Friday, October 17, 2008
Governor Dodge State Park Video
Governor Dodge State Park from Neil Berget on Vimeo.
Click through to Vimeo to see larger size, or full-screen here.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Governor Dodge State Park
This past weekend I drove out to Madison and met Nic and got a few hours in to check out Governor Dodge State Park. Governor Dodge has been seeing a lot of development recently and I've been interested in checking it out for quite awhile now. The climbing is all on featured sandstone - and while the rock quality is unfortunately low - I did find the problems to be fun and the setting very pretty.
We started the day by meeting up with Vince from Madison at the Camp B area who was psyched to show us around. We all warmed up on and near the Picasso wall which provided some fun introductions to the area.
Picasso Right:
Very quickly, however, we set sights on Sandstone Violence - a superb looking V8 in the area. To our knowledge, it has seen just 2 ascents so far:
The line starts standing on an obvious jug, then goes straight up into two really bad pinch crimps. Work your foot up, and go to a higher left hand crimp, switch feet, and go out right to a bad, side pull crimp and then a jump for the break. I tried it quite a few times but was never able to get past the 2 pinches but Nic quickly worked the bottom moves and after a few tries managed to grab the 3rd ascent! Video of the send (and more) is coming soon.. I definitely would like to get back out there and work on it more myself too -- wish it wasn't so far away.
After Sandstone Violence, we went over to the other side of the Backbone and to check out the Hangman/Excalibur area.. Hangman is a traverse on slopers culminating in a dyno to the top. Very fun moves.
And finally, we headed over to the Godfather boulder. The Godfather is quite a tall, proud looking line that goes at about V4/V5. The pockets were pretty painful to pull on, but that was probably because it was toward the end of the day. We both managed to get this one on our first tries:
Another cool line in the area is the jump start problem around the corner to the left -- footage of this coming as well..
All in all, a fun day of bouldering. It's a very scenic area with pretty fun problems although it's too bad you're always slightly afraid the holds you're pulling on might break.
We started the day by meeting up with Vince from Madison at the Camp B area who was psyched to show us around. We all warmed up on and near the Picasso wall which provided some fun introductions to the area.
Picasso Right:
Very quickly, however, we set sights on Sandstone Violence - a superb looking V8 in the area. To our knowledge, it has seen just 2 ascents so far:
The line starts standing on an obvious jug, then goes straight up into two really bad pinch crimps. Work your foot up, and go to a higher left hand crimp, switch feet, and go out right to a bad, side pull crimp and then a jump for the break. I tried it quite a few times but was never able to get past the 2 pinches but Nic quickly worked the bottom moves and after a few tries managed to grab the 3rd ascent! Video of the send (and more) is coming soon.. I definitely would like to get back out there and work on it more myself too -- wish it wasn't so far away.
After Sandstone Violence, we went over to the other side of the Backbone and to check out the Hangman/Excalibur area.. Hangman is a traverse on slopers culminating in a dyno to the top. Very fun moves.
And finally, we headed over to the Godfather boulder. The Godfather is quite a tall, proud looking line that goes at about V4/V5. The pockets were pretty painful to pull on, but that was probably because it was toward the end of the day. We both managed to get this one on our first tries:
Another cool line in the area is the jump start problem around the corner to the left -- footage of this coming as well..
All in all, a fun day of bouldering. It's a very scenic area with pretty fun problems although it's too bad you're always slightly afraid the holds you're pulling on might break.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Taylors Falls
Been way too long since my last post.. Hopefully more coming soon..
I had a great time this past Saturday showing Brian, aka the ClimbingNarc, and his wife Amy around to most of the best problems at Taylors. The 3 of us started by warming up on the river boulders down below the Cave area on the WI side and soon moved up the hill to the Pharoah and Cave boulders where we spent the next few hours. One of the largest groups of people I've seen at the cave was out and the energy level was great! After hanging out at the cave awhile -- where Brian flashed the Midget Stand and did the Sit in a few tries and I had my best go yet on the Traverse (will send soon - somebody hold me to it) -- we headed up to do the always fun Big Boy problems. And finally, to end the day, I gave them a tour of the MN side where we ended up hanging out in the B2 pit.
Anyway -- had a great time -- and although most readers of this blog probably know this already, Brian wrote up a great post about it too and has some sweet pictures of me not doing the Traverse:
http://climbingnarc.com/2008/10/taylors-falls-bouldering
I had a great time this past Saturday showing Brian, aka the ClimbingNarc, and his wife Amy around to most of the best problems at Taylors. The 3 of us started by warming up on the river boulders down below the Cave area on the WI side and soon moved up the hill to the Pharoah and Cave boulders where we spent the next few hours. One of the largest groups of people I've seen at the cave was out and the energy level was great! After hanging out at the cave awhile -- where Brian flashed the Midget Stand and did the Sit in a few tries and I had my best go yet on the Traverse (will send soon - somebody hold me to it) -- we headed up to do the always fun Big Boy problems. And finally, to end the day, I gave them a tour of the MN side where we ended up hanging out in the B2 pit.
Anyway -- had a great time -- and although most readers of this blog probably know this already, Brian wrote up a great post about it too and has some sweet pictures of me not doing the Traverse:
http://climbingnarc.com/2008/10/taylors-falls-bouldering
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
