I'm So Good At Punting I Shoulda Been A Kicker

Well, no go on Mister Sandstone Violence. It felt good to get on the problem again but that last move to the jug still horrifies me. Every time I get up there the silhouetted image of Jason flying off of the problem with the block flying right next to him flashes in my head and I come off.

I think I need to go up there with a bunch of pads and a bunch of spotters that'll yell and scream at me to do the damn move. It's stupid and there's no reason I shouldn't have done this four years ago. No reason.

As for the climbing, it was a pretty calm day. Kinda humid and buggy but the occasional gust of wind kept it decent. With a bit of grit I made it up to the last move without a real problem. Then I chickened out.

On with the weekend though! Sounds like West Bluff on Saturday and Greatest Show cleaning party on Sunday. It'd be nice to have a bunch of people up on Sunday as long as the weather holds out. Who wants in??

Today

Katie and I are leaving in an hour or so to go back to Governor Dodge for the afternoon. I'm actually pretty excited. First time in a pretty long time that I'm truly excited to go up to Dodge.

Goal for the day is Sandstone Violence. We've got all our pads and I want to finish it off. We'll see how it goes.....I've got that good nervous going on right now. Cannot wait.

That's Better

Thanks Chris. This is much less mind numbing to look at.


Hopefully we have some good weather coming up so we can get this thing nice and clean. I'm still amazed at how good this boulder looks in the picture.

At this point it looks more and more like Nic's left exit might be a FA. Currently it looks like we've got 4-5 distinct lines on the boulder.

1 - Greatest Show Arete - No one really knows how hard this thing might be.

2 - Greatest Show Face - There very well might be three exits on this puppy. Right, Direct and Left. It'll be interesting to see the topout when it's clean.

3 - Left Arete - Years ago Steve Day and I spied this line but never put the work into it. Nic also looked at it and this could be rather cool.

4 - PJ's Seam - Talking with Paul Jones a while back he said he did a line up the seam in the damp, dark cave on the right face of this boulder. He didn't seem super keen on the line and said that it wasn't his best work.

5 - Left Face - There should be an easier slabby problem up the sunny face around the corner from the direct.

Thoughts?

I'm psyched. Motivation is growing...

And The Mystery Grows...

Eric Zschiesche climbing "The Greatest Show On Earth"

Huh. So no one actually knows what the true "Greatest Show" is. This should only fan the flames of utter confusion I suppose.

After a bit of prodding Eric Zschiesche sent me the above picture with some of his thoughts:

"Steve, good to hear the stones at the Lake are getting some human touch. Jeez,... it's been ten years or more, since I played on the Greatest Show boulder,...so it is slightly fuzzy. Cool chunk of sandstone, attached a photo of the boulder ( the photo lab botched the image configuration / so it is a mirrored remembrance. ), enjoy the DLSP spring."

First off, do you see how CLEAN that boulder is???!!! Holy hell! I need to get back out there with some more brushes and do that thing some justice! It's immaculate!!

Secondly, and remember it's a mirrored pic, Eric is topping out on the right side of the overhang. Far different than where Nic and I feel the direct would go, and even more different than Nic's left exit. On top of that, there is some pretty major chalk on the arete.

I guess it's time to go scrub! Seems like there might be three different Greatest Shows!!! HAH!

Focus

Motivation is waning right now. Seriously waning. There are a couple reasons why but the ship needs to get righted.

Rocks need to be smote down on.

The talk lately has been of getting my focus back. I came into this season wanting to take shit down. I haven't. I took a look at my goals list the other day and I'm revising it a bit.

Here's the original:

Keymaker
Alpine Club
Sex and Chocolate
The Zipper
Black Sheep
Half Dome Project
Sandstone Violence
Corner Project
Seam Project
The Prow

I've been a failure so far. I need to get into attack mode and take shit down. I need to FOCUS.

So. Spring. It's still on and we still have good temps. Here's what I want to do this Spring.

1 - Greatest Show
2 - The Seam Project
3 - Sandstone Violence

I'd be happy with that. Very happy. Baby steps, right? There are so many things going on in my head right now I just need to pick out a couple things and go to town. Steinke is going onto the backburner. There are things I want to do but they can wait till summer.

Then there are other things I'd love to be able to do by year end but you guys already know what those are.

Aside from Remo doing Sex and Chocolate with a Cherry On Top and Nic doing the Greatest Show it's been a pretty slow season so far. Let's get on it people....

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.

Steinke Pics

Just a forewarning that I didn't get any pictures of the actual problems/projects. The sun was high and shadows were brutal. Plus I had my big lens on and didn't want to take it off. Hah!

I want to really encourage people to head out to this place. The two areas I saw were incredibly cool looking and there seems to be much more in the area. It's kind of a unique setting for DL and makes for a fun day. More traffic will only make the place better and it should clean up nicely.

Turn left at this broken tree to go to Triple Tower wall.  It's only a couple minutes further into the woods.  Just past this is the Steinke Wall turnoff with the Jack Backwards project.

It's absolutely beautiful out right now and the weather for the next couple weeks looks like more 60 and sunny. Can it get any better??? Looking forward to the weekend!