Icarus

The fall bouldering season is in full effect here in western mass, and as always, things are looking up!

 The weather has been relatively reliable with lots of days in the 40s and 50s. More importantly my finger has all of the sudden started feeling better after more than two months of injury. I don't want to jinx it, and i'm still rarely able to close my hand on crimps, but I can finally feel it moving in a positive direction, so with any luck i'll be back to full health by Turkey day! 

The biggest thing I have to write about is doing the FA of my slab project on the backside of the Speed of Life boulder, which I cleaned in summer 2015. It took a while to clean it, and then another session in order to figure out a sequence and do the moves on top rope. I got reacquainted with it at the end of this summer, on a super muggy day, and linked the top crux on TR. I found that one of the biggest cruxes was that the wall is super gritty, so every time you would step on a smear, a bunch of sandy grit would come off onto your shoe, and then make it really easy to skate off the next smears because of the dirty shoes. Anyways, the more I tried it, and the more I refined the beta and brushed the holds, the less of a problem it became. 

An important thing to note about this problem which is hard to see in the photos is that there is a boulder which makes up tiered landing, so the ground is 4 or 5 feet higher on one side, which is nice since the very last move is totally safe, but scary because the bigger falls to the lower tier can happen from the more sketchy foot crux moves in the middle, where you are more likely to take a violent fall when the feet pick off.  

So the climb starts out in a juggy fingerlock, and you do a couple easy moves in the crack and then reach up really high above your head to an undercling crimp. 

Then you step your left foot up onto a smear that is just a flat spot on the wall, and cross over yourself to get a gaston on the higher part of the crimp. Then you stand up and put your right foot on a decent smear that is only a few inches from both your hands, and stand all the way up to get a mono-crystal with your right hand. This move is the first really scary one. 

Then you stand up higher and get another mono crystal for your left and do the crux, which is a three move foot sequence in order to get your left foot way out left into a dish. From here you can stand up to the lip. 

Anyways, a couple weeks ago, after a long day climbing with Liam, I decided to go throw a rope down in to dial in the sequence in order to give it some goes the following weekend. After doing the crux moves Dean and Liam were like "dude you should just take some practice falls from the crux" and i was like ".. okay I guess thats a good idea" and it totally caught off guard. On my first go from the ground I fell off the very last move, somehow staying very calm throughout the whole crux section and bad fall zone. After that go I realized I could do it, and after 3 (!!!) more falls from the last move, I managed to do it, naming it "Icarus Instinct" because of your natural urge to jump to the higher tier of the landing for safety.. and because falls from the middle are big and its like you're.. flying.. or something like that..   

Anyways, A couple days later we went out with a big crew, and everyone took bad falls, and came close, but only Liam was able to squeak it out for the second ascent, despite his own hilarious final move punts. I managed to get some video it, which will be featured in a new project we're working on. 

Oh I also did this sweet v5.. 

More blogs soon! 

Kai