Rose Ledge

Today, Liam, Doug, liams lil friend Katie and I cruised out to Rose Ledge in Erving to do some bouldering on the half dozen of problems that exist there. You may say "SIX problems? wtf, why not go to Farley where theres like 60??" ... Well the problems at Rose are very, very cool, and quite challenging and unique. We started off the day by climbing the stellar v5, called Chumbo. Chumbo consists of a hard lock off in the start, followed by 15 feet of juggy edges, leading to a nice mantle. After Chumbo, we made up some dynos to the left.. because the lip is just so damn cool. Anyways, after that we journeyed over to Farmstrong, a rad rad rad v6, with a hard rep. I'd done Farmstrong the last winter, but it was fun to play around on it, and repeat the moves for video.

The final jump on Farmstrong

Farmstrong has an INSANELY height dependent deadpoint at the top, which is impossible if one is under 5'10 or so. So We played around with other sequences. Next we went over to this cool power-endurance v7, which I had tried last winter, but proved to be too many moves for the 15 degree day, and I kept numbing out before I got to the jug. Anyways, I made my way up the line first go today, which felt pretty nice! Once we all did that, we tried this crazy v8 in a steep roof. The climb starts with a first move crux from two bad sidepulls into a incut gaston, which is hard to take with more than two fingers at first. 

Sticking the first move

After the first move, you cross over yourself to match the crimp and then pull onto the slopey slab. On my second try, I managed to stick the crux, and climb literally 2 inches from the top of the boulder, only to explode off the slimpers on the slab. After a few more similar tries, I decided to throw in the towel, but I have no doubt I will have no problem climbing the top under any circumstances other than sun and humidity. From there, we moved the pads 10 feet to the left and started trying Everything is Purple, a sweet, new, unrepeated v11. This climb is AWESOME. 10 moves out a short roof, leading to a 20 degree overhang, with slopers, crimps, heel-hooks, toe-hooks, edges, leading to a hard mantle. Almost all the parts are worked out on this beast, but it basically all comes down to one very hard v9-ish crux move, However, it was 77 and humid and sunny today, and even so it didnt feel to bad, so i'm very excited to come back this fall and start giving it serious tries. 

Crux sequence on Everything is Purple v11

Fall is in the air and I'm very very psyched. Every day seems to be cooler than the last, and i've spotted a low of 44 at night next week, so it'll be here soon. Until then its ice cream cookies and lowballs! 

-kai