January

As January wraps up, and New England stays buried in snow and ice, I will recap the last few weeks in which I actually got to climb on some rock. First off was Pawtuckaway. Nick and I cruised up there one day last week, expecting to climb on the bottom halves of snow-covered boulders. Upon arriving, we found that all but two boulders in the whole field were dry, and one of them was Chunk O Blitz. I'm not talking snowy top-outs, i'm talking fully iced-over walls. Chunk O Blitz was bone dry, not a single patch of snow or ice on the whole thing. I suppose it was meant to be. Anyways.. we immediately set to work in figuring out a sequence through the little block. Its a funny problem because you are trying to advance four vertical feet to a good hold at the lip, but it takes like eight different movements to get yourself to it. It is both frustrating and interesting at the same time. In a bizarre way, Chunk O Blitz exemplifies why I love bouldering so much.

The redpoint crux. 

Here is the sequence. Start sitting with your left hand on a horrible three-finger patch of friction on the left arete, and right hand on a crimpy sidepull. I start by putting a right heel hook on, in this tiny little ripple spot. I put my left foot on and squeeze this tiny dime edge, to get compression. The first move might be the crux. You pull on, which is hard, and slap right hand to this awful, sharp three finger sloper, you immediately sag down, and do a huge bump to a super sharp four finger sloper on the middle arete. The move is blind, and you must hit the sloper perfectly to engage a thumb catch, so I fell there many times as well. Once you stick that you squeeze really hard and take your left foot off the foot chip and front step a large, flat foothold directly above your right heel. Then you take your right heel off, and "toe hook smear" (toe hooking on nothing) the right wall. You sink super low and move your left hand to a decent four finger sloper on the left arete. 

Then you do the redpoint crux, which is crazy and perfect. As soon as you stick the left hand sloper you pull really hard with the right foot toe hook and do full extension slap to the right arete, its crazy because youre actually moving down on that move!

Downwards move.

 Then you switch your right toe hook to a heel hook and bump right hand to a good pinch on the right arete. From here its crazy because the hold youre going to is right in your face, but trying to grab it sends you right off the wall. i fell here twice from the start. instead, you release the heel and sag down low again, and bump your left hand about four inches higher on the left arete, to another little patch of friction. The you put your right heel back on and do a final hard move to the sloper on the lip. Once you grab that its a pretty easy match and v3 to the top. When I sent, I was panting and exhausted, since you have to be squeezing so hard for so long, and breathing between moves is tricky, since youre never resting. 

After I sent, I had two bleeding fingers, so we decided to call it a day. 

Two days later, Brian and I decided to go check out Farley, reasoning that since it is farther south, it must be dry. Things went wrong from the start, Brian got halfway up to the parking lot, and then slid down it, ending up horizontal across the road, inches from a eight foot deep ditch/pit. After two hours of sitting by the side of the road, we eventually got him pulled out. Upon hiking in, we were kind of relieved that every boulder except one was iced over, since we only had an hour and twenty minutes left to climb. The only dry boulder at Farley was Chronic, so we did the stand a few times to warm up and then did laps on chronic sit, and neighboring dope. We got burnt out on those pretty quick so I suggested we try the 'dope chronic' proj, which starts with your left hand on the right hand starting hold of dope, and right hand on the left hand starting hold on chronic sit. You paste a AWFUL foot, and do a large jump to a bad sloper in the slot. To put this climb in perspective. After warming up on chronic, I did chronic sit, a 'soft v10' five times in a row, while Brian did Dope, a notoriously hard v8/9 10 times in a row, including one time statically.  'dope chronic' took us a solid hour of projecting. If I were to compare it to chronic sit, I would call it a full 3/4 of a grade harder. Or something like that. Not v11 though. After doing it so many times, chronic sit feels more like v9/10, and 'dope chronic' feels middle of the road v10 to hard 10. Anyways, who is going to get the THIRD on it??

Lots of snow is happening, and I dont see a single day in the next two weeks of forecast that looks remotely reasonable for climbing, so it may be a while until rock is climbed again. 

Kai