Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Taylors Falls - 7/27/2008

It's the middle of the hot, muggy summer but I got out to Taylors on Sunday with Nic and Lynn as well as Justin Evidon. We started out in the Cave area and I managed to grease off the holds quite spectacularly at least once so quickly just went to work on improving some individual moves.

It was cool meeting Justin -- he is a very good photographer:

Check out his stuff at http://exposure.evidon.net -- or go straight to his rock climbing pictures at: http://exposure.evidon.net/Rock%20Climbing. You can see more pictures from our day by clicking on Taylors Falls > July 27th, 2008.

After hanging out there we went over to the Big Boy (or is it Peeler's Rock?) area and climbed Big Boy - a super cool V3 that I'd recommend to everybody to try if you are very comfortable at that grade and don't mind getting up off the ground a ways (this problem has sprained ankles before). We also climbed the face to the left of Big Boy. I don't know if it's got a name so I'll just refer to it as Big Boy Left. This ended up being another taylors classic in my opinion that I had not done before. It does have an awful landing but it is pretty easy - especially if you have a long wingspan - V0 probably if you can reach both aretes - but quite a bit harder and headier if you can't. It involves starting with 2 foot smears and a slopey hold and then popping your hands up 2 aretes, followed by a high step to a foot smear and a long stand up to the top jug -- really fun. You can find these boulder problems by continuing up the road past the Cave area and looking for the prominent prow to the right of the road and set back about 20-30 yards. Check out this quick video of Nic on Big Boy followed by me on Big Boy Left:

Taylors Falls - Big Boys from Neil Berget on Vimeo.

We finally ended the day by hanging out for a bit over at Mike's boulder. It sure was a hot and muggy day - but with the right mindset it was definitely worth getting out there. I certainly didn't expect to do a new line - let alone one as high a quality as Big Boy Left.

5 comments:

EricBerget said...

Great video...I can't believe how good that video quality is. I clearly saw an ant on top of the rock. Kudos to vimeo and whatever video camera your using.

Neil said...

Just my little digital handheld canon.

Peter said...

nice shots and vid. question: what is the problem on the pharaoh boulder arete to the left of pharaoh left. it seems like there's a sds and a stand start, the stand being significantly easier than the sit.

Neil said...

Hey Peter --
We've just been calling it Pharoah Arete. The sds has one hard move at the crux which I believe people are saying is V4-V5 and the stand is probably V1 or so. Really nice problem either way -- probably the best of the pharoah lines.

Peter said...

that sounds about right to me. I'm back in MN early/mid September. Psyched!