YMCA
We spent most of our time this weekend bouldering at the YMCA area of Black Mountain. The results were amazing.
Welcome to Winter
It was another Black Mountain weekend. On Saturday I met up with Ian and Bridget at the boulders near group site 4/5. We had a good day climbing a lot of moderates, most have probably been done before but there may have been an FA mixed in. It’s hard to tell at Black Mountain since people have been climbing here for thirty plus years. We later climbed on the Dog boulder which has an awesome V2 arete on the right side and a rad V4 face in the middle. Next we hit up the Captain’s Junk boulder which is a huge bloc with a dozen problems on it from V0 to VHard project! Most of them are high quality and tall but not too scary. If you want directions to this beast (you should, it’s awesome), contact Ian.
The weather was perfect on Saturday, sunny with temps in the 50′s. That started to change around 6PM when the temps dropped ten degrees and the wind started to pick up. By the time we got to the campsite it was in the low 40′s with huge winds! In the morning it was even colder with 40 mph winds! On Sunday it didn’t go over 45 degrees all day and we were in clouds with constant wind. Good conditions for climbing but apparently not good conditions for smurfs (they turn purple when cold)!
We started off at the OK Corral since it’s usually a little warmer down there. After warming up we hopped on Cosmos which I still hadn’t finished. After a couple of tries falling on the last move again I managed to stay on and stick the final move on my third go of the day! This one is hard to rate, it took me quite a while to do it but it felt more technical and slippery than physically difficult so it may only be V9. After the Corral, Joe took us to the Fireman’s Hat area where he showed us some cool problems and projects to finish the day on (Thanks Joe!).
So what was the point of this post? To show you the picture below. My first diagonal split! I sliced it at some point on Saturday and it finally split open when I sent Cosmos.
Black Mountain Bash
This weekend was Aron, Buck, and company’s birthday bash at Black Mountain! It was a good time filled with granite boulders, beautiful blue skies, and good friends.
Big Sends and Big Falls
It was another Black Mountain weekend for Sonja, myself, and lots of other socal climbers. We started off with a 30 minute hike out to the new area around the hillside. We stopped at the midway boulder to warm up and break the hike up. It was at this point that I realized I left my camera back at the car and had to hike all the way back! A lucky start to the day.
FA’s and Planes
The big news is that Anthony Tarascio put up an amazing new line at black mountain yesterday, Where the Wild Things Are. It is on a very large 40+ foot boulder in this new area Ian found this weekend. It is easily one of the best lines at black mountain and likely checks in around V8. I have some video from the weekend attempts and Ian has some pictures he may post up at some point. Nice work Anthony!
Like I said earlier, if you want to check out this new area you should give Ian an apple pie and he might take you there!
The other news is that I got my laptop back yesterday so I can start editing again! I will have some time today since I will be on a plane for 5 hrs making the trip back home to Atlanta for a weekend of family and a wedding.
Black Attack
Sorry for the lack of updates lately but I’ve been having some technical difficulty with my computer so it’ll be a couple weeks before I get a new video up.
In the meantime we’ve been having lots of adventures up at Black Mountain. Last week we climbed at the corral, the chappies, and the boulders near groupsite four. At the corral Alan put up a new line he’s calling LohBoh which starts on Lobotomy and finishes on Loh’s Roof. Later Ian found some secret beta for this line and we both sent quickly. It is a fun one and is probably in the V8 range. Bridget got agonizingly close to sending this one using short beta which makes it way harder. She climbed all the way to the jug at the lip but didn’t have the wing span to reach the next flat hold in order to finish the climb.
The Mountains
