Hard, Unrepeated American Boulders

James Litz’s Morphine is one of the sickest problems I’ve seen. Been to Hueco many times…seen many of the 14′s there…watched Litz on Esperanza….The holds on morphine make some of the holds on esperanza look like jugs. razors on a roof…crazy….

yep the book is absolutely amazing! and i am very close, hopefully i will get back out there sometime in the near future. also boz’s line is not in the gunks, it is at the horse den. i have been there one time and the day i was there it was soaking wet. i tried it little bit and got close even though it was wet. imo i would prolly think soft 8b, but yet again i did not do it so my thoughts dont really count until i go out and do it. i know that the line will appear in dosage volume 5 in the northeast dose though!

tim clifford graded the singularity (aka round room project) as V14.

also, the 8a article tries to focus on routes put up a long time ago that stand unrepeated. climbs like warpath, nuclear war, and mandala direct assis were just put up pretty recently..

i think instead of focusing on V14 and up, this list should include any climbs that are V12 or higher that were put up over 5 years ago but have not been repeated..

meathook in colorado – jim holloway
morphine – litz
chinese arithmetic – litz
book of bitter aspects
etc etc

There were rumors of a repeat of morphine by a guy named Pydora (not sure of his last name). I believe he did it in a day. Brian Camp knows more about this.

A good list is up on udini.de: http://www.udini.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25&Itemid=102

I like this part

The current state of rating hard bouldering/climbing is like the 100m sprint without any direct comparison, face to face competition and before the invention of even a timer…

A couple of strong athletes do their thing in some remote areas, come back and report: “It really felt like 9.6 secs yesterday, the track was fast, I was feeling strong, the wind was making this typical 9.6 sound…”

yeah boz has actually tried both morphine and chinese arithmetic and he says that morphine didnt feel too crazy, probably a normal 8b+. also ive heard that its not such a great line. boz also said that chinese arithmetic felt really hard, way harder then morphine. perhaps 8c?

hi gabor, a list of old V12s and up that are unrepeated would be cool. that would be analogous to how that list on 8a.nu focused on older routes. i think such a list would be harder to put together. unfortunately, i know that i could not form such a list. my knowledge of hard sport and hard bouldering is very nascent.

and also for the original list, the boulder that chris does in dosage 3 is also 8B+ ive heard. its the one where he does the jump into the vertical crack. i think its called the full package or something.

I am putting togeather a list of V12+ problems in California. I would love some input since the list is far from complete and mainly focuses on Bishop. Comments would be appreciated.

http://dreaminvertical.blogspot.com/2008/02/hard-boulder-problems-in-california.html

Little Cottonwood Canyon has a couple of unrepeated problems in that range:1) Cheech, rated V13 – done nearly 10 years ago by Garth Miller, right next to Bully, unrepeated2) Mantra, rated V13 – right exit to Copperhead, Garth Miller again

Second the Garth Miller problems in Utah. From memory this was on the same trip that he was flashing 10′s, 11′s and at least one 12. Cheech took him Quite a few days.

Just a thought. Many times linked problems can be harder than the sum of their parts for a reason both obvious and not so. Imagine, that you link two v10s for a v15. Crazy right? But the thing that most people don’t think about is the linking move(s) themselves. What if you link a v12 into a v14, but the 1,2,3 whatever moves actually connecting the two are v16? Just some food for thought.

just to ask everyones opinion…
1) the swarm and the mandala sit starts were originally graded v13. what happened?
2) seems like all who do ode to the modern man say (face to face) it’s v13.
3) we are experiencing grade compression over the last year or so, yes? i’m not bothered to say why, but it is happening.
4) bernd z did do coeur.. he took 2 trips and a torn tendon. some have done it in about 30 min, some have said v12… ? kneebars!
5) more and faster repeats don’t hafta mean soft. consensus takes time. it don’t matter, it’s about the individual and their feeling. the same problems that made dave G famous in his early days in the park have all been downgraded, not because he was wrong, but things are being compressed. John Sherman once said he thought crown of aragorn would be v11, that he didn’t think the grades should be sliced so thin.. another problem, like slashface, that people do by the truckload and “take” the grade, but slag it off amongst friends… honesty to self is all that matters. If a v11 feels v12 to you, maybe it is, or maybe it exploits your weaknesses. maybe you should go surfing.
I liked the comment about the track runners.

I should point you to Christophe Maschelein’s 8a. It seems that a couple years ago he did The Fly and got the 2nd ascents of Chinese Arithmetic and Morphine. Interesting comment/rating of Morphine vs. Fly.

http://www.8a.nu/user/Profile.aspx?UserId=15583

I thought that paul never sent lost in the hood according to his blog he did not. also warpath is rated v14.

The 13 at Hunter’s (PA) is on private land. it’s only been done by Zach Learner. and Josh Newman. Josh recently did a 13 and said that they new one he climbed is his first “real” thirteen.

Big Monday’s a project as far as i know. some other seriously hard PA problems/projects are unfortunately subject shady access… but then again there’s a slew of HARD 10/11′s all over the south east/central PA region with only a handful of repeats.

There’s a lot of rock in PA.

Has anyone repeated Tactile Style in Hueco? I think Chris put it up in 2006? and I haven’t heard of a repeat. As far as Nuclear War is concerned, I was there for the development of that area and for Boz’s first ascent of the problem. It is a very difficult one to grade because the difficulty centers mostly around one hard move where you jump back into an undercling. That one move was tried by many people who climb V13 elsewhere and no one could do it except Boz…who seemingly did it quite easily. A question of style maybe? The problem is also long-ish, and ends with a V9/10, so endurance after the crux also comes into play. Complex to grade for sure…but unfortunately choss

In other news, there is a problem in the Gunks that Paul put up called Further into the Forbidden Forest, and although I’m not sure how hard he suggested it was, I think it is also unrepeated.

In Squamish we have three other super hard unrepeated problems. Zazen V14 ish (Harry Robertson), The Reckoning V14 (Some guy who lives in a red Toyota van) and The North Ridge V14 (Georg Jost).

Everything involving Reese Martin, Mark Lander, and the Catwalk should be taken off the list, as none of them actually exist.

You should probably take Evil Backwards off the list.