficient and (due to the bolted belays) were able to keep the wasted or excessive gear to a minimum.

Hopefully this is just a starting point for us for climbing routes of this quality and caliber of difficulty. We were dreaming on the route back about future projects in Red Rocks, including Cloud Tower and the Original Route on the Rainbow Wall, both of which involve much harder cruxes and (in the case of the Rainbow Wall) long approaches.

I'm sure Luke will have more things to say about Levitation 29... what a day...

Long-term projects (a.k.a. dreams)

2007-10-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

Long-term projects. I would hazard a guess that every climber has at least one. I have a lot. They're the climbs that you dream about. That page in the guidebook you just have to look at. The dream. The goal to train for.

My list is much longer than you'd ever want to read (and the relative importances of different projects are nowhere near the same), but at the moment there are three that capture my desire and imagination much more than any others...

Sunshine Dihedral, 5.11d, Smith Rock. I first saw this route right after I'd onsighted it's neighbor, Moonshine Dihedral, 5.9, which was my hardest onsight (trad or sport) at the time. A beautiful, perfect, soaring dihedral with a tips and fingers crack that is ideally suited to my smaller fingers. Delicate and technical stemming, one of my favorite types of climb because the movements feel so natural to me and even the unusual body positions seem to flow so easily. I have only touched the bottom of the route, but I'd like to train enough to give it an onsight go (maybe if we get out to Smith this next June) because such a beautiful route deserves it.

Coyne Crack, 5.12, Indian Creek. I've never been to Indian Creek, but I dream about it all the time. This route, to me, exemplifies the reasons behind my desire for IC. Vertical, perfect splitter. A difficult start with a section of mandatory off-finger jams (for any hand-size) leads to red camalots forever (which just happens to be my perfect hand jam size). The idea of the route is so motivating - a sequence of some of the most challenging size jams right off the ground followed by the sweetest reward of running up perfect jams. What makes it more exciting is that I have no idea how my abilities stack up against the route, how hard that beginning section will be, whether or not I will get pumped from all those hand jams up higher. But the chance to go to IC (in March!!) is a dream - so much straightforward jamming, so many different routes to try, skills to test and improve. Crack climbing heaven :-D

And last, but certainly not least, the crown jewel of my dream routes,

Equinox, 5.12+, Joshua Tree. I first stumbled upon this route online and immediately fell in love. Such a steep, perfect crack is really unusual for J-Tree and I knew I had to see it, to feel it, even though it was (and still is) far above my ability to lead. The location is incredible. After driving several miles out Geology Tour road, you walk out into the desert towards one of those big jumbled piles of rocks so particular to J-Tree. The excitement builds as you approach the formation, because you can't see the route until you are quite close. But then you round the curve of the base and there it is - a clean, beautiful crack curving gently up the vertical face of the largest granite block, perched on the top of the pile. I couldn't believe it could be so perfect, that the setting could be so fitting to the beauty of the crack. And then there's the crack itself. It starts with a crazy move pulling onto an ear-shaped flake, then some nice finger jamming (green alien, which is perfect fingers for me, but my fingers are small...) with less than awesome feet (the trend of non-stellar feet continues most of the way up the route because the face is a little slick for smearing and the crack a little small to really be effective jamming your toes in). And then you get into the fun part. As the crack widens to yellow aliens, you pull through a dead-vertical/slightly overhanging section and the crack continues to widen. That's when it gets really hard - grey aliens, somewhat offset, and left-leaning. This size is the hardest I have ever encountered for me personally because it's not quite ring locks or thin hands, but that nasty size in between where nothing feels secure (luckily the two times I've tried it I was on TR so I haven't had to take the whip... yet...). This crux is followed by an increasingly easier traverse left as footholds (!!!) appear when you hand-traverse the crack to the top. Although it has so far proven incredibly difficult for me, I can't help but be motivated and inspired by this route. It is so pure and so beautiful, the ultimate project. (By the way, if you are reading this and happen to be someone short with small fingers who has send Equinox, I'd love some advice for the hard part.)

So those are my dream projects. I think it's really important to have routes that inspire and motivate me. I can often be too much of an aesthetically motivated climber for my own good (although I've been sending harder at the Riverside Quarry, which isn't exactly picturesque), struggling with routes that don't get my heart beating faster. But I find that when I have my goal routes, it's easier to motivate on other climbs that I would otherwise struggle with motivation because I can see them as a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal. That off-size crack in the gym? That's training for Jaws (Mt. Woodson, hopefully not too burned up). And Jaws, well campusing that is training for Equinox.

In related news, this weekend Luke and I are going to try to onsight one of our other long-term projects, Levitation 29, III 5.11, in Red Rocks, so wish us luck!

Grades, Grades, Grades…

2007-10-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

As I have been attempting more “hard” routes recently I have been mulling over the concept of grades. Within a given number, whether 5.9 or 5.13, the variability of perceived difficulty can be quite vast. Rock type can vary between crags as can the grading ethics and the style of climbing. How can we relate a 5.9 on Yosemite granite to a 5.9 at the Red River Gorge?

At one point our grading system rated a climb based on its hardest move, but now we try to rate the overall effort required for a climb. Sustained 5.9 moves yield a rating of 5.10a at certain crags despite the lack of a 10a move. These ideas are not set in stone nor are the agreed upon throughout the world, yet people all over base so much on these simple numbers. Is this because we need an expectation for the route we are going to climb? Do we need compare climbs to each other and to our past climbs? What do we need from these grades?

I found this quote about Dave Graham’s feelings on grades quite interesting. It was originally posted here.

"Do we comprehend as a community a system of grading? As a community, are we confident in our current theories about the complex abstraction of high-end grades?

I think the media did a lot more consolidating of grades than we ever did as a community of climbers. For generations it has happened. Capitalism, money, "fame",...these factors of our world are real, and they have a serious influence.

Grades will never be the most inspiring abstraction donated by climbing. They rank low in overall importance. From an artistic point of view, the possible inspiration one can attain from a grade (it being an after-the-fact interpretation of something special) can never compete with the inspiration donated by the actual experience of climbing.

I changed a lot of my ideas about grades throughout my experiences climbing. I learned a lot about how to compare personal experiences and deduce their relativity. I think its amazing, as a community, how everyone involved, can appreciate the attempt to articulate (with a little number) how challenging something felt, or how one experience compared to another."
--- Dave Graham, 2004 ---

I completely agree that climbing is too complex to be expressed by “a little number”. As a community we should work together to push the limits of climbing and make sure not to be confined by grades.

This article really sheds some light on the John Gill B scale. It is cool to see that a younger climber, Klem Loskot, agrees and his explanation of how to grade problems that are so difficult. It is especially important how he says that grades should really just be a personal reflection of the difficulty of a climb. As well that sometimes the best way to look at the difficulty of a problem can be its relation to other climbs you have done.

Personally I use grades as a measure of performance and a way to gauge progress. I target grade ranges when I travel to crags so that I will push my self climbing. In the past I have been too concerned with sending given grades at the sacrifice of other parts of climbing. I would climb 11as instead 10ds since they are the next number grade up and thus more important even thought both grades be quite similar in difficulty.

While I do think the grades do characterize different types of movement I can still be surprised by the effort required to do 5.9 versus 5.12. Just because a climb is graded harder doesn’t always mean it is more difficult. Difficulty is so abstract, especially in climbing, because there is a varied mix of mental and physical effort. A climb can seem more difficult if the moves are harder to unlock compared to a climb with simple pulling.

Overall I think that the most important thing is to keep climbing and trying different styles of routes. A person’s body can learn so much from a variety of challenges. After man years of climbing cruxes will make more sense and perhaps grades will seem less important. The key is to challenge yourself and have fun doing it.
- Luke

Injuries and Recovery

2007-10-24T11:20:00.000-07:00

This week has been pretty crazy down in San Diego with the out of control wild fires. What this mean in climbing terms is no time outside for cardio and no going to the gym. I usually bike to work and because of air quality issues I have been quite hesitant. I may try it out tomorrow since the wind has been calming down but we will see. The climbing gym has been closed the last two days and we will see if it is open tonight.

What this means for me is that I forcibly got a bunch of rest. While I don’t like to take so many days off from climbing I think it has been really good for my finger. I have had some minor tendon pain that occasionally was a bit intense. This has been an injury that is usually solved with tape. It gives me little pain while climbing and is tender afterwards. A bit of massage and stretching help a lot and this injury doesn’t really affect my climbing.

About a year and a half ago in March of 2005 I dislocated my right shoulder at a climbing comp. I was on some thuggy boulder problem and was doing the typical cut feet campus beta. I was not working on technique I was just trying to get it done. I hit the next hold with my left hand but in that instant I felt my right shoulder lift out of its socket. I jumped down and walked out of the cave with my right hand in the air. It felt weird but not very painful. I moved my arm around a bit and it popped right back into the socket, lucky me. I had what is considered a subluxation and I was pretty lucky.

This injury put me out of climbing for the next few months and really changed my attitude towards how I climbed. In the past I was a very dynamic climber and didn’t really consider movement very carefully. I had learned how to propel my body in the right directions and to pull really hard. As well my training was to get huge forearms and be strong, not at all considering that I would need muscular balance.

As Lynn notes it is important to pay attention to our bodies and make sure to develop them correctly. Personally I need to make sure that I get the proper amount of sleep and adequate days off between hard climbing days or workouts. After injuring my shoulder I had to make sure to pay lots of attention so that I did not re injure it. My doctor told me that if I could keep from dislocating it again for the next few years the likelihood of a complete recovery would be much better. I started physical therapy and after the sessions I would ice and massage my shoulder. It was amazing to see how weak my shoulders really were and how much I how little weight I could lift.

In addition to more cross training I am constantly trying to learn how to move better. I have been inspired by a lot of the blogs that Lynn Hill has written lately. This one on prevention really strikes true because I know campusing that boulder problem led to the dislocation of my shoulder. As well, as she notes, staying injury free is really key to continued improvement. How can a climb expect to climb more routes if they are nursing old injuries?

Having hurt my shoulder has led me to climbing in a new style. While some times I am more hesitant I am climbing stronger now than I was before my injury. I have to step away from certain routes and problems because of reachy or dangerous moves but I still have plenty of things to climb. In terms of climbing harder and more routes I am constantly looking to improve my technique. By climbing more I have been increasing my move vocabulary but I want to keep learning. This blog about visualization is pretty cool since I am not that much in touch with my body yet. I still am struggling with how to do some of the moves that I am already familiar with.

Hopefully in the future I can learn how to better listen to my body and how to use it while climbing. Currently I pre-visualize sequences, foot positions and which ways my hips point. Taking this a step further to examine forces and where my center of gravity is may allow me to climb routes while expending less energy and using smaller holds. It will be exciting to try these techniques out next time I am at the crag.

- Luke

California's Burning

2007-10-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

Just like the Augustana song,
California's burning, burning, burning to the ground
...
And I'm here, wondering where the sun has gone

Even here in Pasadena, where we have had only the slightest breath of wind in the past week, the air smells a little smokey, the light is so orange that it feels like it's been twilight all day, and the sun is just a fuzzy reddish spot amid the haze above. My internal solar biological clock is reeling with the confusion.

It's pretty crazy how cyclical and predictable fires like these are. We had a record low rainfall this past summer, plus super hot, dry weather (several weeks of 100+ degrees here in Pasadena) - everything is just waiting for that tiny little spark. And even though the couple days of rain a few weeks ago might have lulled us into a false sense of security, the plants can't absorb the water if they're already dead (as my Global Climate professor told us in class the other day, it's like dumping water on a dead bush and then blow-drying it with those warm Santa Ana's - the bush is still going to be primed for burning). And what's remarkable is how often fires like these occur. This is the first really big fire season for me in 3 fall seasons living in SoCal, but 2003 was apparently also a big fire year, along with 1994, when fires came through Altadena and the north parts of Pasadena.

The thing is, the fires are pretty much unavoidable. The climate here is hot and dry, the Santa Ana winds are a function of the geography - they're not going to stop any time soon, and in our modern day society, there's always going to be that accidental spark source - cigarettes, electricity, etc. And its not quite the same as with flooding (which is also pretty cyclical and unavoidable) because where a fire goes (and where it starts) can be random. Pasadena was burning 13 years ago, but it's perfectly safe now (*knock on wood*). The house I'm living in right now is over 100 years old. That's 100 fire seasons.

Anyways, what this all comes down to is that I am a little jealous. My family up in the Pacific NW were just dealing with windstorms and power outages (and I'm still young enough to remember that those can be fun), while down here it was raining (lightly, but still raining) ash this afternoon while I was trying to run my team's ultimate frisbee practice. My throat felt scratchy after only an hour and a half outside. And meanwhile, my sister got to snuggle inside the house while the wind blows the cedars and the raindrops, and I'm sure when she finally went outside after the storm abated, it smelled like freshly cut evergreen branches, not like burning.

Red River Gorge Reflection

2007-10-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

This past week, after returning from the RRG, has been super busy without the normal regiment of climbing. Since we got back late Monday I had some hours to make up at work and some sleep to regain. The four days of climbing and travel took a lot out of me so I decided to take some days off from the gym to recover. I didn’t get back to the gym until Thursday and my finger was still nagging me from the trip.

For the last few weeks one of my old tendon injuries has been acting up. It doesn’t really hurt when I climb but afterwards the flesh below my knuckle is quite tender to the touch. This weekend became a rest weekend and I had some additional time to recover. I hope to write a blog later this week about injures referencing some of Lynn Hill’s recent blogs.

The lack of climbing and the recent RRG trip have given me food for thought about “hard” climbing. During our stay at Miguel’s I saw more talented climbers than I have ever seen before. It was almost like Dosage 5 or something. I have been to some bigger comps and have seen many of the stronger boulders before but this was something new and inspirational. After seeing all the climbers and reading about their many ascents at the Red I began to wonder about my personal climbing.

The beauty of having all of these talented climbs was that they were sending routes that I was familiar with. Climbs I had stood below in awe of the beauty and difficulty of the line. Not climbs I had sent or even tried but climbs that I dream about getting on. These were climbs not far away on the gorgeous cliffs of Ceuse but here in the USA in the RED!

This trip really taught me a lot about motivation, hesitation and mind set. Of the nine hard routes that I attempted I was able to send five of them. Compared to past trips to the Red I was thrilled with my level of fitness and the climbs I did. More important though were the climbs that I “failed” to lead cleanly. Even the attempts on the climbs I did send taught me a lot about what I need to be working on.

The biggest thing I learned from trying all of these hard routes was the effect of hesitation on the outcome of the climb. In simpler terms when I failed to commit to a move or sequence on a climb I would waste time. There were times when I could have done a move had I tried it first go but I was un-willing to commit. These decisions made me doubt my self and prevented me from giving the 100% needed for the climb.

While my fitness has been improving I think that figuring out how to commit and how to suppress negative thoughts will be a bigger contribution to my climbing. Climbing more routes, as opposed to boulder problems, has really shown me this weakness in my climbing.I think working on this will help me be in better touch with my self and allow me to climb harder.

Petzl Roc Trip Recap

2007-10-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Lizzy and I journeyed east to meet up with friends and enjoy the rock at the Red River Gorge. Friends from all over converged by plane and car to meet up relax and enjoy the wondrous sandstone. Good people along with an amazing film and the most stacked campground scene rounded out this fun trip.

A Wednesday night red eye from California got us into Tennessee the next morning. A 3.5 hour drive awaited us but that was the price for cheap tickets. With perfect temps we spent the afternoon at Roadside crag sampling the RRG classics before the crowds showed up.

Friday our crew had doubled and we spent the day between Left Flank and Military Wall. Climbing at the gorgeous table of colors wall was the highlight of the trip for me. Amazing colors and unique holds coupled with steep athletic climbing. Near by was the balancy test piece Hen-ry which played to Lizzy’s strengths. I got to climb Mercy the Huff which had excellent moves on sweet holds separated by fairly decent rests. No knee bars or ledges but good holds.

Saturday we saw maximum capacity with seven people by the end of the day. We had a perfect weather day at Drive-By crag which hosts some of the most fun climbing ever. It seemed each route had just as interesting holds as the last. I took my longest fall to date on a flash attempt on Primus Noctum. I cruised the route to the last bolt and rest spot but I had no beta for the crux which led to the anchor. With many grunts and desperation I slapped my way up getting one hold from the end; I missed the crucial knob and plummeted twenty or more feet through the air. On the way down I screamed with desperation but after flying through a tree and knocking loose some leaves I knew it was all right. Still falling I let out a yipp of pleasure and was gently caught by my belayer.

Sunday was our slow day as pizza and beer from the night before delayed our morning departure. We fought the crowds in Muir valley and climbed on some new routes. These routes, only having been established in the last few years, were still dirty and needed more traffic. I got a chance to lead a very atypical RRG line that I managed to redpoint on my second go. This line, so new it wasn’t in the guide book, was full of slopers and balancy moves. The end, with pumped forearms, required sequential crimping that thwarted my flash attempt. It was amazing how many lines are still left to be bolted and how much rock is still unclimbed. I was lucky enough to meet the equipper of this route and brave enough to climb it.

The trip was quite the success and full of fun memories. My mind is still buzzing with crux sequences and foot placements. I can still see the holds on Jersey Connection and Tic-Tac-Toe, feel the sharp jugs from Mercy the Huff and taste the scream from Primus Noctum. I love the Red and will always be excited to go back, no matter how far way it may be.

Resting and Redpointing

2007-10-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

This weekend was my long weekend and it involved a bunch of climbing. Training has been going well with a bit more focus on power problems and campusing. I would like to get back to some more pure endurance training but I am without a belayer.

Friday afternoon Lizzy and I struggled through traffic to get to the Riverside Quarry. Despite its less than aesthetic surroundings I am a big fan of the routes there. While many have been heavily cleaned and glued most are natural lines without chipping. As well most of the lines are quite long a minimum of 7 bolts and the longest line is 21 going for almost a full 60 meters.

Since we arrived late we only climbed a few routes. For training and for timeliness we stuck to onsight climbing and the same routes. I climbed an extension of Lizzy’s warm-up called double whammy. It had a tricky crux with a cool sloper and a powerful gaston high foot combination. This route was super typical of the quarry with mostly easier climbing to a stopper crux if you don’t commit.

The style of the routes at the quarry is very different to those we had be climbing out at echo. While both offer vertical climbing with possible hands free rests the hold consistency is very different. The quarry can have huge jugs quite close to tiny crimpers. The most constant part of the selection of holds at the quarry is that they are far apart. Echo usually has very similar hold size and type that leads to much more sustained climbs. I would find my self tired at the quarry from all the long reaches but not nearly as pumped as at echo.

Saturday I went to Rock City to take pictures of some of the guys I have been bouldering with in San Diego. It was pretty tight to get to take pictures of such a strong crew and I even got to put down the camera and climb a few problems. I probably should have warmed up a bit more and ended up tweaking one of my fingers a bit.

Sunday Lizzy and I met up with two of her friends from Caltech and went out to New Jack City. The previous time we had been out there it had been perfect weather and we got sunburned. While the sun was still shining bright we also got a nasty cold wind this weekend.

The cold and the overall fatigue from the previous days seemed to set in on my first hard climb. The warm up went well but on my first try on my weekend project I got shut down at the crux. I had yet to really figure out how to use my feet and was not sequencing it quite right. After getting through the crux I figure out the rest of the route hanging my way up and setting the draws. After coming down I was ready for rest and Lizzy had fun on a really long easy warmup.

Usually with my hard route of the weekend I hang the draws figure out the beta and then rest and send on my next go. I must have been tired from the comp and chilled since my next try went sour. I struggled clipping the second draw and couldn’t pull the crux. I took, we pulled the rope and then I rested. My next try went similarly with a struggle for the 2nd clip and then I barely made it through the first crux. I got to the next hard part and just couldn’t crimp on the last small hold. My feet were totally insecure and I was probably shaking. I hung, finished the route and cleaned all the draws.

I was totally shut down and not too happy about it. We rested for a while and then went on to some more routes. The first one was cool but I got spit off at the top which was annoying since it was at my usual onsight grade. So then we went to find something a grade easier for Lizzy to do. I botched this one too and missed the onsight and developed the full on funk.

Lizzy top roped this last route and decided it was weird and that we needed to get me smiling again. I think that I had taken my failure on my project a bit hard. I was out of whack and after dogging three routes I was out of my element. I don’t know if it was rest or the cold but I had been shaky all morning. My newly resoled shoes weren’t helping the matter and I needed to kick start my attitude.

We went back to the project and I finally sent Red Devil placing a few draws on lead. The second clip felt hard but I could actually hold on to the small crimp that was my red point crux. This helped swing my mood back to happy and the rest of the day was much more fun.

Monday I was really tired from all of the tries on Red Devil on Sunday and just pretty exhausted from the whole weekend. It wasn’t until this morning, Tuesday, that things seemed more normal.

I am excited for our trip to the RRG and will be resting today and tomorrow in prep. It is interesting as I am trying to keep pushing my self and trying to climb harder to examine how the climbs I try effect my mind set. I had been disappointed by failing to onsight climbs at echo but redpointing them second go helped with that. I guess there are always days we don’t feel quite as strong as we like and Sunday was one of those days. Rest is always key and necessary for improvement.

Quite a bit of a blog but it has been a while since I had last written. Lots of thoughts as it becomes fall and the Petzl Roc Trip approaches.

Till next time,

Luke

Circular Patterns and Onsight Climbing

2007-10-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

It’s always funny how we learn things. Some times we go out and search for answer and other times we stumble upon them.

Something like this can often happen in climbing. The crux beta may be given to us or perhaps it is obvious and it just works. Other times we must work through sequences to find the way that works for our own body.

Training will help give you more time and more possible sequences on the rock when trying to onsight a climb. Recently I have been falling off onsight attempts because I am too pumped and either unable to climb the required sequence or unable to figure it out in the time I have.

In the past month I have been out to Echo Cliffs, in the Santa Monica Mountains, twice. I have been trying to push my onsight limit and have been getting really tired on my onsight go. The next try however, after having hung the draws and found all the holds has gone quite well. I am able to milk the rest more on my second try and reach the anchors without the bulging forearms I encountered on the onsight go.

I think that since I am getting really tired on my onsights I either need to be committing faster or need to keep training endurance. On my first hard onsight attempt I committed to the wrong sequence of holds and found my self with nowhere to go. The second time I could not figure out the sequence and I couldn't last on the holds I was on. It was particularly interesting because this sequence took me a while to figure out and then on my redpoint it worked so well. It still felt a bit awkward but the movement linked together perfectly.

I learned a bunch about commitment this weekend and that you need to keep pushing since you can do amazing things if you want them enough. I thought I was going to fall at the 1st crux on my onsight but I made it through even though I had to try two different sequences before it worked.

The start of this post was about learning and how we learn funny things at different times. I was reading this article about saber tooth tigers and it mentions "coup de grace". This is the name of a Dave Graham route in Switzerland. I had wondered what it meant and I now had the opportunity to find out. Coup De Grace is the blow of death (or death blow) and seems suitable for a yet unrepeated 9a.

Dave seems to have lots of cool names for climbs that sound good even if you don’t know what the mean. A recent FA he did in Rodellar is called Los Borrachos Del Mascun which translates to The Drunkards of the Mascun. You can see a video of the FA on MomentumVM.com

That’s really all for now but ill be writing more about training later this week.

- Luke

Training, Progress, Belief

2007-09-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Climbing fitness and strength are linked, by many, to the ability to send hard routes. There is definitely something to be said when you can hang onto smaller and smaller holds. Climbing, as with most things, usually shows improvement with time. While a climber may not always improve in a linear fashion I think that things usually change for the better. Personally I find that climbing a lot and getting in the right mindset really helps.

In recent times I consider myself a fairly fit climber but I often struggle with the mental game involved in climbing. I have a hard time pushing to my limit and getting past thoughts of failure and falling. Belief in yourself and the ability to keep pushing when you might fail I feel are key to improving.

As we develop as climbers and move up through the grade ranges the routes tend to demand more from the climber. Bigger holds on slabby faces yield to crimps on a vertical wall. Jugs become slopers and foot holds become smears. This transition can be mentally difficult as a climber finds themselves holding on to progressively smaller holds. Cruxes can be harder to decipher and holds can be directional. Footwork and pressure come into play and all the while you have to keep from getting pumped. The difficulty of a route not only demands more physically but mentally as well.

I think that training in some form or another can be important to steady progress. Personally I keep track of all the routes I have climbed and have a fairly accurate picture of the last 4 years of routes I have sent. A more in depth idea is a Training Journal where one keeps a log of all workouts for future comparison. Both of these things help to keep tabs of where you are and how you are doing.

Personal evaluation is essential to taking the next step and breaking through to the next level in your climbing. Weather the goal is to send a give route or onsight a certain level knowing where you are at shows what a climber needs to work on. The types of routes that you do well on can help you figure out what you are strong in. If one wants to be an all around climber one cannot only go to the same crag and do the same routes. To really grow as a climber one must try and climb the things that are the most difficult. I found this quote fitting as many new climbers become strong boulderers yet struggle with routes.

“If you focus entirely on power based bouldering training you are asking your muscles to work 100%. You have ‘recruited’ all your muscle fibres to work in one explosive effort. The minute you go on a route you are asking your muscles to work at 70% for 10 times as long. No wonder you get pumped!” From Katherine at MoonClimbing.com

Right now I am trying to keep a large variety in the types of routes I climb outside while maintaining fitness while climbing and training inside. The biggest breakthroughs that I expect to be making in the next 6 months will be mental. In addition, I want to gain more endurance as well as learn how to push through when plagued with doubt.

Til next time,

Luke

Harrrrrrd Trad

2007-09-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind on this news, but Sonnie Trotter is at it again. Apparently he's redpointing another contender for one of the world's hardest trad climbs, The Path, at 5.14R. Like the East Face of the Monkey Face in Smith Rock, The Path was originally bolted. Sonnie, however, lead it as a trad route. You can watch the video here.

Those who know me know that Sonnie is not necessarily my most favorite climber, especially for scooping the cutest Swiss climber that ever did be on the Cobra (and not even doing it ground-up). (Really, who could prefer Sonnie and his too-cool backwards baseball hat to Didier and his "zis is not ze crux" middle finger undercling jam?) However, I can overcome my dislike to make a general statement about the current trad scene - wow!

The new cool thing (other than bouldering in RMNP or emulating Sharma) seems to be hard trad climbing. It's not just the Canadians (Sonnie) or the Euros (Didier, among others); Americans are in on the action too. Climbers like Eric Decaria, Matt Segal, and Renan Ozturk are pushing the limits of trad climbing beyond what previous generations might have considered possible. They're taking skills and movements learned from sport climbing and applying it to trad. They're making bolts obsolete. And I think that's pretty damn cool.

It's great (especially for a traddie like me) to see trad back at the leading edge of the climbing world and it's beyond impressive to know that there are climbers out there who are pushing the limits of possibility without all the sponsor-plastered, rappel-placed, pre-placed draws.

In other news, Mountain Hardwear is sponsoring a contest for awesome, outdoorsy women called Diva and Conquer. You can read the entries so far or enter yourself or a friend (with permission). There are also special Ladies' nights at local stores carrying Mountain Hardwear products with special deals, special guests, and gear giveaways. Sounds cool, so check it out!

So get out and climb some trad! (Or clip some bolts to prepare to send some trad)

Movement and Flow

2007-09-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

As I have been climbing more freqently I have really began to think about how we climb. I am an active reader of all things climbing and I love watching videos of the pros. It is quite fascinating to see how they move over the rock and how impossible looking routes get sent with ease.

My current infusion of climbing info has been coming from the multitude of blogs that I have found around the web. Instead of having to wait to see an ascent feature in Climbing or Rock and Ice I can read about it first hand. No longer does a DVD have to come out for there to be footage of the hardest sends. All of this information is much more easily accessible and I am loving it.

I have been reading Lynn Hill’s blog and she recently had a great entry about Flow . It coupled with recent climbing outings has made me really think about how we move over rock.

This past weekend I was out at New Jack City and got destroyed by one route by my style. Decent climbing fitness and strength allows me to power through routes when I should be thinking more about moving my body. I struggled on an initial boulder problem of a route many grades below my usual onsight limit. I got confused, pumped and I fell. The second time I got through this cruxy section but without much more technique. I made a sequence and grunted through it wasting much energy.

On comes my girlfriend who shows me a thing or two and sails through this beginning section. She used more feet and less power and had a much easier time with the route.

When I climb at the gym as many climbers do I think we forget that you don’t have to be square. Using feet out to the side and leaning and pulling with your body can be very effective. Strength can help with bigger moves and core tension but I forget to “train” technique.

I think that the biggest problem I face when confronted with irregular movement is how to properly assess the forces and apply the right pressures. I think what this all comes back to is move repertoire. Climbing more routes, especially with funky sequences can really help expand your mind. I think that believing in your movement and proper evaluation of your options can lead to climbing crux sequences more easily.

Cross-training

2007-09-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

Despite the ridiculous (rainy!) weather in the general SoCal area this weekend, we managed to get some rock climbing in on Sunday at New Jack City. The weather was perfect - not too hot, but nice and sunny with a little wind and the routes were in general cool and thought provoking.

I was really excited to be pushing my sport climbing limits on lead, redpointing a 10d/11a on the first try and getting very close to a crimpy 11a on several tries, although I still need to return and send it. It's been great to start climbing routes again after so much bouldering this summer because I've really started to feel that there is a lot I can gain in my trad climbing from becoming a better sport climber - the climbing version of cross-training.

I've realized that a big reason that I struggle to push my limits when trad climbing is that I don't believe enough in my ability to not fall - I freak out when I think I need to place gear from a "bad" stance, I take a long time to commit to difficult moves (and tire myself out while doing so), and I am sometimes easily intimidated by a route. I'm beginning to realize that all these issues are problems that I can work on through sport climbing.

Clipping bolts gives me the opportunity to practice clipping quickly and from less-than-ideal stances or holds, which I think will help me realize that I can place protection quickly, safely, and efficiently while trad climbing even if I don't have a great stance or a bomber handjam to do it from. I think these skills would be especially helpful somewhere like Indian Creek, where protection is barely more challenging than clipping a bolt since the placements are so straightforward. To be able to still place pro from a sub-optimal jam would be an invaluable skill.

Sport climbing is also helping me realize that I need to commit to moves instead of wasting time and getting pumped. On the 11a I was working on this weekend, I kept falling at the crux, which involved a few moves off very crappy crimpy holds near the top of the route, because I had trouble committing to a long, balancey move below the crux and was getting too pumped to hold onto the small holds above. Every time I rested below the crux, I could pull the move fairly easily on the first try. I've realized that I need to focus on memorizing and committing to the lower moves so that I have enough energy left for the crux. I'm pretty sure that if I work on this skill through sport climbing I will see a big improvement in my trad climbing, too.

And finally, I think I can also work on my problems with intimidation through sport routes. I often can get psyched out by a route from the ground, resulting in low self-confidence that definitely affects my performance. Sport climbs, for me, are an easier way to approach intimidating scenarios like big moves, overhangs, or difficult grades because bolts seem to require less commitment than gear placement. I'm already learning to take on more challenging routes and have a positive and open attitude towards the route instead of worrying about falling or succeeding (and getting intimidated).

Anyone who knew me a couple years ago probably knows that I used to want to climb only trad routes and turn up my nose at other kinds of climbing, but I've lost that attitude recently. A lot of skills from bouldering and (especially) sport climbing are very applicable to trad climbing and all the best trad climbers also climb fairly difficult sport routes. Overall, I'm actually really excited to keep clipping bolts and pushing my limits because I feel like I'm gaining a lot of valuable skills, especially by stepping out of whatever rut I may be in with my trad climbing.

lizzy

all about the karakoram

2007-09-14T07:59:00.001-07:00

It often seems like the mystical realm of "mountaineering" is so far removed from the rest of rock climbing. But that's not to say that those massive snow-covered mountains don't hold an enormous allure even if you (like me) don't really want to trudge up them.

And what mountain is more alluring, mysterious, or frightening than K2, the crown jewel of the Karakoram range. But really, what is the Karakoram range?

Well, you asked for it, so here it is: all about the Karakoram range, which is mostly in Pakistan, but also extends into China and India. Like the Himalayas, the Karakoram was formed when India collided into the Asian continent, which is why these 2 ranges have many of the highest mountains on the planet, none of them volcanoes as we are so used to finding on the Pacific Rim.

K2 is the tallest peak in the Karakoram and the 2nd tallest on the planet at 8,611m, followed by Gasherbrum I at 8,068m and Broad Peak at 8,047m. Other notable peaks in the range include Gasherbrums II, III, and IV, Masherbrum, and Chogolisa.

Why K2? It was the 2nd peak discovered in the Karakoram by a group of explorers (pretty unoriginal, right?). Other mountains were initially called K1, K3, K4, and K5, but are now known as Masherbrum, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum II, and Gasherbrum I. The Chinese government still calls K2 Qogir, a name derived from a word created by Westerners from the local Balti words for "high" and "mountain."

K2 was not summited until 1954, when an Italian expedition, including a young Walter Bonatti, succeeded in getting two of its members to the top, while Bonatti and a local porter were forced to spend a night unprotected at extreme altitude. A second ascent was not achieved until 1977, when a Japanese team employed 1500 porters to reach the top. The following year, a strong American team led by James Whittaker reached the summit via a new route, the East Ridge. Although K2 has been summited successfully many times since then, it has earned a reputation as the world's most dangerous mountain. The weather is much worse than that on Everest and the easiest route is much more challenging and dangerous than its Everest equivalent. Ten times more people have climbed Everest than K2, while only 4 times more people have died on the big E than on the Savage Mountain. No wonder Ed Viesturs was more concerned about K2 than any other 8,000-meter peak.

Many thanks to Wikipedia for statistics and background info.

Enjoy

lizzy