Bouldering at HCR (& the 24HHH comp)

Climbers - Yusuf, Chad and Calvin
Weather - fantastic


In other news being posted around the web, the 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell 2009 edition has come and gone. Congrats to all the participants and thanks to all the volunteers (I guess I'm thanking myself). This is Jon & Russell, who both did great at the comp:

I had a good time volunteering and want to compliment Andy Chasteen and Beka especially for putting on a great event and staying up to make sure it ran smoothly. By the way, the new Arkansas guidebook by Cole Fennel is just fantastic. I got the chance to look through one and highly recommend it. I'm going to buy one soon and hopefully go to some other areas I had no clue existed (maybe the locals won't be so happy about the book).

We arrived a day early on Thursday night and decided to get some bouldering in. Friday morning started as a brilliantly blue day and we made the most of it. I even got to break my streak of bad climbing weather (finally!). We started at the South Idahos, and my lack of a climbing book is going to hinder me, but we started at the big boulder which I'll call the Dig Dug boulder, for lack of a better name.

The far right holds a warmup V1, the far left a warmup V2. To the left of the V1 is a V3. Here's Chad working on it:


To the right of the V2 (this is on the left side of the boulder), is Dig Dug, a "classic" V4. DD is very fun and I enjoyed it. We tried a couple variations and V4 seemed right on. Afterwards, we moved on to War Bonnet V5, which is a great problem. I heard War Bonnet used to be V4, but the new guide has it at V5. I'm shitty at grading, so either seems right to me. Yusuf and I sent this after working out some beta (go left? go right? try both?). It has a nice overhanging crimpy start, with a strong move to some good slopers and has a satisfying topout. We then tried Crescent, a tricky slab V3. Noone got an ascent and we all blamed the weather. Works for me. Yusuf found a cool variation starting from the right of Crescent and leading into the big sidepull; also no sends, and seems about the same grade. Anyone try it? Yusuf on Crescent:


From there, we did a very nice V2 just down from Crescent; it starts low on crimps and has a couple long moves - the holds almost look manufactured they are so nice! I don't know the name of this one either, sorry. From there, we looked around for some climbs and decided on the Idahos. We had trouble identifying the climbs and did a weird V4 variation to what we thought was a V7, then did the standstart on Moondye V5 on the left side of the boulder. The full Moondye is V9 and looks cool but incredibly difficult. The standstart alone took Yusuf multiple tries to send (no sending from moi) and involves some compression moves on sidepull crimps. Whenever I think a gym problem is too weird, I always have to remind myself that problems like Moondye also exist outdoors.

That pretty much ended the day. Saturday morning found us at the North Forty. We started at the Warmup boulder on a highball V0, which was fun but a bit scary. After that was the Tang (?) boulder, home to Orb Weaver V7. Described as solid for the grade, OW starts on a layback flake, moves right into a crimpy undercling, and requires a strong core and good footwork to traverse right into tough crimps before topping out. I got to the undercling but couldn't make it past into the crimps. Yusuf fell going into the crimps multiple times. Tough but very cool. We tried a V2 warmup variation to the left and Yusuf worked on some heinous compression problem with bad slopers to the right along with some dudes already there. We had full sunlight by then, and that made it hard to stick some holds.

I talked Chad and Yusuf into going to the Leatherface boulder (I it has another name) where I hopped on the V4 and then worked on Leatherface. Me on Leatherface V7:


Leatherface is a horizontal crimp climb that demands good footwork and some dynamic movement. I pieced all the moves together and made a valiant effort on my one send attempt, but didn't have time to try again before needing to leave for my first volunteer shift that night. Fracknabit!! It'll wait for a return trip. Yusuf finished by working on the Honeycomb Traverse V6 - which is quite long and we called it a day.

After watching and interacting with several climbers from other states (I even met some from the DC area), I think I'm getting the itch to try the comp again next year. We'll see. The rest of the pics are here.