Weekend Recap

So that was a nice little weekend. It's pretty rare that I get out three times in a weekend but the past few days just kinda worked out perfectly that way.

On Friday I went up to the big slanting talus field that I'd explored a few weeks back and messed around on a couple of things. Definitely would like a few more pads for some of the dicier landings but it seems like it has a bit of potential. The rock quality on the Twin boulders is astoundingly good and there should be a handful of potential new problems in the area. I did a cool slab that climbs up the left twin.

It was great being able to get out of town around 3:30 or so and still have enough light to have some fun and climb some rocks. I timed it perfectly and got to the railroad tracks just in time to hike out in the dark.

On Saturday I met up with Brian and we had a great, tiring day. We'll just ignore our ill fated warm up attempt at Rail Gun and start with Brian trying Fat Pants. Despite what you see in the video below, he did come extremely close to doing the problem and has said he wants to come back.

While we were over there I played around on Ivory Face for a bit and while it's very cool I don't think it's anything that I'd ever put an enormous amount of time into. That's not saying anything at all about it's quality, by the way. The holds are cool, the landing is good, it has an obvious start. It's just tough to excited about a 2-3 move dead vert crimping problem. I will say that the two left hand crimps were much better than I thought they'd be.

Brian did take some apparently cool pictures of me on it. Excited to see those at some point.

After Fat Pants we hiked over to Bulbous to give that one a whirl. Our first tries were ill fated and resulted in very little progress. Then Brian stepped up and figured out the toe hook beta that I think Ian also used when he did the line last summer. All of a sudden each of us had stuck the moves and the energy was totally different. I tried the topout once to make sure the mantle felt alright, which it did, and Brian made fun of me for trying to not be a punt.

Brian gave it one try from the start, made it to the end and fell off the mantle. After trying the mantle once he very quickly sent the problem next try. Unfortunately I could not follow suit and even though I had the bottom on lockdown I fell on the last move twice (anyone want to go up on Thursday afternoon?!? Around 3:30 or 4???). The last time left me completely gutted so we moved on to Sex and Chocolate where we finished up the day, failing once again.

On Sunday despite being as Brian put it "Wrecked" I made the quick trip back up and threw a rope on Greatest Show. In short, I was able to do the upper crux about 10 tries in. I used a smaller dimple for my right foot and it feels about the same difficulty.

And let's be honest, if the chubby kid with no core, wretched skin, a bum finger, a bum hamstring and a seeping right hueco can do it, so can you.

It was nice on Sunday to know that there were people at Anchorpoint and North Shore and it seems that there were more people spread around the park as well. I saw Nick's car as I drove in and Aaron, Andrea and Dobbe went up to Fat Pants. It's nice to see people getting out once again.

Brian and I spent a good portion of the day talking about just how drastically things have changed for Devil's Lake in just three years time. In 2009 at this time it would have been absolutely deserted as far as bouldering goes and the fact that it's changed so much, in part because of Mountain Project and this site is what I'm most proud of.

With temps getting up into the 70's this week it seems the spring season is now over and I'll do a spring recap later this week. It could very well look much like this post. HAH!

Here's a video I put together.



And here's one Runnells put together.