The season for high-end sending in Colorado’s alpine bouldering areas started with a bang with RMNP’s Jade already getting repeated twice and the 2010 season has really barely begun. What else will the summer of ’10 bring?
Will there be an onslaught of hard FAs reminiscent of the rampage that Daniel Woods, Paul Robinson, Ty Landman and crew went on in the summer of 2007, or will it be the summer of the woman like 2008 seemed to be with Alex Puccio, Alex Johnson and Angie Payne all pulling down hard, or maybe it will be quieter like the summer of 2009 that had a few highlights but lacked the excitement of prior years? My vote is for another summer of the woman, but only time will tell.
There was a time when Mrs. Narc and I had planned on climbing in the Park this summer during a trip out west but those plans have been scrapped due to the fact that I haven’t bouldered in going on 4 months because of a finger injury that continues to bother me. I managed to survive a relatively prolific (for me) spring sport climbing season without aggravating the finger any much further, and I hope to build on that mild success when we visit Ten Sleep, WY in a few weeks to clip some more bolts. Despite my affinity for bouldering it’s been really nice to change things up and enjoy the different challenge presented by sport climbing. I know my finger joints have certainly appreciated the change of pace as well.
So, it will be with a certain fondness that I follow the goings on in the alpine realm of Colorado’s high country this summer. Not sure when we’ll make it back out there, but until we do quality videos like this one from Jon Glassberg will surely keep us psyched for that return trip:
Rocky Mountain National Park • Hallett Boulder • Jon Glassberg & Kevin Jorgeson from Jon Glassberg on Vimeo.
A day spent bouldering at the Hallett Boulder in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Jon Glassberg sending Stranger in a Strange Land (V12) and Kevin Jorgeson making the first boulder ascent of a Matt Segal sport route called The End of the Beginning (5.13).
FWIW, I guess the first 2 bolts of The End of the Beginning were still under the snow. It sounds like Kevin was planning on returning to boulder out the whole route once some more snow melts.
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Chaos is an amazingly beautiful place with some great rock. I was up there last year, met up with a guy in the Bear Lake lot and walked up with him. He only had one leg (prosthetic on the other) and climbed V7, pretty inspiring. What I realized was that I spent more time looking at the beautiful scenery than climbing up there, because, unless your really a bouldering hardman, theres not much to be done up there. I got Autobot to go down pretty quick, but thats kind of lame in comparison, when everyone I hung out with climbed V10 or harder. Still worth the trip in hindsight, to me, just to be up there and see everything. It was August and everything still had snow on the top of the boulders, I can’t imagine how it will be this year.
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I heard Dave Graham is setting up shop in Boulder for the summer…
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Be careful in Ten Sleep. Some of those pockets are tweaky!
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You know how to call it Narc. The Summer of hard female sends has begun. Alex Puccio just sent The Centaur.
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