Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Bouldering!

Well, it has certainly been a while since I posted last.  For all two of you out there that noticed, my appologies.  Jess and I have been getting out to climb quite a bit no thanks to all the rain we've been getting.  Lately, with the colder temeratures and the threat of rain pretty much every day, we've been doing some bouldering, which is not our typical routine.

A few weeks ago we headed down to Cody, WY to check out the bouldering there.  We had a really good time and climbed a lot of great problems.  I was able to tick off a couple of V9s at the Antelope Boulder, but the highlight of the trip was sending a V5 on the UFO boulder.  A normal strong-guy boulderer could have pulled hard off the starting holds and tossed for the lip and topped out.  I however am not a strong-guy boulderer, so my sequence involved tossing my foot up first, matching with a double toe hook and THEN bringing my hand up.  Super weird and super fun!

On Friday, I headed out to Whiskey for a little solo session.  I was able to finish a crimpy traverse problem on the Wave boulder that has taken me forever and then I moved on to the Green Monster (V9).  I've put a few days in on this thing so I wanted to see if I could finish it off.  After a little while, I managed to finally stick the crux and finish it off.  I am really psyched to have done that problem, it's classic!  Jess and I went out to Whiskey Saturday as well and had a good time.  Jess did a V4 on the Wave boulder and came really close to doing Opiate of the Masses (V4) on the Pope's boulder.

On Memorial Day, we decided to brave the horrible weather and see if we could get any climbing in at Yankee Jim.  Most everything was wet, so we got pretty shut down, but I was able to climb Sir Moves a Lot (V4) and the variation to the sit start to Way Out (V6).  The variation to the sit involves starting on a sloper for your left hand rather than an undercling.  The difference is pretty minimal, but the undercling way felt utterly impossible, while the variation wasn't so bad.  Funny how one slight difference for one hand can add two whole number grades.  I decided to mess around with shooting some video, so here is a quick one I put together.