I woke up the second day of the trip feeling a bit more refreshed. My fingers was still sore, so I relegated myself to the role of photographer. This means that this one will have lots of photos. The plan for today was to meet up with Kevin in Prescott, and then to link up with a large group of boulderers at Groom Creek.
Bouldering or crag party?
It's been a solid year since I last went to Groom. The timing was never right to go and work the projects, and I haven't felt much enthusiasm to go and repeat some of the climbs there. The boulders there are of the granite variety, and climbing them involves more of moving around features rather than holds. Secondly, the rock quality is quite good, but can be a bit crumbly.
The first stop for the day was the Dangling Woo Lee boulder, which is home to many easy problems, and a single moderate, which is the Dangling Woo Lee Bastard (V5) line. It is the extension of the Dangling Woo Lee (V3) boulder and includes a gnarly sideways hand toss to a slot where your body is completely rotated 90 degrees. It's quite the low probability move, but it is fun to mess about on it since it is low to the ground. I gave the Dangling Woo Lee Bastard an attempt at the day flash, and stuck the toss, but managed to chuff the swing around.
Photography wise, the Dangling Woo Lee Boulder is interesting to photograph, as you are able to get some top-down shots of people climbing. It was my first time taking shots at that angle, so here are a few of them.
Ari going all in
Derek bringing on the tryhard
Aaron dialed in
Afterwards, we went over to the Moonstone problem (V6). Moonstone is a very classy looking problem that consists of holds that are single-pad crimpy jugs slots, with dynamic moves in between them. The crux is to repeat an airy toss four times to holds that get increasingly worse as you get closer to the end. To better describe the movement, it's similar to how salmon swim up through the river when it comes to lay their eggs. The bears waiting to prey on the salmon is gravity waiting to pull you down as soon as you miss. Therefore, you will require a very aggressive and confident disposition to make it through. I managed to lap this a few times, including a personal speed record of 26-29 seconds.
Video Credits: Dom
Photography wise, the moonstone problem is very fun to shoot since you can get all 4 limbs of the climbers. Here's a few of my favorite shots:
Kevin getting started on the problem
Lilia core-ing up!
Carmen with the tiger eye
Amelia with the flexibility
Crossed up, dude!
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Halo showing his guns
Noah being too cool for school
I also caught some shots of Donovan working Eclipse, which he put down in a single session. Eclipse is another classic problem that requires a wicked left heel hook at the start to some improbable looking grips. We also discussed a problem he FA'd at Cherry Canyon, called Juggernaut, so I would like to check that out when the roads open up again.
Donovan with the flow
Afterwards, we messed around on the Space Lord highball, and then ended the Groom Creek day at Bill's grill. A solid afternoon.
That night, I returned back to the draw with Kevin for a midnight Mars Roof session. It's been a while since I've returned back to Mars roof, so while I worked on familiarizing myself with the sections of Receptionist (V10) again, Kevin got his first taste of some Mars Roof grips.
Kevin
Twisted up
Heart-shaped Cam
Locked in
Going big
On the hunt!
We also got some super cool night shots of the full moon, and then called it a good night.
I made a promise to myself that when I did this blog, it was going to be once a week. And now, it's been at least two weeks since I've written anything. So it's overdue, but here's a trip report. But first, a cool picture of me climbing on my birthday:
Working the Receptionist for a birthday trip
Thanks Kevin!
It's been a solid week since I got back from my 26th birthday trip from the 17th to 20th. Initially the planning was a bit haphazard, since Northern AZ has seen a spree of forest fires due to man-made causes (burning toilet paper). It may be a bit morbid to say, but I know a few people who would bash in that guy's kneecaps for doing so. Anyways, for the week going up to it, I was scoping out the weather daily, as well as whether the forest roads would even be open. Here's a link to the Coconino national forest service roads to see what's currently open, and what isn't.
Anyways, I was primarily concerned with the following forest roads: FR 132, FR 235, FR 231. Fortunately, they were all open during my trip, so that means the roofs are open and ready for business. Additionally, unlike the weather forecast predicted, there wasn't any rain, and there was a surprising lack of bugs. This was how my trip broke down.
Friday: 6/17/22 - Priest Draw
There wasn't much going on this day at first. It was quite hot during the day time so I floundered around the draw solo. I started off at the Bat Cave. My fingers were also hurting that morning, so it was a little disheartening falling off the Bat Cave. I tried to do it forward and backward, and wasn't able to get it down until two hours into my session. I then went to try Saltine Crackwhore (V8-10) on the Saucer Roof. It's an interesting climb! There's two memorable things about this one:
The first move is god awful hard. Maybe it was due to the humidity, but for the life of me, I could not stick the toss to the greasy slopey pinch.
Near the end of the climb, there is a cool straight-arm gaston with a pseudo hand-foot match that leads to several right arm bumps and a foot-first finish on good holds.
I managed to do all the moves except for the first one, so I'm looking forward to going back to it. I then called it quits on that session and went to set up my hammock, and rest for an evening session with Evan in hopes that it would go better.
Fortunately, the second session went much better. Evan was still at work, so I did some solo laps on my old projects. I managed to recapture footage of Twister (again) in good style, as well as several laps on Anorexic Sacrifice. The videos are shown below:
Twister (Better Style)
Anorexic Sacrifice
Afterwards, my finger was starting to hurt, so I called it quits on climbing and picked up the role of being a photographer for Evan, who's working on Anorexic Sacrifice (V6). It was my first time legitimately picking up the role of photographer, so it was exciting to learn what worked for some photos, and what didn't. I'll upload a few here!
Afterwards, we parted ways after I used his shower at his place and introduced myself to Rudy, his dog that he adopted from the shelter- and then went to hammock in the woods. Before I went to sleep, I took a couple more long exposure shots of the stars. Flagstaff is a dark sky city, so the pictures were amazing.
A pretty good first day!
here's the breakdown of climbs done, and V-points associated with them:
Bat Cave (V3) - 2 V-points
Bat Cave Reversed (V3) - 2 V-points
Fin (V1-2) - 1 V-point
Horn to the Fin Exit (V?) - 2 V-points
Saltine Crackwhore (V8-10) - 1 V-point for trying and getting most of the moves except for 1
It's been about two hectic weeks since I updated this blog. It's a lot trying to sort out my thoughts, so this post might have to be continually updated as I'm now sifting through all my thoughts and impressions. Before I continue, here's a picture of a cute dog I met during Memorial Day weekend, Lucille.
Yours truly driving Lucille on the way to grab dinner in town
Anyways... the last two weekends I've been climbing at the draw which is nothing too new. Phoenix is getting way too hot, so I'm taking any chance I can to head up north. Unfortunately, gas prices are at an all-time high, so I'm now stuck in between a desire to escape the heat, and to save money on gas. Nevertheless, I'm not the only person who's been escaping up north- the last two weekends have been very busy.
Memorial Day weekend ended up being a trip down memory lane, as I relived my experiences when I first started climbing at the draw by watching visiting climbers on the roofs i.e. lots of falling, misguided optimism, and general confusion about the climbing style. Having climbed here consistently for the last two years, I forgot that the style here is unique. It's a good reminder, and is worth remembering whenever I go to new crags that learning the style is important.
One thing that remained very prominent in my mind that weekend was how much of the climbing is knowledge based. There was a surge of folks coming to the draw from all over the states trying there hand at, and not getting very far, on the lines, and I realized that a lot of it was due to copying beta from the beta videos without spending the time to understand what was going on.
One good example of this was on the Bad Ass roof. Bad Ass got so much traffic that weekend, but it's pretty easy to understand why: it has a nice topout, isn't too high, and has so many beta videos. That being said, lots of beta videos don't mean they are going to be good. On one point, I'm happy to know that I've dialed in the roof beta well, and on another point, I'm a bit upset to know that there are beta videos (Tim's and mine) that depict how to do this roof very casually in a short frame of time, and yet people were trying the weirdest contortion betas and low percentage moves that take twice as long. What a weird conundrum. For your viewing pleasure, I'll grab both videos from Youtube and upload them here.
Me
Tim
To keep it brief, I spent most of that weekend running laps on old projects on whatever roofs we visited, while occasionally convincing some people to come out to Mars Roof so I could also work on my projects. I added a list of roofs I visited with the people and climbs.
Saturday:
Bad Ass Roof (Amanda, Brett)
Bad Ass x5
Mars Roof (Amanda, Brett, Locals)
Receptionist (chunked in three)
Floorpie Roof (Cole, Meredith, Grayson, Antho)
Twister x2
Sunday:
She Lives Roof (Cole, Meredith, Grayson, Antho)
Unnamed V3 x2
Grayson's V3 to the left of She Lives Roof (maybe his FA?) x1
Bad Ass Roof (Cole, Meredith, Grayson, Antho)
Bad Ass x5
Stinky Ass x1.5 (foot slipped during drop knee on first go)
Mars Roof @ night (Cole, Meredith, Grayson, Antho, Milz)
Receptionist (chunked in three, again)
Monday:
Bad Ass Roof (Amanda, the rest of the US)
Bad Ass x5
Big Block x2
Stinky Ass x1
Anorexic Roof (Amanda, locals)
Anorexic x1
Meateater x0.5 (did the traverse over, but didn't have the juice/skin to get the full send late in the afternoon)
Overall thoughts about the climbs: For the repeats, I am doing them in better style, more quickly and more often. Project-wise, Receptionist feels hard, but doable in that I can chunk it when I'm tired and my skin is completely shot. The process feels similar to how I felt about Moonstone, where I'm unsure if my fingers are ready for the task. The receptionist can be broken down into two parts: A roof, and then the headwall. When attempting the headwall, there are some half-pad underclings with high feet. I'm not sure if my fingers are used to that, so I've started doing some training- hangboard repeaters in hope that they'll raise my confidence by getting my fingers ready, and some core work (hanging knee raises, and knee windshield wipers).
Movement and tactics wise: I've started realizing that the skin on my fingers is kind of like the rubber on the bottom of your shoe. If you place it well, your skin won't tear as much. I'm going to keep that in mind, as well as learning to keep my torso close to the wall when reaching. These are simple lessons, but worth remembering as long as they mean something new every time you revisit them.
The next Saturday, I took a day trip to climb with Evan at Drop Zone. Before meeting up in the afternoon, I spent some time getting some new footage. I primarily was interested in getting footage of the foot-first beta on Meateater, but I also decided to toss in a video of the Bat Cave. Additionally, I spent some time improving my jump beta on Carnivore. I didn't get footage of that, but it was important to note that going out to the hueco required my left leg to be closer to my midline than my left arm, but I also needed to go outwards in a hip-squared motion. I was able to stick the move 3 times in a row. The videos are shown below:
Meateater
Bat Cave
Drop Zone was rough. It turns out that a key foot had broken on Drop Zone left, which allows for shorter people to cam their foot to hit a key grip, but without it, it seems like it does not go for the shorter folk, 6'0", or under. Fortunately, Evan is 6'1", with a positive ape, so he still has hope. It looks like I'll have to go for Drop Zone Center as a substitute, which currently seems out of my pay grade, but I would need to actually try it.
Afterwards, we went to Bat Cave for some endurance, and where I managed to climb Bat Cave to the lip, and reverse it all the way back to the Fin. What a good work-out. At least some progress has been made on this project. Additionally, I was made aware of a 5.12b variant, which bypasses the lip during part of the traverse and goes direct. I've also started taking a look at another project close on the Flying Saucer Roof: Saltine Cracker/Crackwhore. The grips seem cool, so I can't wait to play on it. In a grade-chasing sense, it also seems easy for the grade, but I wouldn't know until I actually climb it. I'm taking a break from the roofs this week, but I plan to be out north again next weekend as it'll be my celebration for making another year round the sun.
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