Exploring

Man, I kinda hate exploring at the lake. Maybe a Love/Hate deal is more appropriate than just a strictly hate based relationship.

All too often you find nothing. You go out with all the intentions of finding something cool and instead you find nothing worthwhile.

You find this...


Or this...


Both of which would probably be fine little problems, but neither was that tall or proud. In fact I could reach the lip of both.

Then you walk up the hill a bit and see something like this...


Which would be pretty great if it were another 10 feet tall or so.

The whole time you see something down the hill that you seem to be rotating around. It may look like this from above...


Instead of dropping back into the talus field you go up and see something like this...


Which would be nice if it had a few more/less holds.

You walk a bit further and see a reasonably cool bluff line that could hold a reasonable amount of problems, but don't see anything spectacular.

As the sun gets ready to drop below the tree line you drop back into the talus and decide to exit the field by going up, instead of going down the way you came in. After walking over 5 or so boulders you stop, turn around and look back once more at that slab you saw from above, wondering if it's worth the walk. It never is at the lake. It's never, ever worth it.

Inevitably you walk up to the boulder and it's 6 feet tall and a total heartbreaker. Or there's a roof without a start hold. Or it's completely devoid of footholds.

As you stand there looking at the boulder that you know in the pit of your stomach isn't worth it, you reverse course and start walking towards it. You'll never know if you don't check it out at some point.

99 times out of 100 it's a complete, utter disappointment.

Yesterday was day 100 for me.

As I walked up to the boulder I saw this incredible face over a backbreaker of a landing.

At first I was a bit disappointed. The boulder is huge but the landing is terrible. The I walked to the other side and saw this...


The cave goes about 7-10 feet deep and would climb up really cool features over a very manageable landing. I don't want to overhype it, but this one is extremely cool and is a very easy approach. One of the better talus boulders I've seen at the lake.

Then I walked downhill and saw this, which looks really cool...


Then I went down the hill to another boulder I'd spied but thought nothing of. As I got closer though...





This one looks climbable on 3 of the 4 sides and could have a number of fairly cool lines. Another gem in the field.

And not too far away from that one were the twins...


Which look to have a bunch of potential problems on them. As with the others, no clue if they have anything hard on them but even if they don't, they're all tightly clustered and it could be a phenomenal moderate area. The setting is incredible and there's a huge field full of potential lying directly above it!


I'm gonna see how many times I can take pictures of the shanty town.