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May 31, 2005
Hueco - One Down, One to Go
Paul and I spent Fri and Sat of Memorial Day weekend at Hueco....deadset on sending.
Friday morning, we woke up to rain. Rain, rain and more rain....with a couple lightning storms thrown in to make it a little interesting. Paul's project was soaked (Theatre of the Absurd), so we ran up to Martini Roof so I could try mine (Baby Martini)- always dry in any rainstorm. But no send for me. I finally got established in the final Hueco but then flubbed up my "Mary Poppins" double toe hook beta and blew off. :-( I tried it again a few more times but no go. Sooo close!
Saturday we woke up again, to more rain. Grrr! The air felt like a classic sticky New River Gorge kinda day. It was all misty out, the mosquitos were as thick as pea soup and Paul and I were lathering up with deet. Mmmmm, deet. Ok, this may sound a little weird, but I was actually getting all reminiscent by the smell of deet. It smelled *good* to me. Ya know - like when you grow up in the country and the smell of cow manure makes you all homesick?! Mmmmm, "fresh air" we'd all used to say. Haha. Ok, so where was I? Ahh yes, deet....and drizzle....and blood thirsty mosquitos.....
Lucky for us the drizzle was short-lasted that morning, barely wetting the rock. We lounged around in the tent for a few hours, and then headed out to warm-up near Mushroom Roof. After warm-ups, it was on up to Theatre of the Absurd (v10) for Paul. A couple tries to work the bugs out, and then woohoo! SEND. Nice job Paul. It looked effortless.
After Paul's smooth send, we went on over to Baby Martini again. Typically, Paul and I always send in pairs. But unfortunately, this wasn't one of those times...perhaps the first. Again I got established in the last hueco, but again I fell out...not bumping my hand when I should have. A boulder problem with that many moves gives me too much time to think, I think. :-)
Can anyone guess where you'll find us next weekend?
Posted by April at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2005
Patience
Hueco Tanks, Texas
Friday, May 27th
Noonish
Posted by April at 05:33 PM | Comments (2)
May 25, 2005
Unfinished Biz
According to the Yahoo weather report for El Paso, it looks like temperatures are forecasted to drop for Friday and Saturday which might provide April and I an opportunity to send. When I say "drop" I mean the temps are forecasted to be in the upper 80s, possibly 90 degrees. That's better than last weekend of 100+ degrees. So it looks like we have a window to attempt to send our projects, Baby Martini (V6) for April and Theatre of the Absurd (V10) for me. Wish us luck so we can complete our unfinished business and top off 6 months of awesome bouldering.
Posted by Paul at 12:23 PM | Comments (2)
May 22, 2005
Triple Digit Meltdown
Well, no exciting climbing news to report this weekend...well, other than the fact that Paul and I almost got fried like eggs in a frying pan on the 100+ degree Hueco rock on Sat and Sun.
Yes, it was hot. VERY HOT. EXTREMELY HOT. Now, we usually like to act like we're all tough and hardcore and stuff - and climb regardless of "conditions." But, I gotta say, triple digit temp conditions kinda put a damper on things....just a little...ok, a lot. We've both been devoting all time and energy to two particular boulder problems: Theatre of the Absurd (v10) for Paul, and Baby Martini (v6) for me. We've been training, eating good and healthy, getting lots of sleep, and getting fricken psyched UP. But needless to say, you can be as psyched as a chocolate lab finding a new pile of shit to roll in and still get completely shut down when the thermometer is reading HOT. Oh well. Maybe it'll snow next weekend.........cause we're going back to try again. ;-)
So what do you do when it's too hot to climb? Go and play mini golf.
Posted by April at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
PTA in Phoenix
During a Pittsburgh coop bouldering session our good friend Jr came up with what he called, "PTA Training." It is something that I always think about when I'm working out. I just finished a run this evening and as I type this entry I'm soaked in sweat. Yuck. I always find that the last few hundred feet of a run are so hard. My mind wanders and I fight the thoughts about wanting to stop. Today, during the last few steps of my run the words PAIN, TORTURE and AGONY ran through my mind and I cranked up the pace to finish knowing Jr would be proud.
And proud Jr would have been knowing that April, Vince and I hopped in the car early yesterday morning and drove 2 hrs. to Phoenix to...climb in a gym. AHHHHH! A gym? Yeah. It's not just a gym. AZ on the Rocks is RAD. We specifically went because we only had a day to train and we wanted to take advantage of their awesome bouldering wall. They have some really cool features including a nice overhanging cave and some highball steep, creative problems. We put in a non-stop 4 hour session, bouldering most of the time and then switched over to climb some routes before we left. Check out a couple pictures we took of the place. It's hard to get a feel for how much fun you can have from looking at the pictures but take my word for it, it's FUN!
Posted by Paul at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2005
Parents Part II
After having showed April's parents a great time skiing last month, now it's part two with my parents. Yesterday we ate breakfast outside, took a tour of Mt. Lemmon and hung out around town. Here are a few pictures of our hike at Rose Canyon Lake and the Mt. Lemmon Rocks Lookout tower.
Posted by Paul at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2005
New Climbing Film
I emailed friends today because I was really psyched to find out there is going to be a new climbing movie coming out. Movement Films is going to release something rad. It looks like most of the footage is from Hueco. From seeing the trailer on their site. I recognized almost all of the problems. Throughout our time bouldering at Hueco the last few months we've heard the word about most of the sends in the video. It will be really nice to actually see everything to believe it. We missed Sharma's send of Esperanza by a day. April and I were working our lines in the Martini roof about the same time. Check out the trailer and get psyched!
Posted by Paul at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2005
One More Try
Our plan was to start into a summer of sport climbing and lessen the number of bouldering trips we take to once a month. Well...plans change. Last weekend ended just shy of an amazing finish to our almost every weekend of bouldering, for the year so far. Both April and I were so close to sending our newest projects we decided to reschedule our sport climbing and book more Hueco Tanks reservations for at least one, maybe two more weekends. April linked all the moves of "Baby Martini" V6, to the final crux. She reached the crux with almost no steam left and was faced with a huge throw to a sloping hueco. The move is hard for me but April, being smaller, must throw herself at full extension, keeping a toe hook in order to barely reach the "bad" part of the hold. She is able to do the problem in two parts but needs to train a tiny bit more to link the entire problem.
I gave "Theatre of the Absurd" V10, another series of sending attmpts. I realized that I must surpass a specific stage before I can send a problem near my upper limit. The stage that I'm speaking about is the perfection of all the subtile movements between segments of the entire boulder problem. I've been quoted recently saying, "I've done all the moves, therefore I'm ready to send." But, last weekend was devoted to the stage of piecing all of the moves together, figuring out all of the efficient energy saving techniques so that when I return in two weeks I can successfully link all of the hard segments together and send, with style.
Posted by Paul at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2005
Roadtrippin' to Bishop
Paul and I (and Morgan!) decided to head up to Bishop, California for a 4-day weekend of bouldering.
We left after work on Thursday evening and blasted up to Mt. Charleston outside of Vegas to camp at the brrrrr elevation of 7500 feet. Silly us decided to leave our sleeping bags at home - anticipating warm Bishop weather - and just slept with a comforter. Whoops. Brrrrrrrrrr.
On the way to Bishop the following morning, we decided to side-trip it to Death Valley, since I had never been. Giving up a 1/2 day bouldering for a hot dusty tour of the lowest point in the US sounded appetizing given that we had each downed about 10 cups of coffee the night before and froze our butts off in the tent. Ahhh, hot desert ahhh.
Saturday morning - rise and shine for some BOULDERING! We headed to the Happy boulders. We basically climbed all day non-stop from 9am to 7:30pm.....I guess we got a little carried away not being bound by time or rules like at Hueco. Sleep in and stay out late. Not much was sent this day but we tackled all kinds of problems...re-visiting favorites and trying out new stuff: Classique, Totty Boulder, Monkey Hang, Gleaner, Chollos, Action Figure, Serengeti, Burning Rubber Necklace, Bleached Bones, Red Rum, Celestial Trail, Donkey Boy, Every Color You Are, and Cheap New Age Fix....plus many more.
Sunday we opted for climbing the AM portion of the day at the Happies again....trying to tick off some of Saturday's projects and attempting more new stuff. We were only semi-successful - shredding more skin than problems. At around 2pm we decided to head somewhere else. Although our finger tips were completely thrashed, we opted for the Buttermilk boulders over the Sad boulders.....b/c as Paul puts it "If I'm going to draw blood
Monday. Time to head to home, but first - a short quickie at the Sad boulders. With only a 1/2 day of climbing time, we ran from boulder to boulder, trying to rest less and climb more. Funkadelia Bdelia, Parliament, Hot Pants, Loaded, Erotic Terrorism, It's All About Love, The Mothership Connection, Pow Pow, Still Life, Molly and Smith. The big bang finish of the day/trip was Paul's send of Pow Pow (v7). This was quite the accomplishment b/c every time we come to Bishop we always save the Sads for the last day, and every time...Paul is too beat to send Pow Pow. Must be he turned on the afterburners full-force this time. Nice.
So to sum it up, it was an extremely successful trip. Successful in the fact that we had a blast - every day - from the moment we woke up under our freezing cold comforter, till our heads hit the pillow at night after a looong long day of climbing.
Trip Highlights:
1. Death Valley
2. Paul's send of Every Color You Are (v6) at the Happies
3. My send of Browning Variation (v4) at the Happies
4. Getting on the all-time best problem at the Happies: BIG CHICKEN (v4) (thanks Tammy for the recommendation! Alas, no send for me on Big Chicken b/c I was a Big Chicken, hehe).
5. The discovery of that Hueco-like cave problem at the Buttermilks (v4)
6. Fresh green dinosaur sugar cookies from The Bakery
7. Getting to spend the entire weekend with CuteMorgan b/c dogs are allowed at the boulders - yahoo!
Posted by April at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)