Tag Archives: Bouldering

Jul27

My love of Yosemite National Park: Sentinel Rock, Curry Village, and leaving… for now.

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My love of Yosemite National Park: Sentinel Rock, Curry Village, and leaving… for now.

I’ve never been to Yosemite, but it’s been etched into my adult mind in the same way that the Titanic and Dinosaurs were etched into my young mind. It’s a myth, a legend. The greatest place for traditional rock climbing in the world, and arguably the birthplace of modern climbing itself.

Feats of strength and endurace took place here; first ascents of climbs that no one thought could be climbed by human hands..

Brilliance of engineering even happened; the creation of Cams, and many other unique pieces of protection.

Yosemite is greater than life, in my mind. But I’ve never been there. Until this trip.

Friday, 12-June-2015

The day starts early, when I hear the adventure group rolling out from the campsite next to me… It’s annoying, but it does get me awake and clean up camp…

But screw taking my time – I skip breakfast. It’s not really necessary… I’ll eat snacks. And I’m in Yosemite! I have climbing to do! So I packed up the last bits of the campsite, pulling my food out of the bear thing, and rolled out!
On the drive into the park, I’m reminded about the fun of driving in non-Massachusetts placed: a jeep tries to cut me off… but they really do a half-assed job of it. So… nope. Cut-off denied. No other drivers are any good. New England for life!

Instead of taking the scenic route like I did the day before, I do direct for a spot from the guide book called Sentinel Rocks – I park, walk right in and start working the routes. But damn they’re tough. Still WAY too hard. I’m talking “Ben still can crush some, but most of them he can’t even do the first move of” tough.

But that’s what I’ve noticed: most Yosemite bouldering routes are only a single move. They’re just a “mantle up onto this tiny ledge”, or “slide over from this crap hold, to this other crap hold, and you’re done!”. A lot of them don’t seem to even top out, which is definitely another interesting aspect. I think the real difficulty isn’t the routes themselves; it’s my lack of experience with this style of climbing. I’m used to more sustained movements – strong core and legs, instead of insane crimping.

So I keep my head up, keep chilling, and climbing and reading and watching Adventure Time on the laptop. It’s the usual awesome times.

And then once I’m all tuckered out? Or… when I’m hungry and sick of snack food? I head back into Curry Village, get a hamburger and do some writing. I even picked up a Nalgene bottle as another souvenir, and grabbed some postcards to send to folks out East.

While I’m waiting in line to get said Hamburger, I strike up a chat with two kids who work in Yosemite with the park services. I guess the jobs that they’re working on are year contracts? A year staying in Yosemite… working a few days a week and having the rest of the time off… Nice… I could do that someday!

But “Someday” isn’t “Today”. Today, I’m on an amazing roadtrip across the country, and the final leg is in sight. With a semi-heavy heart, I finish up my burger, and leave Yosemite Valley behind me. The goal of the day is Davis, California – meeting Mike for a weekend of partying, followed by the drive into Oregon.

It was raining as I drive out of the valley. Annoying, but I was going into California – into the throes of a multi-year drought. This was the last rain I was going to see in a long time, so I enjoyed it as best I could.

Jul26

My love of Yosemite National Park: Exploring, and the first climb on sacred rock

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My love of Yosemite National Park: Exploring, and the first climb on sacred rock

I’ve never been to Yosemite, but it’s been etched into my adult mind in the same way that the Titanic and Dinosaurs were etched into my young mind. It’s a myth, a legend. The greatest place for traditional rock climbing in the world, and arguably the birthplace of modern climbing itself.

Feats of strength and endurace took place here; first ascents of climbs that no one thought could be climbed by human hands..

Brilliance of engineering even happened; the creation of Cams, and many other unique pieces of protection.

Yosemite is greater than life, in my mind. But I’ve never been there. Until this trip.

Thursday, 11-June-2015

Today, I climb Yosemite.

I won’t climb the famous peaks. I won’t be ascending El Capitan, dragging two days worth of equipment below me. I won’t be sending a line up the Sentinel, or any other legendary face.

Instead, I’ve got my crash pad on my back, my shoes and chalk, and the goal of getting to know the rock of Yosemite. Learning the bouldering problems, and seeing how the rock forms holds, and how people move up the routes.

First thing I learn? Yosemite ratings are TOUGH. I can climb routes rated V5 at the gym back in Boston. And that gym is generally considered fair, as far as ratings go. Maybe a grade or two harder than outdoors. In Yosemite, I’m climbing V0, and flailing against V1 climbs.

But that’s ahead of myself – first I drove in, took pictures, and stopped in Curry Village. When tourists go to destinations, they get souvenirs. I am no different… but the souvenirs that I get are always climbing guide books. They’re useful, and I can keep them on my shelf to show off where I’ve climbed… and to tease myself about where I can go back to.

So I bought a book, debated getting some new trad gear (I didn’t, I stayed good) and looked for some early lunch… didn’t find any, of course, since it was only 10:00 and the grill doesn’t open until 11:00.

So that’s how I found myself at the Legendary (yes, capitalized) Camp 4. The home of American rock climbing. Seriously. There’s even a plaque saying so!

I climbed, and explored. I met a climber from Chile, who was looking for a partner to climb El Capitan with. Speed climb. With a random partner. Yep, he’s nuts.

We bouldered – watched someone flail at Midnight Lightnig (a V8 climb, arguably the most famous Bouldering route in the United States). We met up with some Brazilians, one of whom climbed at the same level as me – so her an I snuck off to fight with a V0 that took WAY too much effort for a V0.

Then I headed out on my own, looking for more adventure. I found some other climbs, did a bit of bushwacking, and forgot my bug repellent in the car (meaning that I hiked back out to get it, since I’d be dead and drained of blood if I hadn’t).

I loved every second of it.

Routes that I worked:

Honestly, I don’t really remember any specifics. The routes here are hard. The folks that I was hanging out with were pretty fun though, and they definitely made the difficulty more tolerable. I focused on the main “Midnight Lightening” boulder in the beginning, then followed the Chilean climber to a perfect splitter crack that I couldn’t do much more than start on.

I was able to bust out that pretty good V0 balancy route nearby though, after a fair amount of work.

From there, I hit up some smaller boulders on the walk out – much easier routes than the splitter that I had been working before.

Ohh! I do remember one! The Presidential Traverse, a V0 rated at four stars. It was really fun – just a long traverse from one end of a boulder to another, walking on big ledges and using huge flakes. Honestly, it was really easy… annoyingly easy, after the rest of the day.

Jul9

Adventures in Zion – Part 2! Bouldering where no one boulders

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Adventures in Zion – Part 2! Bouldering where no one boulders

Monday, 08-June-2015

 

  • Wake up, and I start exploring right out, instead of making Breakfast right away.
  • The first goal of the day is to find a good map / guidebook… so I hit the guide shop that’s right across the street from my campsite and buy a climbing book. While I’m there I stop to chat with one of the canyoneering guides, since the other folks at the shop mentioned that he’s a climbing. He directs me to good spots to go… but he doesn’t really know anything that’s not already in the guidebook. Zion has some of the best multi-pitch trad in the world… but this is not a good land for Boulderering :/
  • Next stop: a walk to find postcards, and to scout the first boulder of the day. The guide mentioned a huge boulder right by the entrance of the park, so I figure that’s a good place to start. And lo and behold, right across the road from it is a small grocery and souvenir shop! I find some postcards, buy up a few breakfast burritos, and then head back to find a post office.
  • Third stop is also a rousing success – the post office is nice and simple, and I get all my post sent out without any trouble or undue cost. Woo!
  • Now that all of that is dealt with, I pack the car up, and drive out to the boulders!
    • The Globe, AKA The Entrance Boulder – Fun, very fun. I spend a lot of time here, exploring lines and trying to do the traverse around the entire thing. The routes are good, and a bit too tall for me to be comfortable topping out… especially since there isn’t really a good way to get down off the boulder if I did top out. So I stayed low, and did some fun traverses.
    • Drilled Boulder – This one… this one was fun, but the drill-holes don’t really make sense. The guide says that someone, back in the dark ages of bouldering, took a power drill to the rock to make it more interesting. But they’re not really in any pattern or route that I can make out… Most of them are too small to be used (at least by me), and then the good ones aren’t really in good locations. The rest was cool, but not 100% sold on it.
    • Split Boulder – This one is WAY bigger than it looked in the book; too big for me to be comfortable climbing. I found a few interesting lines on it, but there were all a bit too easy. Nothing really good, at least nothing that I’d be willing to do with just a single crashpad.
    • Other boulders near the split boulder – I’m not sure if these are named, but I strutted over and climbed them anyways. Nothing too insane, but they’re better than the Split Boulder, at least. I did some routes, read some book, drank some water, and repeated the process until I ran out of routes to do.
    • Pine Creek Boulders – These were gorgeous, if not ideal for climbing. The boulders are all spread around a small creek down by the road (pine creek… crazy, right?) But most of them were a bit too hard for me to really rock.
      I did find a few really good routes though, and if you ignore the obscene amount of sand that was ground into every single thing that I own, I’d say this was the best of the bunch, aside from The Globe near the beginning.
    • There seems to be the theme here… beautiful landscape, but mediocre bouldering. Which is fair, since Zion is all about the big, long, perfect splitter cracks. Running straight up the cliff. For hundreds of feet. Damnation Daniel! Why didn’t you come with me so we could have climbed them all?!?!
  • Once the sun started setting down behind the cliffs, I made my way back to camp. A quick stop in at a grocery along the way got me all the parts that I needed to make an excellent & filling dinner… I deserved it after that day I had – boiling heat and more dust in my face than even Arizona threw at me…
  • So with everything set, I made me some dinner! Stir-fried chicken with Chorizo, Onion, tomatoes, tomato sauce, and shells. Yeah. Over a campstove. Using just two dishes. I am just that good. Now if you’ll excuse me… Nom, nom nom nom nom!!!
  • Once dinner is done and the dishes are cleaned, it was the usual evening for me. I hung out on the crash pad, using it like a nice mobile couch. I relaxed, watched a few episodes of Adventure Time, and slept like a log.