Moab Day Two: The day of Laughingness

Day two dawned cloudless, sunny, and psyche filled. The photo below is just a random sample of the excitement felt amongst the crew.

Diggs, Asher, Flann, Elizabeth, and Alexis all showed up in the early morning and after some coffee and breakfast were READY FOR SENDING!!!

We started out at the Black Top boulder for warming up and then headed down to the silly wabbit arete where a few battles occurred...

This thing is definitely not V3, but it saw quite a few sends from the crew anyway.

From there it was on to Circus Trick where the girl squad had strong showings. Here, the Flannimal is rehabilitating that finger in STYLE.

Asher and I got interested in the Phantom Fighter Dyno, but really just did a bunch of rock jumping-off. Not sending.

Red point of the trip for me was probably balanced stick brush to single flip to balanced stick brush. Proud.

As circus trick wound down, Elizabeth Flashed Split decision. NICE!

We decided the day wasn't quite over yet, and all headed over to the Basketball Diaries boulder. Below is Alexis sending the slopey goodness of the boulder's namesake line.

This was old business for Rich who did the crux 3 FREAKING TIMES in the SAME BURN before sticking the jug and pulling through to the topout! Hard Fought Send!

Unfortunately, "Army of Darkness" was covered in snow, so my proj was off the list. IHowever, as I brushed snow off the top hoping for a dry topout the following day, Asher became interested in the V10 extension to Basketball Diaries called "Return of the Jedi". Lots of try hard yielded no sends unfortunately.

Once we were all tired and satisfied with our day we gave in to our growling stomachs and headed back to camp and town for food.

End Day Two. Up next, day three. The day of sendingness.

Moab Day One. The day of Soggyness

Ahhhhh Moab. The land of milk and honey. Shangri-La. The chosen place... FOR OUR ROCKING WINTER CLIMBING SHENANIGANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Friday, Feb 12 two goofs pile into a Subaru and head for Utah. These goofs are set on climbing pebbles. Big ones. And they are set on doing this in Moab.

Rich and I arrived in Big Bend around 3 and decided camp could wait. There were rocks to be climbed! We warmed up, and then messed with Blankity Blank and it's arete brother.

Sends were enjoyed, and it was a good opening to the trip. However, Rich made a HUGE sacrifice. He threw his pad in the puddle so that we could climb those lines.

We also got on Chaos and started messing with different beta for hopes of mid-trip sends.

This ended up to be a running joke for the trip. (yes, that is Rich attempting to remove mud from his crash pad using an ice scraper...and it worked!) Once camp (creepy) was set, we headed to town for dinner and called fool-faces who were en-route for the weekend.

Diggs, and the Shay-Nimmerow mutants (Flan and Asher) showed up that evening and enjoyed swapping stories and ribbings by the fire.

So yea... That's it. End of Day one. How can I have a climbing post with only one shot of climbing in it you might ask?

Easy. I'm saving all the Gnar for the future posts. Here's a preview:

Rich has clearly had too much coffee, and me... NOT ENOUGH.

Even though I started the day on the slow train, more climbers arrived in the night, and some seriously fun times ensued the following morning.

Exhibit A:

Oh yes. The climbing went down. Just wait. You'll see.

P.S. That makes TWO climbing shots for the post. (LOOK OUT!)

Photos by Situner and Diggs

Remember Berthoud and Buddah Caves?

Well, guess what? They're still there!

This past Saturday, I had the great pleasure of sneaking out of work early and heading up to everyone's favorite choss pile; Castlewood Canyon! I met up with Shawn, Alexis, and Elizabeth who all had psyche levels running high, and their game faces on! We warmed up at Buddha cave with everyone making quick ascents of the usual. EVERYONE flashed Buddha. PROUD.

Elizabeth make quick work of Phillips Problem V4 and Alexis worked moves on a tougher variation while Shawn and I messed with an obscure v5.

From there, it was up to Berthoud Canal. Alexis was making good progress, and Elizabeth came EXTREMELY close to sticking the big move on link.

When I say EXTREMELY, I mean she was all over it but couldn't contain that crazy swing. She'll be sending next time for sure!

We also messed with After Berthoud V8, and Placenta V6 with Shawn pulling a nice last go send of the latter. The rest of us pulled roof moves until we were totally wiped out.

Nice job Shawn!

I pulled down on an old project (Berthoud Hips) but by the time Beta was remembered, the core was giving up.

Ahh well. Id be psyched to go back sometime soon! I like berthoud a lot and it was a beautiful session of T-Shirt climbing in the middle of winter. PSYCHED!!!

Speaking of excitement...This weekend is MOAB!!!!!! We leave tomorrow morning, and climb through early next week! All are invited and all will enjoy. Hope to see you out there!

Yay Eldo!

Sunshine, smiles and sends perfectly describe this past Saturday which I had the pleasure of spending at Eldorado Canyon with a psyched group of new and old friends.

We all warmed up at the Gill block and had a great time playing on the non-snowy front side. Elizabeth pulled out a "soaked topout" ascent of the back-side V5 which was awesome to watch. NICE!

Ben Elkon played a bit with "606" but found that the holds felt like gummy bears. (except for the part where they are tearing at his fingers) We decided a change of boulder was in order.

My project for the day was "Resonated". Ben and Rich were also psyched, so we rolled down to the stream bed to try this problem while the iced over landing was still solid.

Ben sent this rig in a single session and in COMPLETE control. Very cool and fun to watch.

It was my second day on the problem and though I struggled to remember beta intricacies at first, I was able to ride Ben's send-train and thrutch through all the moves.

I'm REALLY psyched to have finished this problem, and especially with the amped crew that was around.

After the sun was going down, we decided to go support TJ on a rad project in the canyon. Unfortunately, it required an epic Ice-Bridge river crossing, some serious postholing in talus, and a good attitude to stay psyched.

TJ climbed strong, which was awesome (no pictures due to spoting duties... sorry) and then Elizabeth and I tried a V4 / V15 on the same boulder. Her hands were too cold to feel the holds, and my feet too cold to tell if they were solid or not, so we decided it was time to call it a day.

Thanks to everyone who came out and was psyched this weekend! I had a great time!
Also: Moab climbing trip coming soon, and media to follow. EVERYONE IS INVITED, and should come!

First photo and photos of "Resonated" courtesy of Elizabeth.