If there’s one thing I miss the most when I’m not climbing it has to be the travel. For me, and I think many of you probably feel the same way, there’s something strangely addicting about visiting new places and exploring everything a climbing area has to offer. Now, my experience is relatively limited to the well traveled areas of the U.S. which is why I find stories like the ones below especially interesting to read.
First up are the stories from Davin of the blog A Place Of Legend. Davin recently spent 5 weeks exploring the bouldering in Qingdao, China, and this is how he summed up his trip:
I hope that the three posts regarding the bouldering around Qingdao, China were enough to spark some interest out there for people to get out of their comfort zones and experience the world. That being said, bouldering is one of the finest reasons for doing so. China is a place of maximum potential and climbing there is a new born baby.
You can read about his entire experience at these series of posts:
China Bouldering Part 1 | China Bouldering Part 2 | China Bouldering Part 3
Boulder Fields of Laoshan, China
A little closer to home, Ander Rockstad has been spending some time in his native Alaska sampling the bouldering in a state not many people think about when it comes to climbing small rocks. Check out these series of posts for more:
AK Boulder Mission Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 – AK Boulder Mission Photo Dump Part 1 | Part 2
And finally, a little closer to home (or not), Lloyd Climbing Blog recently embarked on a bit of an expedition to explore the bouldering in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. After hiking 9 long miles with 30 pounds of gear, they spent a day cleaning and climbing several nice looking new problems…and battling mosquitoes. You can read all about the adventure that is back country bouldering in the Wind Rivers here.
Wind River Boulders
Stuff like this is the future, in my opionion. The day will come when all of the areas close to roads in major climbing communities like Boulder are tapped out of most of their good problems (though that may take time). I actually really like the idea that bouldering in the future may more closely resemble alpine climbing in that people backpack in and camp out to find the sickest new lines. I believe Jamie Emerson had a post on this a while back and I feel like he was dead on.
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I live in the rain forest of south east Alaska and climbing here, Especially bouldering, is brand new. Every day we go out we can do new problems. sometimes the hikes are far and yield very little but its an adventure. The next generation of climbers is losing their sense of adventure. Repeating climbs is cool but there is a satisfaction that you get from finding a rock covered in 6 inches of forest floor, cleaning it and climbing a beautiful fresh problem
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The Wind’s have INCREDIBLE potential. If you have the time to lug in some camping gear as well as a few pads (some really bad landings) there is UNLIMITED potential, TONS of overhanging granite as well as some testy trad single pitch, most of which is undiscovered due to the size of the Winds and how good the multipitching is.
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Here is another new area in Utah
High altitude bouldering is IN!
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Wow, that place looks amazing!
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