Stop the Madness...

Oh what a trip.. The Murphy's Law climbing trip. It's finally all over now..

Here's the rundown:
3 of us got ridiculously sick (puking guts out/not eating anything for 3 days/losing 10 pounds sick)
everybody got injured at some point: a tendon in my left knee and a tendon in my arm connected to right ring finger (which will probably keep me from climbing for a month), eric and nic pulled hamstrings and couldn't heel hook, chad sprained an ankle

Oh well -- even an awful climbing trip is still much better than sitting at home on the couch. I had a great time hanging with friends and met a lot of really cool people from around the world. Hueco is beautiful and I do hope to get back again.

The exact moment of tendon injury:


Final day:

Hueco Update #3

Still in Hueco. Everybody seems to be at close to 100% health finally........

(PUNCH!KICK!POW!)

TAKEOVER-

by Nicholas Oklobzija

back to 100% my ass.


Let us take role

skin- well I have a full pad flapper (pointer finger) f'n power of silence (still not sent)
stomach- able to eat however I left Minnesota at 152 and am now at most 143.... WTF!
muscles- looking amazing seeing that i have rested and sunbathed more then i have climbed
friends- great as always, yet we could hang out in minnesota (did not need to spend 700$ to go chill in a coffee shop in el paso) not my idea of a good time.
family- lost a great woman in my family this week and a key player in my life (we will miss you bonnie!)
girl friend- is wishing she would have thought twice about "us" (joke)

but on the bright side i would change nothing... this will be the trip of my life (i just have to kick ass these next couple days) if all go's well i will climb "dark age" v11, "power of silence" v10, and "diaphanous sea" v11/12. I do not want to sound like a baby i am just letting the public get the real story kinda like cnn?

well neil is coming to better go before he wakes up..

peace,

-----------------

........okay back to Neil here...Nic is right - this trip has really sucked at times and featured extreme hits to our psyche but we still have a week to go and things are on the up.

I sent Baby Face V7 on Friday on my 2nd try of the day which is one of the best lines I've done. My sights are now firmly set on Adjust Your Attitude - a roof V8 with some of the craziest moves I've tried. I have all but one of the moves worked out and it feels close.

Chad and Eric are both working on projects as well. Chad hopes to do Baby Martini V6 and Eric has done King Cobra V6 is making progress on Speed Bump V7. Nic has done the Right hand variation of Free Willy V9 and has his projects as well.

Jeff Fink joined us this weekend for his first outdoor bouldering experience -- quite an introduction this was! He really enjoyed climbing on a whole lot of fun problems throughout North Mountain. Nice work Jeff!

Dan and Andy have left us to go back home. It was fun climbing with these guys and too bad to see them go.


Here's my send of Baby Face:


Nic On Free Willy:


Jeff on a nice line:


Warming up:


Chad:


Adjust Your Attitude:

Hueco Update

Not much to report. I got food poisoning or something a few days ago and am just now getting better from it. Yesterday was my first day of climbing since my first day and I was really weak as I've eaten hardly any food for the past 3 days. I did make some progress on Baby Face and have no doubt that I will send it when I stop hyperventilating after 2 moves :). I'm falling currently going for the 2nd pinch on the arete.

I'm not the only one feeling under the weather so it seems only Chad has really been doing much of any climbing. He did a nice V5 called Lobster Claw:


After this, he and Andy went to work on Lithologic and Andy did it 2nd go. Here's Chad on it who is also very close:

Hueco Tanks Day 1

We've all made it to Hueco. Eric Johnson, Chad Johnson, Nic Oklobzija and myself met up with Dan and Andy Kolar and our trip has begun. On Sunday (the 13th) we started the trip with a circuit of amazing easier problems. I commented after the day was over that this day was probably the greatest climbing day of my life as measured by sheer number of mega-classic problems done for the first time on a single day.

We started by doing the V0 problem Melon Patch. This is a tall, beautiful face covered in large jug huecos and was the perfect way to start the trip:


After this we hiked over to check out the Terremer/Diaphanous Sea cave to look at the amazingly small holds on Terremer. We then did a V1 highball slab problem called Hershey's Symphony:

We all did this one a couple times and Nic started working the moves to Diaphanous Sea:

After this we walked over and did the V3 Sign of the Cross. I was very psyched to flash this one.

After this, we went over to check out the V10 Power of Silence and Nic started trying it. He almost did it his second try of this trip, getting into the left hand gaston slot and falling going for the top. I'm sure he'll get this one soon.

After this, we hiked up the chains and all did the V2 roof problem Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive. Very fun moves on jug holds out a horizontal roof:

We then went and did the super long, amazing V2 problem Ghetto Simulator. Props to Chad for flashing this one. I got too pumped my first try but did it second go. It is the longest ropeless problem I've ever done. But it parallels a big slab behind you the whole way that if you get into trouble you can step off at any time.

After this we headed up to the Baby Face area. Eric did a V6 problem in about 2 tries called Daily Dick Dose that he has worked in years past and made it look easy:

I gave Baby Face a few tries and am really psyched to do this one. I think when I come back fresh I will do it right away (hopefully!). This is probably the best V7 I've ever seen:

All in all an amazing start...

2007 (Personal Bouldering) Review

How strange it sometimes seems to measure success in terms of 10 to 20 foot sections of rock. Start on the ground and get to the top, using the hardest section of rock you can find or manage.. Stepping back and imagining this sport from a non-participants perspective is always good for a chuckle and maybe a healthy dose of perspective. But no matter how hard it is to explain and how tired I get of explaining why climbing without ropes is not the suicidal pursuit non-climbers perceive it as I am currently of the conclusion that this sport is truly the greatest sport.

2007 was quite a year for my personal climbing development. I'm not the strongest guy around but fortunately success is a personally defined attribute in climbing and by my reckoning - this was easily my most successful year yet.

I've been climbing for 6 years now -- starting in late 2001 hanging from top ropes at VE. Before the start of 2007, I had never climbed anything harder than V5 and my interest in the sport was actually at an all time low -- By late 2006 I had hardly climbed in 6 months. But then two things happened. First, on Thanksgiving Day 2006 Eric Johnson found the single most amazing boulder I've seen anywhere practically in his cabin's backyard and second, my first trip to Bishop (and first climbing trip anywhere for more than 2 or 3 days) in January 2007.

The boulder discovery was important to me as it injected a new interest in Minnesota bouldering in me. At that time I was bored with Taylors and frustrated at Sawmill (since then my attitude has shifted significantly on both these places) so the possibility of new lines on amazing rock was a huge shot in the arm and motivating to get stronger and contribute to its development.

The trip to Bishop opened my eyes to how beautiful and fulfilling spending time among rocks can be. On that trip I think I completed only a single boulder problem but I was in school the entire week and learned an immense amount about how to move on rock and what my body was capable of pulling on. I came back very psyched to get stronger and ready to plan the next trip somewhere.

Well, to make a long story short, I did go on more trips and I have gotten a lot stronger. Joe's Valley in Utah twice -- once in April with a group of friends and back again in May alone (I did meet up with friends I'd met on the road). A quick trip to Colorado where I got completely shut down but still had fun. A week in Horsepens 40 in Alabama in the fall on the crazy sandstone. And back to Bishop for a second time to close out the year where I climbed everything I had left undone a year ago. Not to mention dozens of local trips to Taylors, Sawmill and the development of the Cabin/Big Swirly Boulder up north which has exceeded all of our expectations. Favorite problems of the year include Scary Monsters V6 in Joe's, High Plains Drifter V7 and Saigon V6 in Bishop, The Sycamore V2/3 at the Cabin Boulder but I can think of dozens more that were a blast.

While I do think it is important not to place too much emphasis on grades, they are the most obvious way of measuring progress. So as long as you're not skipping over amazing problems just because of their low grade or searching out only the soft problems to inflate your tick list I think it is important to be trying to increase what grades you are capable of climbing over time. For me personally I was able to go from having never climbed a V6 to climbing 15 problems V6 and above including 7 V7's in the past year. To me that is solid progress and I'm quite proud of this. I hope to continue to get stronger and hopefully break into some V8's and hopefully beyond soon. Who knows -- maybe in Hueco in 2 weeks I can get started.

Another aspect of climbing that has become quite clear to me is how wonderfully social the sport is. I've made some great friends in the past year and developed older friendships further as a direct result of climbing. There are of course some loud exceptions, but it seems the vast majority of people you run into at climbing destinations are some of the coolest and friendliest people around. The more you travel the more you begin to run into the same people randomly at different places around the country and pick up where you left off with people. How crazy is that? Not too many activities allow that. It's also funny how diverse the people are that get drawn together. 16 year old kids stand next to 40 year olds and everyone in between equally enthused and cheering each other on as equals to succeed. There are of course dramatic exceptions and occasional back-biting but that seems to be the exception.

Well, I've written this mainly for myself but perhaps some of you out there that read this found something of interest in here. Thank you to the friends I've been able to share this year with and here's to a great 2008...

End of Trip

I'm just killing time in the Las Vegas Airport - about to celebrate the new year's here in Terminal D...woohoo!

We finished the trip by heading to the Happies. I was able to barely do Action Figure - a V6 I couldn't do last year. This was particularly nice for me as it completed for me every problem I got on last year that I gave any significant effort to that I didn't do -- basically met all my trip goals and assured myself that I have indeed gotten significantly stronger in the past year.

I also did Ketron Classic -- a very nice V4.

Eric worked out all the individual moves on Cholos and has another project to dream about: