Past, Present, Future, aka: Memorial Day Weekend, Drop Zone, Project updates

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.