Remo's Bday

It's not news anymore but Remo had one of the more impressive Birthday Challenges in recent history.  It was maybe two weeks ago now but I wanted to write about it a bit.

The day started out with Aaron, Dobbe and I meeting up with Fuzzy, Andrea, Kate and Remo at their campsite.  I hadn't realized that Remo and Fuzzy were doing a double challenge and the previous day had climbed 30 pitches from a number of different spots around the lake.

When I got to the campsite Fuzzy was worked enough from the route day that he had already bowed out of the bouldering day so the crew was down one before it had even started.

We started out on the North Shore doing a handful of the more classic warmups over there.  Remo got in a good bulk of his problems there which was nice and it gave the rest of us a chance to mess around a bit. Aaron and I tried Welcome To The Lake once more and finally proclaimed that it has to be a joke, ala the Secrets of the Dodge Wall.

After a bit of time we started trying Earth Mechanics which neither of us had done previously.  With some good beta from Mike, a number of us were able to do it.  Dobbe, Remo, Aaron and I all finished it up with slightly differing beta.  For anyone looking for a fun V5 with a safe landing, comfy holds and an easy but enjoyable topout, Earth Mechanics is a great choice.

The V5 grade is kind of an enigma at the lake, and while I'm not sure where the grade will settle on this one, it's funny that we may have a good one with such a good landing and such a short approach that's been sitting right under our noses.

After we finished up at the north shore we made our way up to the Greatest Show Bluff, Venus Rising, Sex and Chocolate and Perfect Medium.  Greatest Bluff was fun, as always, but made better by Aaron acting like a dumbass as we filmed for a special "Aaron" piece.  Should be a good one.

Remo uncharacteristically fell off of Venus a couple times before doing it shortly after, same with Sex and Chocolate.  Aaron and Dobbe both came close to doing Sex and Chocolate but eventually had to leave it. With the short move down to Perfect Medium, Dobbe and Andrea left us for the day but shortly after that happened John and Paul came down to join the fun.

Remo repeated it after a handful of tries for his hardest send of the day so far.  I think it was the first time he'd done it in a couple years so he was obviously excited.  Both Aaron and Mike were coming close but were still without a send.  I came down from my perch and told Aaron to try pulling up before he tried to get his foot in the notch and he immediately looked much stronger on it.  Same with Mike but he had to bow out since his elbow was killing him.

Neither of them sent that day but I have very little doubt that it's imminent on the next nice day.  Both looked agonizingly close.

After that we went over to Bulbous so that Remo could finish that off.  In short, Remo was fucking tired by that point of the day.  He came incredibly close after refiguring out the crux but fell on the last move, right before the mantle.

The bright spot for me was seeing Aaron pony up, very late in the session, after everyone had kind of written it off.  I think everyone else was actually packing up when we looked over and saw Aaron throwing to the lip.  He calmly finished it up in very proud fashion.

We all walked over to Tombstone to try and finish things up and you could tell everyone was slowing down a good bit.  Remo in particular looked incredibly tired and just wanted it to be done.  He did a couple problems over there and then finished it all on the walk back to the car at Slope of Dadaism.

In all, it was a phenomenal day and I'm glad I joined in.  After Earth Mechanics I spent the good majority of the day heckling.  Besides a short stint repeating the crux of bulbous I just talked shit the whole time.  Seemed to be a much better way to spend the day.

Hope everyone else is getting out!