Vid - Fred Nicole

From prana and Chuck Fryberger comes a short, thoughtful vid on the bouldering legend, Fred Nicole. For once, someone with even bigger forearms than that Sharma guy. More seriously, FN has been a bouldering pioneer with serious FA's all over the world for many, many years. Hopefully we'll see more like him someday.


I first saw this vid over at Jamie Emerson's site.

Jackson Falls/The Holies - Day Trip, Dec 2009

So I'm looking at the weather for New Years weekend, and it sucks. Highs are only in the 20's. I've tried climbing in the low 30's and that was a challenge. I think climbing in 20 degree temps is not exactly ideal. Arkansas is the same as So Ill... but HP40 is in the low 40's, which might be good, but is further than we wanted to travel. Unsure what to do.

In other news, Joey K of Team Tuesday is headed up for a brief visit, so we're looking forward to his arrival and heading out for some local climbing while he's around.

Here's a video of Topher's send of Bagpiper V5 at the Falls. Bagpiper has the distinction of being the first boulder problem put up at the Falls (correct me anyone?) and is on the side of the Yosemite Slab Boulder. It's a bit tall at the top. I apologize for the grainy quality, but I didn't realize the camera was at such a low setting. Props to Topher for the only send of the day and for the novel way of warming up his fingers. ;)

From Jackson Falls bouldering 12-7-09

From Jackson Falls bouldering 12-7-09

We messed around on THC V3, which Steve posted in the vid below, then worked on OBD V6, which seems quite difficult. I could do most of the moves and just need a little more work on the transition in the middle before topping out. Here are some pics.

The following weekend, which is last weekend (Dec 20), Steve, Topher, Chad and I headed to the Holies and did some climbing there. We variously repeated and worked on Shadow of a Man V5 and then tried Trillium (sp?) V7 while Topher and Steve worked Jungle Book V8.

I've posted about JB before, and it's a cool problem but my hamstring prevents me from even trying that. Trillium starts with two sloper-pinches and a shoulder level right-heel/toe cam. You bump your right had to a sloper, bump again to a small crimp, then set your left foot and pop your left hand to a decent crimp (couldn't do that move). Steve/Topher did that move nicely. With your right foot still wedged, you then pull hard and go right-handed to what looks like a pretty crappy sloper, then fight your way to the top. None of us managed to latch onto the sloper, so it remains a project. Tough moves and it's nice to have good spotters so you don't biff your head because your foot is stuck. I don't have pics, as the video we took came out pretty grainy. Maybe Steve can salvage something from it.

Finally - there's a trip to One Horse Gap we took a few weekends ago, but that was a rained out disaster. Gotta have one of those every now and then.

From One Horse Gap 12-14-09

While we couldn't climb much because everything was wet, it was impressive to see the amount of boulders and the sheer size of some of them at OHG. Some of the rock is chossy, but with some cleaning and some work, there are lots of problems to establish. Here are some pics from that trip - we ended up working on Drop Zone V6 for a while.

Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all our friends and family as 2009 draws to a close. May the new year be full of new and wonderful climbing memories. Climb safe!

Vid - From Jackson Falls

This is from a couple weekends ago. Big Steve Xu put together a quick video. Thanks Steve!

Forearms

There's been a lot of info about Sharma's latest sends in Spain. Congrats. For your review, I post this picture (linked from pranablog). Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?


Also, I'll have a couple TR's posted soon on some recent bouldering trips. Yesterday was pretty friggin' cold.

Vid - Falls at the Red

From Spencer Victory, prolific climbing vid producer. They call it climbing porn. :)

Vid - Paradise Lost, .13b

From James Zanoni, a class project on a RRG classic:

Just Do It from James Zanoni on Vimeo.

Pretty cool. Here's the thread that led me to it.

NYTimes - performance is better later in the day?

This NYtimes article is interesting; it seems to indicate that performance is higher and more efficient in the late afternoon/evening.

"And not only are performances better in the late afternoon and early evening, but, contrary to what exercise physiologists would predict, heart rates are also higher for the same effort."

It seems intuitive to me; that is, I definitely feel more sluggish in the morning than in the evening when working out.There are a couple variables: 1. it only really applies to people who work out regularly and 2. it's unclear if it applies to anaerobic activity (e.g. climbing).

Anyone have clear experience with this and notice that you tend to send harder later in the day? It might be difficult to assess this notion since people tend to climb all day on trips, making late day climbing just more tired climbing.

HCR - Thanksgiving Weekend 2009

Climbers - Josh, Leigh, Morgan, John, Jaime, Conor, Angie & Calvin
Weather - Really, it's November

From

Thanksgiving weekend was a blast. We headed down on Friday morning early and met up with the Krefts and Wilsons to get some holiday climbing in. A 5am start landed us at HCR around 10:30am, and we were on the walls around 11am at the Cliffs of Insanity, by the Roman Wall. There, we climbed some warmups 5.6's and 5.8's with the Wilsons and their extended family visiting from Louisiana. After warming up a little, we headed over to Magoo Rock to sample some of the climbs we hadn't tried before.

Mad props to Jaime for flashing a 5.9+ and .10b on her first outdoor trip, both on lead. Also big props to Josh (aka Big Sexy Daddy, or "BSD") for flashing an .11a on Magoo. All the routes were great fun, although the .11a was more of a short crux; the .10b was more fun and required varied climbing using sidepulls and stemming.

Here's Angie on the 5.9+:

From HCR 11-28-09

We headed down to get comfy in a cabin with daylight failing around 4:45pm, had a couple beers with dinner (thanks again to the Wilson family!) and headed back out to do some nighttime bouldering at the South Idahos. Angie, Josh, John and I climbed on some V1 to V3's, including Crescent, which had thwarted me on the last trip. Topping out in the dark felt a little scary. :)

Day 2 was a bouldering day at the North Forty. We started by the Warmup boulder doing various problems before heading over to the Honeycomb boulder. This boulder has a series of good face problems with a decently high and slopey topout to make you thankful for spotters.

From HCR 11-28-09

At the HC boulder, the quote of the day is attributed to Jaime. John and Jaime worked on the left-most V3 (name?), figuring out beta and trading burns. After John got the send, Jaime immediately said, "Well, I'm not going to be shown up by my husband" and promptly threw down the problem. First V3 outdoors too! Nice job. :)

I sent a V4 two problems to the right of that problem on the same boulder, then looked towards the Leatherface boulder for a good try on the namesake problem, V7. I'd tried this several times on my last trip and felt reasonably sure I could get the send, but it was not to be. I ended up getting very close to making the last crux move and linked it from the middle a few different times, but couldn't pull it off. John & Jaime even tried to motivate me by telling me Big Steve Xu had crushed the problem (not going to let some kid show you up, are you?), but even that wasn't enough to get me up the boulder. Heh.

Around mid-day, we had to say good-bye to the Krefts. The Wilsons had left that morning to return to St. Louis because of a prior commitment, so it was just Angie and I. Angie was saving skin for the next day and I was wrecked, so we called it an early day.

We awoke to a gloomy Day 3 and hurriedly packed the car fearing rain would shorten our day. Angie had never done the routes at the North 40, so we had a good time running up a 5.7, 5.8, another 5.8 and a 5.10a to the left of Crimp Scampi (name eludes me). Angie did a great job with the send of the .10a second go. I had spied a V5/5.12a/b 30 foot route on the backside of the Warmup Boulder and took a recon burn on that. The V5 has apparently been solo'd several times by intrepid boulderers, but it's a full 35 feet tall with the crux at the very top. I fell at the very end on my second go (roped up), and that would be a very scary move to pull that high up. The fall would almost certainly result in a hospital trip (or worse) because of a large tree directly in the fall zone.

We had to get back to St. Louis early, so we packed it up and called it a day. Nice weekend trip. Here are the rest of the pics.

A Conversation Between Thom and Calvin

From the depths of the depraved mind we call Joey Kreidel (Team Tuesday)... note that Thommy is the one in the skirt. And I somehow have a mustache. Nevermind, it's all about the conversation, right?

The Spot - Vid from some locals

Well, somewhat locals. Aaron's moved back to Cincy now. You may have seen this already, but here's some cool shots of Peter Hill and Aaron Schneider, a local strong kid sending V4-6 and working a V10 at the Spot, So Ill. Got this from Schneider's FB page.

The Roost - Nov 22, 2009 - UPDATED 12-4

Climbers - Topher, Chad, Dave & Calvin
Weather - is it really November?

Here are the rest of the pics. See the new video below. Sorry, no vid of the send - I missed it.

A couple of weeks ago, we headed down to the Falls to do some bouldering at the Roost. I'd been hearing about this spot for a few years, but never got the chance to go. The Roost is a series of small cliff lines jutting out, with few stand alone boulders. This makes some of the topouts susceptible to runoff and dirt accumulation, but the climbing was very fun. I suspect a little cleaning will go a long way.

Warming up was a little hard; the easiest problem we tried was a V3 with a powerful pocket move, but we made do and had great fun. After warming up a little, we met Eric and Greg (or Graham?) - Eric we'd met on a prior trip to the Beach and Greg was cleaning a new problem to the left of the Oriole.

The Oriole V5 is a stand start off two good underclings, to a decent sloper-pinch and a fun topout. The first move is the crux, then it eases considerably. Hard to grade such problems, but V5 sounds good to me. Eric was working on the sit-start that Jason Kehl had put up a while ago. The sit goes at V9 (apparently) and involves falling into an awkward sidepull pinch, pulling through and standing into the right undercling that is the standstart of Oriole.

Here's a vid of Chad working and sending Oriole (nice job!):

The Oriole V5/3 from Chad Tenbroek on Vimeo.

Afterwards, we climbed Cold Turkey V2?, the new problem Greg had just cleaned and climbed and moved to the right into Redneck Swing V5. Not in the book, and not sure if that's the real name, but we have some video to post of it so if you know the real name, let me know. Here's the vid:

Redneck Swing (Really Harvest Swing) V5 from Calvin Hwang on Vimeo.

We got excited about trying Eternal Sunshine V8/9 after that. ES has a really stout side-pull start leading into decent slopers, heel-hooking and using these uber-fun undercling pinches. The crux is falling into the last undercling pinch and controlling the swing into a long move out right. Then topping out is no easy matter either. I couldn't pull the crux at all. Topher did a good job launching for the hold, but no dice.

We finished out the day on a V4 that is the stoutest V4 I've worked in a while. Name anyone? Definitely hard to do at the end of the day, but quality.

I left thinking it was too bad some of the topouts were so dirty, but that also made me think I could contribute a bit of time helping to keep some of the boulders cleaner. I sometimes take climbs for granted and it was good to see the amount of work necessary to make climbing good problems a reality for others. More pics to come.

Last weekend was a trip to HCR; I'll post pics and a TR later.