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.