apAdventures

Paul and I spent Fri and Sat of Memorial Day weekend at Hueco….deadset on sending.

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Hueco Tanks, Texas
Friday, May 27th
Noonish

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 pjv

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 arr

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!

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!

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.

Paul and I (and Morgan!) decided to head up to Bishop, California for a 4-day weekend of bouldering.

Here are a bunch of photos documenting the journey

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.

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Last Sunday Vince, Tammy, Paul and I decided to warm up on the front side of North Mountain. There is a huge collection of V0s, V1s and a couple V2s near Mushroom Roof. After we ticked off nearly 10 problems we tried something a little more tricky. Here is some footage taken by Paul of Tammy and I, from the top of a really fun problem…

Tonight we had a small woody session at our place. Myself, Paul, Tammy and Vince. It was a good and fun night, although the energy was a little low – perhaps thanks to either the beer, or the detailed poop conversation…complements of Vince.

Here are a couple pics of us pulling down on the woody.

For those non-climbers:
Woody = Homemade climbing wall. Typically built out of plywood and 2x4s…hence the name “woody.”