After 6 weeks of sitting inside watching the spring season pass by while waiting for my knee to feel better, I was abnormally psyched to meet up with Nic (of Five Ten fame), Steve and Remo for a day of bouldering at Devil’s Lake. Of course, I didn’t actually climb anything as I’m still trying to be “patient”, but it was fun nonetheless.
I had a bit of time to kill before everyone arrived so I took the Merrimac ferry and walked on the Ice Age Trail near the east entrance to the park. Unfortunately, my attempt to reach the railroad grade near tempting looking rocks on the south bluff were repelled by a weird marshland of sorts and I retreated to drier ground.
After killing a sufficient amount of time everyone showed up and we immediately headed to the talus beneath the West Bluff to check out Alpine Club (V9) and Beautiful Soup (V8/9ish).
Alpine Club is a short problem of pure difficulty that revolves around locking off a bad right hand edge long enough to hit (and hold) a small horizontal crimp. After working out a sequence Nic manage to do the problem starting on the 2nd hold, but he wasn’t able to add in the first move. Next trip for sure.
This is a sequence of pictures of what a send might look like
Locking off the bad right hand
Hitting the bad crimp
Each streak of blood represents a time Nic’s hand blew off the slick hold and crushed his knuckles into the rock. Ouch.
Steve trying hard
After an exhausting number of attempts on Alpine Club, the crew moved one boulder uphill to try Beautiful Soup. Beautiful Soup is relatively short, like Alpine Club, but the method is quite a bit different. From the start you reach up with your right hand and establish on a sharp right hand crimp. Then you find a glassy hold to paste your foot on and explode to the less than juggy rail at half height. Witness several explosions below:
Josh Helke shout-out
Despite my having several frames of everyone’s hand ON the jug, noone was able to hold it. Next trip for sure…
Here are the rest of the pictures:
