Tag Archives: Bouldering

Oct21

The first bouldering, outdoors, of 2015

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**I think, at least… I mean, I’ve played around on the rocks a little bit before this, but this was the first “real” trip.  You know, the first trip with the primary purpose being climbing.  So yeah**

Sunday, 19-Apr-2015

The day starts out not super early – I can’t complain, since I don’t think I actually woke up until something like 9:30.  But I had a good reason to get moving that morning!  Climbing is a great draw, especially on a beautiful Sunday morning.  Climbing after making steak and eggs with Daniel… well, that gets me moving very quickly indeed.

So we cooked steak and eggs.  We ate both steak, eggs, and salad.  It was delicious.  It took a bit of time, but made sure that we were ready for…

Lincoln Woods!  Premier bouldering of the New England area!  Excellent weather!  Convertible tops down, and music cranked up!

Yep, it was an excellent day.  We climbed, relaxed, I did some staff spinning (see the pictures… but ignore that last one where I smacked myself in the face), and enjoyed the sun.  We ate strawberries and ham, and then swung by my Mom and Stepdad’s house in the evening to have dinner with them.

More steak… there is no such thing as too much steak.  Especially when you just spent a whole day working some impressively tough climbs, after hiking through the woods with a massive crash pad on your back.

The Routes we worked were focused on two areas – I don’t know the actual names of the routes (bouldering is kind of hard to determine route names, in my opinion), but…

  • The Pond – This was, unsurprisingly, right by a small pond!  The rock itself actually swung out over the water in some places, and there was a neat traverse over the pond that we both debated doing… but decided against, since it wasn’t warm enough to enjoy an unplanned bath.
    Instead, we stuck with the main traverses; there were some gorgeous splitter cracks that gave solid handholds for long moves… though there wasn’t too much in terms of feet.  Which made the climbs all the more fun, right?
  • The Wave – this rock was actually quite close to where we parked the car.  We walked past it originally, and then circled back for the end of the day.  Same as before, but this time the climbing was along a beautiful fin of rock that swung out from the main boulder.  The route started out awkwardly, but then moved to a much cleaner hand-over-hand section, followed by a mantle up onto the top of the rock.
    There were, of course, a few other routes on The Wave that we checked out, but most followed that same basic style.  However, I did check out the cave that runs through the main rock, and found a small GeoCache hidden in one of the nooks.  Don’t know anything about it, but that cache has been marked for NUHOC, thanks to me 😛
Aug31

My birthday weekend! The fourth weekend that I’m in Hood River, Oregon, and the West Coast! — Saturday: Ribs and climbing

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My birthday weekend! The fourth weekend that I’m in Hood River, Oregon, and the West Coast! — Saturday: Ribs and climbing

Saturday, 11-July-2015

Waking up happens! Then heading for Breakfast!

Yes, it was a capital “B” for Breakfast, since it was pretty large and definitely excellent. We hit up a not-so-small place right by my house that I’d been eyeing since I first started moving… it labeled itself as a pancake house, and I was curious exactly what that meant, in regards to delicious breakfasts…

Turns out – it means that they have excellent pancakes. I know, I know… I should have known. But I don’t like assuming things until I have empirical evidence. And that evidence took the form of three monstrous pancakes covered in bacon and strawberry jam.

That’s right. Bacon pancakes with strawberry jam. And that’s not even counting Brian’s omlette-with-three-pancakes meal.

The car’s already packed, so we roll out to Horsethief Butte, the climbing spot that I’ve been scouting out earlier in the week. And since Brian is around, we don’t need to stick to the short climbs anymore – my trad rack is on my harness and Brian is giving me a belay almost as soon as we get there, and we’re exploring the routes…

ROCK CLIMBING!

  • What I’m calling “the entrance arrete” – 5.9/5.10, trad, Ben leads… partially. I finished up the first section, but after that it got a little too committing for me – so I lowered off, and we walked around to build an anchor. Then proceeded to crush it on top rope.
  • Middle Canyon routes – 5.easy, maybe as high as 5.6? All on trad, with Ben leading. These are fun routes, though no real technical difficulty. A few spicy moves make it fun, and the gear placements are definitely enjoyable. It sort of reminds me of Hammond Pond, back in Boston. The climbs are clean and solid, and there’s a ton of variants that can be done.

We climb ’till a little after noon hits, and then head back toward Hood to start the ribs cooking. We stick to my old-school recipe, and sauce them up before tossing them into the oven.

And now… we wait. But waiting is boring, so we head into town and explore a bit. Checking out the wind surfers and kite boarders, jumping in the water… you know, the usual. Because everywhere has huge populations of kite boarders, right?

The goal of the evening is hosting a dinner party – not a big one, but a small one for myself, Brian, and the folks who’d hosted me at the Airbnb rental when I first came to Hood River. We’d gotten along quite well, and so they’d made me promise to keep in touch as I got settled into town. I figured that a birthday dinner party would be ideal, and an especially good chance to show off my cooking skills!

So… I show off my cooking skillz. Everyone shows up around 7:00, and we relax and eat and chat and have a good time. The drink of the night is a Moscow Mule, which somehow goes super well with Ribs and cornbread and veggies. And Alexandra brings along raspberry tart, which is completely amazing and disappears quite quickly.

The rest of the night is chilling – chatting some more ’till they head out, then Brian and I light a fire out in the pit out back, and sip beers and poke fires ’till we get bored.

Aug29

Exploring the rock climbing of Hood River – Horsethief Butte

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Exploring the rock climbing of Hood River – Horsethief Butte

Various points during the week between 06-July & 10-July

Day 1

I love climbing.

Yeah, I know. Huge surprise. Hush.

But now that I’m in a new town, I’ve got to explore the area! I had an entire new landscape to adventure in – I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest, much less climbed all the fun stuff it had to offer. And the Columbia River Gorge is beautiful – with huge soaring cliffs every few miles.

I needed to climb some of those cliffs.

So I looked up routes on Mountain Project, and found the closest solid crag that I could – a place called Horsethief Butte, about a 20min drive from my new house. So, even though it was right around sunset, I hopped in the car and headed toward the butte.

And… I’d left too late – by the time I got there, it was too dark to really think about climbing. So instead, I pulled my headlamp out of my pack and headed in to do a quick recon run of the area.

First thing: The view of Mt. Hood is amazing from Horsethief – It’s a solitary peark, so it stands out beautifully from the rest of the landscape. And since I’m on the Northern side, there’s still snow on the peak, which makes it just that much more picturesque.

But, since there wasn’t any climbing to be had, I didn’t stay too long. Just a quick exploration in prep for the next day…

Day 2

This time, I left the house almost as soon as I got home from work. Just left enough time to have a quick snack and grab my climbing gear.

And this time, I hiked in with a crash pad on my back… Which normally doesn’t really make much of a difference. But the Columbia River Gorge is windy. And a crash pad is, at it’s heart, a large piece of foam. Which acts like a sail.

Basically, I just mean that the hike in was kind of more interesting than I expected.

As far as climbing goes? It was fun – there’s a ton of climbing to be done at Horsethief; the problems ranged from easily done to “wait… what?” levels of difficulty. I enjoyed it; I don’t know the sames of any of the routes, so I couldn’t comment on difficulty or anything. But I enjoyed it, and that’s what matters.

Even got home in time that dinner wasn’t even too late.