apAdventures

It was January of this year when we first went to the boulder problem “That Hi-Pro Glow,” V6 at Hueco Tanks. April was psyched because the moves seemed do-able with a little bit of work. Unfortunately, 11 months went by until we got around to re-visiting the problem (so many choices when you’ve got over 2000 Hueco problems to choose from). Fortunately, after 11 more months of climbing, the problem seemed quickly send-able for April.

Beta:
That Hi-Pro Glow is a super fun Hueco climb in our opinion. April starts it out with two hands matched and a left heel on the heinous sloper starting hold. The first several moves are hard as you work your way around a blunt arete. If you don’t keep your core tight and you blow a foot it drains all your energy just trying to get back in control. Most people just fall off. If you get established around the arete there are a few options but most people quickly pop to a sloper and…whew…”the hard climbing is over…” not really….

April quickly works out her beta for getting to the final sloper and then starts giving it some sending goes. One go, two goes, three goes…more and more goes – climbing it smooth around the arete, but keeps falling at the big pop to the sloper – too pumped to get the height she needs to grab it.

The tour is about wrapping it up and getting ready to move on to the next area. Ok, last try. Two hands and a heel on the slopey start, holding the tension as she works around the arete, left hand on a shelf and right hand on a good pinchy sidepull – wing span at full extension, right foot pushes and POP….right hand smacks the sloper! YES – this problem is in the bag for April….um, we think. There’s still a decent amount of climbing to get to the top of the boulder….kinda highball….but hey – it’s only V0ish at this point.

April is working her way up, we’re all cheering, she’s pulling on jugs. As I’m watching April through the video camera eye piece, I see she has one last move to go to the lip…to a huge honking big as a bucket jug – wait a second – she looks pumped as hell. But how could anyone possibly fall from there? – I’m thinking. As my brain is computing the answer to that question, my finger switched the camera off and I went into emergency spotting mode. (Brain processing next thought): Well at least she’s falling feet-first….hmm, are there pads under her?

April’s highball crash landing placed her perfectly on the pads and in the arms of a spotter (who just happened to be standing in the right place at the right time – THANK YOU DAN FROM L.A.) Ahhh, the adventures of bouldering. She’ll be seeing you next time – you Hi-Pro Glow (with a little more juice, let’s hope).

After a long week of driving (J-Tree to Tucson) and climbing (Hueco Tue and Wed) and driving (Hueco to Tucson, Tucson to Hueco) and climbing, the time is 4PM on Sunday afternoon, the place is Martini Roof, the problem is Baby Martini, the climber is April….and…SHE SENDS….AT LAST! Who says you can’t pull a send out of the bag when your arms are blown and it’s time to hop in the car for a 6 hour drive home? This was the ultimate conclusion to a great week of climbing.

Here are four videos that we put together to show some of the fun climbs, cool people and excitement of the week.

Or did I mean “Two Days With Gene?” No no (that’s a boulder problem name)…I’ve got Hueco on my mind again why? Because we went back again! Yeah. We took a little vacation and went to Hueco mid-week on Tuesday and Wednesday! Our good friend Nate who we met climbing at Hueco last year mentioned that he was coming to Tucson for a “conference.” Any climber knows that when you go to a conference for work or whatever you have to figure out the closest climbing destination and plan accordingly. Of course Nate did and his two good friends Matt and Justin joined him for a few days at Hueco Tanks. We had a great two days bouldering on N. Mt. and going on a tour out to E. Spur. Nate and the guys had a nice 4 day stretch of climbing before they were totally burned out and returned with us to Tucson for the conference. I won’t report on any of the highlights yet because we are leaving for Hueco again tonight and I’ve gotta get ready. So, we’ll catch up on the posts when we return next week and detail the excitement soon. It’s gonna be nuts!

AKA “The Coolest Girl We’ve Ever Met”

Normally I’m psyched to detail the weekend events and list the highlights of all the amazing things we got to see and do but unfortunately we had to end last weekend with a sad goodbye. Grit, our new friend from Germany is heading home very soon and our trip to Joshua Tree California was the last weekend adventure April and I got to enjoy with her. We had a great couple of days in J-Tree, visiting with friends, climbing routes, bouldering and hanging out.

I remember driving out of J-Tree after saying goodbye, looking in the rear view mirror seeing Grit walk away with her crashpad. How sad…actually…it wasn’t long until we started talking about ideas for a trip to Europe and plans to visit with her again. We’ll just have to make Grit jealous and show how much fun we’re having at Hueco by posting pics and trip reports so she decides to move back to the U.S. ha ha. WE’LL MISS YOU GRIT!

Quick Weekend Summary:

We signed up to volunteer at the Annual Hueco Tanks Interpretive Fair. It turned out to be a lot of fun. Luckily the weather was pretty nasty on Saturday morning so we didn’t feel too bad about not climbing (Sat morning). The Interpretive Fair is an event in which anyone from the public is allowed to enter Hueco Tanks (without reservations) and participate in the weekend festivities. There are many cultural exibits and booths to explore which give a great insight to the parks history. We were assigned to park cars throughout the morning and into the afternoon. When we were relieved by another set of volunteers the sun came out and the sky cleared up! By that time we were all psyched to go and to our advantage the park was open until 8:00PM. So, we were off to work projects and eventually we took a lantern down to the Martini Roof for some evening bouldering.

On Sunday we spent the entire day on N. Mt. doing tons of problems. No major sends to report of (except I finally did “Speedbump” V7) but there are some BIG potential sends on the horizion. Hopefully April, Grit, Vince, Tammy and I will come through by the end of the year and tick some SICK lines. Don’t worry, our video camera is fixed and we’re fliming for our next movie.

Sorry for the apadventures neglect. Things have been quite busy around here lately. So this entry will be a quick a dirty summary of what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks:

1. Grit. Grit is our new bud living in our guest house. She’s here from Germany for a few months working at the university. I met her at the gym one night and turns out we have a common friend from Germany. Small world. Anyway, not only are we psyched that she’s as psyched as us about climbing, but she also likes to run! and run and run and run. Grit, Paul and I just ticked off a 7.5 mile’r this evening. Whew. Paul and I finally broke the 7 mile mark…just barely. 🙂

2. Climbing. Climbing has been stellar as usual. We’ve been frequenting Flagstaff lately. Hitting up Priest Draw. The weather up in Flag is gorgeous…crisp fall wind and getting rather chilly at night. Can’t wait for the aspen leaves to turn. Last weekend Paul, myself, Grit, and Morgan went up with Miles who is real good fun. He helped develop the place a (few) years back and showed us some stuff we’d never seen before. Cool! Paul is still taking it easy on his finger that he tweaked back in May. But how easy can you take it when you’re climbing on Priest Draw pocket roofs? 😉

3. Training. We’ve got the campus board up!!! Grit and I started building it the weekend before last, Paul stained it with some nice weatherproofing stain, and just before we left for Priest Draw last weekend we finished it off. It stands tall and proud out back by the mamma woody, looking oh-so-good. The woody has been stripped and re-set. Courtney, Grit, Paul and myself spent a night last week eating those new peanut butter double stuff oreos and setting new problems. And this past weekend we picked up some cheap 2nd holds from Voodoo. Now if we could just find the time to get some cushy mattresses so we don’t have to “Climb At Your Own Risk” each night.

4. Biking. What?! More biking you say? Well, kinda. I *finally* succeeded in getting myself motivated to ride my bike to work and back last week. I only did it 1 day though, so don’t ooo and ahh yet. My butt was waaaaay to sore to climb back on the seat so soon. We’ll see how this week goes.

5. Morgan. Cute.

6. The adobe. Still hanging in there. Our list of home fix-up to-do’s keeps growing. The bathroom sink has been clogged for 5 months now. Brushing your teeth in the kitchen is not so bad…..

7. The old ball and chain. A major smoochy smoochy weekend is coming up for Paul and I. Oct 2nd will be our 1 year wedding anniversary! Amazing that one year has already gone by. What a fine year too at that. If the upcoming years will be anything like the first, I think it’s safe to say I made a real darn good pick with that Paul, heh heh. Anyway, we plan on spending it in Yosemite. CAN’T WAIT.

Here we are in Flagstaff, Arizona, sippin’ coffee and resting our weary selves at the Late for the Train coffee shop. Our extended weekend started off yesterday, Friday. We slept in at home in Tucson, then packed up our climbing gear, running sneaks, and mtn bikes and hit the road. “Whoa, wait a sec, mtn bikes?!” you say? Yes, I’ll admit, we’ve pretty much given up the mtn biking scene since we moved out west…..for the sole reason of obsessing exclusively over climbing. But lately we’ve had the itch. And we *finally* acted on it.

We arrived in Flag a little later than expected on Fri, so we decided to set up camp and finish the day off with a beautiful run along Lake Mary. Absolutely beautiful.

This morning we headed to Priest Draw for some bouldering. I guess the Flagstaff boulderers are late sleepers b/c we were literally the only ones there until about noon. Sweet. I had the boulder problem Anorexic all to myself. Highlight of the morning was me FINALLY sending the V4 traverse on the warm-up triangle boulder. For those of you that have seen our “Desert Bouldering” video, this is the problem where I fall at the end, right before the finish. Falling at the end was a trend for me many many times….so I was psyched.

Paul found this two move wonder near The Egyptian. First move is a dyno. Second move is a heinous mantle top-out. I got great butt crack footage of him beach-whaling over the top of the boulder, hehe. Once you grab the top of the boulder, you have to throw a heal up and then basically turn a lock-off into a mantle all in one motion, cause there’s no holds on the top. I was planning on opting out on trying this one, but since I was laughing so hard at Paul’s dramatic finish, he said “Now your turn.” The dyno was a no-go for me. But I make-believed the dyno and tried the mantle…..and did it!!! Must be all those pushups are paying off.

We bouldered from about 8am to 2pm, and then drove up to Shultz Creek trail to see how hard we could get our butts spanked on our mtn bikes. We started off up this super super rocky/bouldery single track. DAMN we’ve lost our skills!!! This trail is HARD! Turns out, we were on some Burrito Barfer trail or something like that….one that’s rated with skulls and stuff for the hardman biker. Whoopsies. Now where is that trail Miles recommended (the classic 5.9 of mtn bike trails, as he puts it). Pedal around a bit more, and finally we come to Shultz Creek trail. Stellar dude. After a mile or two we had our game back and were bouncing along through some modest technical sections. Waahooo! Why was it again we’d given up on biking? Oh yeah – too much time bouldering at Hueco. 😉

Well, that’s the scoop for now. We’re going to chow down tonight and get some good rest and do it all again tomorrow.

Here are a few pictures so far.

After telling story upon story about the bouldering mecca Hueco Tanks, we had to prove to our new friend Grit (from Germany) that we weren’t lying. She’s been climbing for three years but has never tried bouldering and was really psyched to see what the best bouldering in the U.S.A was all about. Turns out, Grit is a true boulderer.

It all started at a little get-together we had Thursday night with our climber friends. We got so psyched that we decided to leave for Hueco the next day and take our chances with the weather. Some friends said, “Dude, why go? It’s gonna be like 110 degrees out there.” I said, “No way man, it’s gonna be cloudy and about 80. Perfect for summer climbing.”

Turns out…it was cloudy and PERFECT!!! We spent Saturday on North Mountain re-visiting the classics and showing Grit just some of the hundereds of amazing lines that Hueco has to offer. On Sunday we joined some really nice new friends on an observation tour which led us to “The Gunks” and to the “Sausage Factory.”

Here are a few photos of the weekend but the video should capture the fun and excitement better. We’ll have footage up in a couple days.

On Sunday we decided to stay local and hit up Mt. Lemmon. Courtney, Marcus, April and I headed up to Windy Point and spent the day mixing it up. We managed to do some trad, sport and bouldering all in the same day! Overall it was just a super fun day and we’ve decided to mix it up a lot more on future climbing trips. Perhaps we’ll set our sights on something like “ Levitation 29.” ha ha. Stay tuned.

posted by pjv

Well here we sit in our favorite sandwich place in Las Cruces, NM, on our way home from Hueco. Sadly, we are not talking about my send of Baby Martini (my first V6) because, well, I didn’t send it…nor am I going to send it any time soon because we’re not coming back for a while. I’ve decided to leave this unfinished business for the time being because if I attempt it anymore, I may actually begin to hate one of the best boulder problems in the park. I’m so close, so very close. Last weekend was my best attempt I think, and had I not fudged my beta….who knows, maybe it would have went down. But…on to bigger and better things…..LET’S CLIMB SOME ROUTES NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5.12 here I come, haha.

posted by arr