Belated Weekend

So Saturday turned out to be pretty fantastic. Katie and I were rather stunned with how few people were up at the lake, not even counting climbers. The place was just dead.

First Katie and I got on Tipping Point. I had rather little forward progress this time but Katie made some headway on the first move. She can't quite reach the toe hooks so she has to get a left hand/heel match which is absolutely absurd. It's stunning how close she got to sticking it too. Really impressive showing by her and I think she'll do the move soon. She described it as the absolute hardest move she'd ever tried.

Then we made the short walk over to the Money Pit project. Another find from last year that I hadn't had time to try. Despite it looking rather simple, it turns out that it's quite hard! Towards the end it felt a little better but I'm excited to get Chris up there since he's got a bit more size and some stronger fingers.

For anyone that wants to try it, it's all chalked up and ready. The landing is fairly good (I'd feel comfortable trying it with a big pad and a half pad) and it has a reasonably obvious start with two sloping crimps just above head height. Plus it'll stay cool in hot weather since it's in a cave/pit thing. Easiest way to get to it is to go directly under brototype. It'll be right there.

After we got back we found out that Ian had done the Pit Problem at Burma after Peter, Blake and Sam had cleaned it. Not sure if any of them also did it but I'm really glad that one is gonna be resurrected. Back in 2006 or so Kelsen and I went out and tried it for a half hour or so. Between the both of us we did all the moves but couldn't put it together and never went back. The first move looks impossibly long and has terrible feet but I remember begin stunned that we both did the move first try.

I'd be very interested to head back out that way and see how it looks all cleaned up. Would be fun to finish that one up. The holds on the face, if I remember right, were incredibly cool crimps and the line is incredible. I'm sad that it gets so dirty so fast but great effort to those that helped clean it off.

On a camera note, I started using my flash again and quickly remembered how fun it can be! I haven't used my flash in commander mode since RV, Katie and I tried Strong Men Also Cry maybe 3 years ago. We got a couple nice shots in though.









In general I've never been a fan of the over the top flash/strobe look. It just looks too fake to me. Too staged. A couple of my personal favorites are the pictures below.



Anyone that's been to Split Personality knows that it's kind of a dank, dark, musty hole. It rarely gets any light, it's almost always wet or damp and it's incredibly hard to take a good picture of it.

On the day I took these I got very lucky. I had the flash below Katie and a bit to the right. I snapped them as she stuck the crux move for the first time, on the send and for whatever reason the light was perfect. If you didn't know better there's no way you could tell that there was artificial light in play.

I've actually tried to replicate this multiple times with varying degrees of success. None of which turned out as well as the above pictures.

For some reason though, I really enjoyed how the pictures above turned out. Again, Tipping Point is a tough one to take pictures of. It gets zero light and the problem almost forces you to blow out the picture to make it look decent. I almost like the "staged" feeling of these. It fits the problem.

Oh, one last thing. Chri$ sent me this video yesterday. Worth a watch as there are some big whips in it. I even think I spied Chris Esser a handful of times. Look for him a bit later in the video making some sad whimpering sounds as he takes a couple of giant whippers.