FeralBlog

My sister is packed and ready. I’m nearly packed as well, and excited as hell. After all the crazy shit of the last few weeks I can’t wait to have a few days where I do nothing but climb 5.10 jug hauls all day and scoop monster pots all night. I’ll do my best to keep both climbing and poker journals, so I can satisfy all 4 of my readers equally.

I think I had almost forgotten that my sister and I had planned a trip out to Vegas this fall. I sort of panicked when I realized that the dates were almost here, so I now have flight, hotel and car reservations. I went budget all the way, since the hotel is only going to be for sleeping at night. We’re staying at the Golden Palm Casino, which I never even heard of before. (Apparently it used to be the HoJo’s?)

The purpose of our trip is two-fold: climbing and poker. With Red Rocks just about a half hour away from downtown, the plan is to climb in the mornings, then head back to town to shower and hit up a cheap buffet for dinner. I expect it will be thoroughly exhausting and thoroughly enjoyable. I haven’t been on a rope in months, so the next few weeks I actually need to start getting my ass to the gym; at the very least to do 4×4s to build up some semblance of endurance (and callouses). My sister has been out of practice too, with some issues that have kept her from climbing. We’ll both be flailing our way up 5.9s and 5.10s, but apparently Red Rocks has them in abundance!

This weekend I went with Paul and April and their friend Miles to check out Jack’s Canyon, up in the north part of the state. I had heard that it was a completely manufactured place; just a cliff line that had been grid-bolted, each line 5 feet to the left of the last one. I was pleasantly suprised to find a good variety of climbs there. Yes, there were lots of drilled pockets. But that didn’t change that the quality of the rock and the climbs themselves were pretty darn good. Several of the climbs actually reminded me of some routes at Summersville Lake/New River Gorge. Best climb was an 11c that I was way too out of shape to do, but could see myself struggling up in pretty short order if I keep going to the gym like I plan on.

There are some pictures here, including a fantastic shot of the sunset made all the more impressive by all the wildfires in the area.

Last night was my inglorious return to the world of route climbing. Some serious life shit going on, so it was nice to go and sweat and grunt and try to not think about other things. Today my hands hurt, my shoulders are sore, and I’m eager to do more of the same.

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P1010078, originally uploaded by feralboy.

The whole tags thing seems to have taken off.

Pictures are posted. Full trip report and Thankgiving menu breakdown coming shortly.

Finally got my home computer up and running (I’ve been surfing porn working only on my work desktop since I got here), and dug out my movie archives. I had tried to save most of the good video clips from the now-defunct climbxmedia.com while it was still un-defunct. I’m going to give all the post-Dosage Vol 1 videos to Paul so he can make a DVD out of them.

For anyone who remembers the site I’m posting a few of the better clips:

Dave Graham and crew tear it up at Rumney

Klem Loskot deep water soloing in Spain

Joel Brady on a cool project in New England

Some Cockney dude on his woody (heh heh heh)

Paul and I just put the last plywood sheet into place, and we’re ready to start setting routes and climbing on the thing!

All pictures here.

This past weekend Paul, April and I headed down to a little-known climbing spot just outside of El Paso, Texas: Hueco Tanks.

Update: Vince sent me some pictures he took as well. See those here.

All photos I took here. (more…)

Paul and April took me on my first outdoor climbing excursion yesterday. We drove up to the top of Mt. Lemmon to check out what the local crag had to offer. First of all, the drive up the mountain is totally amazing. The desert floor drops away, and you completely change scenery going from saguaro to scrubby pines to full trees as you get higher and cooler (totally forgot to bring the camera).

To get to the areas, you drive nearly to the very top, and then hike down, past the cliffs you’re about to climb on. After a decent hike in, we tried out a few “warmup” problems (easy 11s). The type of rock on Mt. Lemmon is totally different from what I’m used to at the New River Gorge. The rock here is very sharp, with lots of quartz crystals. This is good because you can make use of a lot of blank-looking sections because of the friction, but bad because I don’t have very good callouses built up right now, so today my tips are blown.

After the warmup we hiked a little further down to head to an area called “The Orafice”. There were a few problems there that Paul and April wanted to work on there. To get there you have to shuffle across a foot-wide ledge, and then go around a corner and hook your harness into a safety line. P + A started across, and I looked and looked and looked and bailed. We were at least 500 feet above the rocks below, and one slip meant you were dead. I had visions of a foot giving way (it was sort of loose-looking choss), or a strong wind coming around the corner or something. That plus trying it with a loaded pack did not sound like my idea of fun, so as crappy as it made me feel I stopped. P + A were super-cool about it, and told me their first trip there they had bailed too, until some guy came and basically made them go across it.

Instead, we went down a really steep section of the cliff, past where a lot of the fire damage was from last year (burned trees and blistered rocks everywhere), and did a HARD 11 which was super-exposed, with a gorgeous view of the other mountains in the range, and all of Tucson spread out below that. Paul got the redpoint, and April and I both went up on TR. By the time I got to the top (long route, like 14 bolts or something) I was wasted. Not tired, so much, but no skin left, so all the prickly holds at the top felt horrible.

It was a fun place, but I’m still in bouldering mode, which is great because we’re going to Heuco next weekend!!! Hot weather be damned, we’re going to try and find all the shady spots, and just walk around and pick out some projects for the fall and winter. I’ve heard so many cool things about Heuco, combined with the video that P + A shot there, that I can’t wait to see it!