I Feel Oldish

Good weekend. Good one. By the way I'm not sure if I posted this little tidbit up or not. Katie has a partially collapsed right lung so any bitching and moaning on my part is to be taken with a grain of salt as I'm weaksauce compared to her.

First we went to Steinke on Saturday. Radness ensued. RV and I did a couple of warmups and a cool V4. Called it "Dodge the Choss". We figure V3/4.

HAH!

Honestly it's probably V4 and actually cool and fun to do. It may have been done before. Chances are it has but oh well, the name fits and it was fun. Plus we got to see RV get all scared on the topout and mutter "I'm not done yet Steve". Always ALWAYS fun.

After that we tried in vain to move the big boulder under the project before moving on to another new face.

Just left of Good Grief is a cool looking slabby face. It's full on pitiful looking features and we hopped on it. You start on a big break and go up to a good sidepull before making an interesting move up to a crimp that is just far too small. Full on dime edge.

It took us a bit of time to commit to the move but pretty soon I'd hiked my left foot and rocked onto the scary looking jug. I sat there for a couple minutes before eventually hopping down. The next few moves didn't look super hard, just insecure and I wasn't really feeling the mojo that day. Will come back for you sir.

On Sunday RV and I made a quick trip up to the Greatest Show to throw a rope down. I rapped off first and recleaned everything. It looks great right now. Like really great. People should get on it. It's the best its been in years.

I hopped off and as I was pulling my shoes on I felt a slight twinge in my back. Fuck. Knowing I'd be crippled in a couple hours we started sussing out the bottom moves. I had one great go where everything felt great. It was awesome. Sadly I hopped off somewhat elated and then couldn't get it together again. Oh well.

RV did well though and made it to the crux before jumping off. Fun.

I got back on the rope which ended up really pissing off my back, and went about sussing out the upper moves.

After a few minutes I was getting closer to the loaf of a hold in the upper hueco. Getting up into the position, while a bit gut wrenching, wasn't too horrible. Eventually I figured out just how hard to squeeze and stuck the throw. The next couple moves weren't too bad and a sagged onto the rope once more.

The first crux isn't horrible. It's hard and VERY physical, but not horrible. The topout will be HORRIFYING!!

There was some murmuring on the interwebz that Nic didn't do the true Greatest Show. Who fucking cares. He did the line that made the most sense to him and I don't blame him. While I was up on the rope I was able to get two fingers into the upper pod marking the second crux. Once you get that you get a bit locked in and I didn't play around on that too much. I'll do that next time.

I really don't think people understand just how serious that upper crux is. It's insecure, tall and the fall would be kinda awkward. Climb safe out there peeps and don't be fucking dumb.

There's my piece.

RV got on after me and after 10-15 minutes was able to stick the first crux as well. Eventually the pain and embarrassment of being back in a harness got to him and he came down.

Here are some pictures.






After we packed up we went over to Beautiful Soup where I dropped a rope on Keymaker and quickly realized how tired I was when the holds felt horribly small. Oh well.

I did end up getting some cool pics of RV on Beautiful Soup. Check em.





Not sure what's up with the last pic but it's being difficult. Oh well.

As of last night my back was f-ing destroyed! Sucks!! Feels a little better today but still damn rough.

I'm pretty embarrassed that I threw out my back putting my shoes on. Damn.