ABS Youth Nationals and the Malibu Roof

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I've updated, and a lot has happened in that time. I spent last Thursday through Sunday in Colorado Springs, CO, coaching at the ABS Youth National Championships, enjoying a few days in a climate other than California's constant sunshine.

Natalie, Charlie, and Sami, all from Rockreation LA, made a great showing at Youth Nationals.
Natalie managed to flash all four qualifying routes on day one (going into semis tied for first place), but re-tweaked her sprained back on the third semi-final and barely missed making it to finals (by one point!) Charlie also flashed all four of his qualifying problems on Friday, and climbed very well on Saturday and Sunday, securing him an 8th place finish. For full results, click here.

Natalie Josefsberg flashing qualifier number 3

and 4

View of Pike's Peak from my hotel room window.

Walking around Garden of the Gods on Saturday before semi-finals

Some dudes climbing some sketchy sandstone at Garden of the Gods

We returned Sunday evening, and Monday I set my boulder problems for the new set at Rockreation LA. Check out the steep side of the boulder if you get in there, there are some fresh new problems!

On Wednesday, Maya and I ventured out to Malibu Creek State Park, so that I could try to send Chubbs aka The Malibu Roof, featured in my last post. Here are some beautiful pics Maya took from the day.

Walking in to Malibu Creek State Park

Lichen

 

Me traversing back to get my additional crashpads at the end of the day. The other guy was rocking a wet suit and kept jumping in and swimming, while I aimed for the opposite.

The Rock Pool

While I didn't send it first try, I did on my second! Luckily for me, my friends Alex and Dara were there to capture a repeat of the ascent on Dara's iphone for the uncut footage. Check it out below.


Untitled from Dara B on Vimeo.


After the long hike out (well it sure seems long if you're carrying three crashpads) Maya and I went to one of our favorite LA spots, Malibu Seafood, for a delicious dinner. You can't really beat sunset on the ocean and a plate of amazing fresh fish.

Psyched to have sent (twice!), I felt I deserved a big meal.

Full moon over the PCH, what a perfect ending to the day.

Stay psyched everyone and see you out on the rocks!!

Blank Generation Vid

Here is a little video of Saturday's send. Big thanks to Alex Chujo for capturing the footage and putting this together!




What you can't really tell from the video is just how small and sharp that right hand crimp is!

Stay psyched everyone, and see you out on the rocks!

Great Twilight Video from Scientia Climbing

Brought to you by the folks over at Scientia Climbing comes this great video of Twilight of the Idols.


Looks like they were there the day two days before our crew went up this weekend. It's actually odd for two groups of climbers to visit this part of the mountain in such close succession. This is not an area where you typically run into other climbers!
Check out their awesome video of this world class line:


Twilight of the Idols from scientia on Vimeo.

Super Nova Sends

Well here is the "uncut footage" of Eden and I both sending Super Nova (v10) at the Jupiter Boulders.

It is worth noting that the left hand compression hold in the overhang is a horrible sloping angle change, rather than a real "hold" and that the first few right hand holds aren't much better. I haven't done many hard compression boulders, so I was pretty darn psyched about this one!

Eden sending


Me doing the same


Stay psyched and see ya all out at the boulders.

Blochead's 5k Miles part 3

Max and Lib finished the Priest Draw segment of their 5,000 Miles video series, and it is really impressive. Check it out HERE to see tons of footage of my favorite type of climbing, horizontal roofs, on problems ranging from v0 to v11.

http://blocheadclimbing.blogspot.com/2011/10/5000-miles-part-3-priest-draw.html

Sends and Near Misses at Black

UPDATED  to include a second Ex-Pat fail.

Sunday was another day of fun at Black Mountain. The temps keep getting better, and it was pretty chilly by the end of the day. Kris, Anthony and I were joined by our new friends Luke Cudney and Cerre Francis, freshly transplanted from SLC, and we were looking forward to giving them a good tour of Black Mt.

We started by heading over to the top of an amazing chute of boulders that starts essentially right under the summit lookout tower and goes all the way down past Ex-Patriot and down further to the Lion's Mane (approached from the OK Corral, the lower parking spot.) 

After a quick warm up, we headed over to a hard compression problem at the top of the boulder-strewn slope. Anthony had done the stand start two weekends ago, and was able to put down the sit start to Little T's Big Bulge first try of the day, at a suggested grade of v9. 

Anthony on the first move of "Little T's Big Bulge"

The move to the heinous sloper

and from the sloper to the upside down pinch

Crossing to the crack

Anthony is psyched for the FA

Petri found a piece of wood shaped like a piton

From the bulge we went up the hill to a couple of little dyno problems. Not sure of the name or grade of the first one here. I've done it before and there are some pics of it on this blog from maybe a year ago too.

The second dyno, Face Meat, v6. Dan Mills told me he did a sit start to it, which, given the size of the "holds" on the lower part of the face, looks really freaking hard.

Luke Cudney sticking "Face Meat"

Kris Linstrom sending the same

I wanted to go give Ex-Patriot a few goes, since we were in the area, but first we stopped to show Cerre and Luke The Visor.

Luke Flashing "Center Visor," v6

Cerre on "Center  Visor"

From here we went down to Ex-Patriot (v11). I took 4 burns, doing all the moves with overlapping linkage, after being boosted through the first couple of moves after falling on my 3rd go. My last attempt was my best yet, falling literally one move from the finishing jug! I must have just been tired from the previous three attempts, as my foot unexpectedly popped off a pretty good foot hold. Alas, another one I have to go back to, but at least it looks like I'll finally do it soon.

Here is a video of my best attempt so far. My apologies in advance for the profanity.

EDIT: Here is how the second part of Ex-Patriot (the way I think of it, after matching on that block in the roof) should be climbed. Got tired and dropped in an attempt to save some juice for the send ... the results of which you can see above.

At sunset we found ourselves down at Dark Horse (v10) for Anthony to give it a few goes. Unfortunately, none were quite successful, but I'm sure he'll send this one soon too!
Video of what most of Anthony's attempts looked like.

Stay psyched everyone, and maybe we'll see you at Black Mountain next weekend!

Captain America Vid!

Thanks to my buddies Max (blochead) and Liberty for putting this rad video together. I'm embedding it here, but really you should go to his Vimeo channel and watch all the cool stuff he's got on there.

And without further ado:

Captain America V9, Black Mountain, CA from BLOCHEAD on Vimeo.

Blochead's 5k Miles Part 2

Well I was doing pretty well there with the weekly bouldering updates, but I didn't get outside two weekends ago due to rain up at the Tramway and Black on Sunday, then this past weekend was the boulder set at Rockreation, which I had/wanted to participate in, and this coming weekend I probably won't be getting out either .. sooo in lieu of any cool content from me, check out my buddy Max and his girlfriend Liberty's videos of bouldering on just more beautiful California Granite by clicking here.
They feature some rad looking lines in the Tahoe area and Tuolomne. Looks to me like they'll be ready for the "get your ass handed to you" nature of Black Mt's technical granite bouldering by the time they make it out to meet us there for a session.

In other news, wtf is going on in London? Hackney, the neighborhood where our flat is, that Maya is scheduled to return to next week, has seen its fair share of the recent madness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1-XlVJSQ24

Inspiration Post: Action Directe

Maybe I missed the boat by a year, but I just found this awesome, inspirational video of Rich Simpson on the world's most famous sport climb, Action Directe, in the Frankenjura, Germany. It's kind of long at 26 minutes, but worth the watch, and does a great job communicating the level of obsession we climbers tend go through with our personal projects.

Watch it at Chris Doyle's vimeo page here: http://www.vimeo.com/6848413

UPDATE: Apparently, many of Simpson's accomplishments have come under scrutiny lately.
http://climbingnarc.com/2010/12/rich-simpson-the-burden-of-proof/
He certainly looks strong enough to send in the Vid. I for one hope he sent. The video is super inspiring. We may never know the truth.

Some iconic images of the famous line:

Wolfgang Gullich

Rich Simpson

Gabriele Moroni

Adam Ondra

Killian Fishhuber