Sawmill Creek Dome season begins...

I drove up on Friday night with Nic and Eric to Chad's place in Duluth and the four of us headed up to Sawmill on Saturday morning where Jim and Scott joined us for a great bouldering day. The temps aren't perfect yet but they are getting better and the air is getting drier as well. The colors were pretty much at their peak as well -- very pretty. It looks like it will be a good season for a lot of people up there.


We started the day by warming up on the standard warm-up problem - which I learned is called the Luscious Lips Traverse:

and following that with some problems I don't know the names of that are around the corner from Jaws and back behind Juggernaut. There was a nice arete problem and a little roof on the opposite side of the same boulder.

After warming up, I started working Sticky Icky (V7) with Eric. Eric came really close to doing this problem this spring and was ready to do it -- and sure enough he beared down and sent the problem after 3 or 4 tries. I gave it about 10 tries as well and made good progress on it. I had never stuck the first move before but managed to do it nearly every try this time and got the next few moves figured out before my fingers got too sore to do the whole thing. I'm pretty confident I'll do the problem next time I go up there.

Scott then went down and sent Jaws in a few tries to begin what was to be a great day for him. Soon after this, we all headed to work on Counselor Moon - a V7 on the face around the corner to the right of the tall slab. Scott sent this heady problem too and was really psyched - he made it look easy.

During this time, a lot of us were working on a double arete problem that I don't know the name of that was really fun:

The problem has a very short fall and isn't too hard so we weren't using pads on it - and of course I managed to blow off it elbow first into the rock below and bleed a bunch. Got it wrapped up with some paper towels and climbing tape and it was fortunately fine.

We then all went to the Exodus area and Jim went to work on the Left of Exodus project. He was working the stand start and nearly sent it -- got into the top out a few times but didn't quite do it. To the left of this is a problem called Umberger Helper (put up by Joe Umberger I guess?) that is pretty fun that I was able to do.

After this, we headed to My Stereo for a few tries on that and then headed home. Had some car problems so had to borrow jumper cables from some other people but we managed to make it home finally - at 2 am.

Scott, Me, Nic, Chad, Jim, Eric