Good Times

I've been feeling lucky lately.  A couple weeks ago I got to spend three days leading my students on field trips in Torrey Valley.  The students learned what I wanted to teach them, but even more importantly they were able to experience the grandeur of the place.  Part of the lesson included ten silent minutes of free observation.  The sound of the river, and the bird songs would emerge as soon as everyone stopped talking.  Winds were blowing plumes of snow off the ridges above us, while the air was warm and still on the small hill on which we sat.  One group got to watch a herd of bighorn sheep graze just a couple hundred feet away for the entire activity.  The field trip was initiated due to my experience with the place through days spent bouldering there.  And the teachers on my team supported the trip by leading other activities in the valley, like hiking and a tour of the nearby fish hatchery.  About one hundred and twenty students spent the majority of three school days outside in the mountains.  That's a significant amount of outdoor time when you add it all up.    

 Some students saw more wildlife than others, but they all saw at least a few bighorn sheep.

And while showing groups of students glacial erratic boulders, I noticed new chalk here and there.  Someone has been spending time on difficult sit starts recently.

Last weekend, Ashley and I had such a busy day working on projects at Sweetwater that I barely took out the camera.  Most of the things we worked on are still projects, but Ashley enjoyed sending "Metropolitan Glide" at the end of the day.

Here is one new project I'm working on.  I'm pretty sure I can do it if I get back out there with a strong spotter.  I just couldn't get myself to commit without one.

 

 The rocks out there are blooming with phlox.

 And on the drive home I pulled over for a landscape shot in the afternoon light.

Yesterday was another nice day at Sweetwater.  Ashley decided to give herself a week off of climbing so she'd feel recovered and ready for more climbing into the summer.  I decided I wanted to try a roof crack called "South of Heaven."  It's a problem first done by Vance that I'd never attempted before.  It's at the Hampi Boulders and requires full tape gloves.  Devlin and Ana decided to take a break from their sport climbing projects in Sinks to check out the area with me.  I enjoyed giving them a tour of my favorite lines in the main sector.   

Ana climbing a problem I dubbed "Sloper Line" in the guidebook.

 I'd looked at the glassy boulder behind "Sloper Line" on many occasions, but never padded up the landing and tried the climbs until yesterday.  It offers a couple technical, insecure, but really fun V3 lines.

And I just can't get over the surrounding landscape.

Here's Devlin climbing one of the problems.

 Ana and Devlin spent time working on the Hampi Boulder Traverse.

 And then we walked along the slabs to the south side of the formation for "South of Heaven."  It starts 30 feet deep above a somewhat steep slab landing.  Sometimes the pads would slide a little, but we had enough to cover everything well.  The length and angle remind me of the problem "Analog" at Vedauwoo, but the climbing here is all hand jams.  Some that are perfect, and a some that are a little bigger than I would like.

 On my best attempt I made it out to the spot seen below.  The line is so stout!  But based on the hardest move it probably is accurate to call it V4.  No individual move is that hard, but it's such a full body workout.  There isn't a good way to rest, and by the end it's really difficult to finish it off.   5.12 crack climbing, is a number that better expresses the difficulty.

 I'm excited for a rematch.

We ended the session by hiking around and looking at a few more projects.

 Sweetwater offers everything.  Plenty of established lines, and lots of exploration to do as well.

Only two more weekends, and then my summer break is here!  It's hard to contain the excitement.

If you're excited to check out the bouldering at Sweetwater, or at eleven other areas within easy striking distance of Lander, you can buy the guidebook Bouldering in the Wind River Range from Wild Iris, Fixed Pin Publishing, or ClimbingWyoming.Com.  Climbing Wyoming recently posted a variety of action shots from the guide, and is also helping  promote the guidebook with a 10% discount right now.

A New Site for Lander Area Bouldering Info

We spent today at the Ice Age Area.  It's usually not the best bouldering sector near Lander.  But it might have been today.  Almost everything else was snowed in.  We got out early and managed to get most of our climbing done before the wind picked up.  Ashley climbed the complete Warm Up boulder traverse from a pocket at the far right to the top out on the left slab.  It goes high at the end, but stays below the top of the boulder the whole way.  It might be Jeremy's old traverse? It's pumpy and goes at V4 or 5.

So I've been making a habit of posting bouldering info like that within my posts since moving to Lander, but I think it's a good time to make a split between the journal that I keep of our sessions on this blog, and new information that might be helpful to anyone bouldering in the Lander area.  To get the new beta, you shouldn't need to also keep up with reports of every bouldering session that I get out for.  So I'm starting a new site called Bouldering in the Wind River Range.  It will be a site for posting new problems, guidebook updates, and corrections.  I did it in Blogger because it's a familiar, convenient, and free service for me to use, but that also means that its login is connected to this blog and a couple others that I do.  So I'm not planning to make it directly accessible to other contributors.  But I'd like it to contain posts from anybody who has developed an area, or even put up a single problem that they want to let people know about.  Please send posts and photos to my e-mail, and I'll add them to the site.  It's got a couple posts that I've put together already.  Hopefully this will grow into the go-to spot for information beyond the new guidebook, and also be a helpful resource when it's time for the next edition.  

The Guidebook is Out!

If you've been reading this blog, you probably already know that I've been quite impressed by the bouldering in the Lander area, since moving here from Ft. Collins four years ago.  Especially by some of the new areas developed during the last couple years like the God Eye Gully/ Norwegian Wood sectors at Sweetwater, the Falcon's Lair, Devil's Kitchen and the Rock Shop.  Each of these areas already have enough problems and enough potential within sight of the developed problems to be regionally significant bouldering areas.  Zoom out a bit and the Sweetwater Rocks region, and many parts of the Wind River Range could become nationally significant bouldering areas one day.

These boulder gardens haven't hit most boulderer's radar yet, and they aren't places to visit if you want to be part of a scene.  But if you're looking for some amazing bouldering in uncrowded places, the Lander area offers it.

About a year and a half ago I committed myself to writing a guidebook documenting the bouldering in this area.  I wanted to update the problems and areas already documented in Steve Bechtel's guide, and add all the new areas that Chris, Jesse, Davin, and I have been bouldering and developing at.  Last summer Ben Sears joined the project, and used his graphic design expertise to make the maps, format the pages, and make the whole guide look great in general.

Before starting the guide, I looked at every guidebook that I owned in order to figure out exactly what I wanted to create.  Guidebooks are collectibles to me, and I often buy guides to areas that I'm not even sure I want to visit.  I like the landscape orientation binding of the Stone Country Press guides.  Their guides look good and the weight of the wide pages keeps the books from closing themselves as soon as you let go of them.  But with pages bound on the short side I decided I'd need a sewn binding to be absolutely sure that pages wouldn't start falling out after use in the field.  I wanted the new guide to be full color, with photos of almost every problem, and have color coded lines based on difficulty.  It was also important for the new guide to be small enough and light enough that it would easily fit into a bouldering pack.  I like the history, natural history, and geology sections in Tom Moulin's Southern Nevada Bouldering guide.  I wrote my own, but decided to keep them brief.  I also liked the matte finish and photo quality of Wesley Gooch's Jackson Hole and Pinedale Climbing Guide.

I noticed some things in the guides on my shelf that I wanted to avoid.  One trend that has annoyed me in recent guidebooks has been the proliferation of advertisements.  They're a distraction.  And who wants to be carrying a bunch of unnecessary pages around?  I decided that my guide would be ad free.

After over a year of writing, and fixing issues as they arose, the project is finished! It wasn't easy, but I was able to meet the goals that I started with.  The guide is bound the way I wanted it and the pages are sewn in.  It's full color, the routes are color coded for difficulty, it's the size that I wanted, and it doesn't have any ads.  But custom sized pages, and sewn bindings raise the price of book printing.  Also, small print runs are very expensive per copy.  Stores and distribution require a mark up as well.  And there is a reason most full color guides have ads. They help offset the costs.  In order to make the guide as good as it could be, I paid the printing costs myself, and I priced the guide as low as possible based on those printing costs.

I worked really hard on this guide, and it is honestly the best guide that I could create right now.  Actually it's better than that.  Ben Sear's graphic design work, Davin and Jeremy's photos and topos, and the essay Davin wrote about his experience of bouldering in Wyoming have made this guide much better than any guide I could have ever put together myself.

I hope you buy the guide.  I hope you enjoy it, and use it to visit the great new bouldering that you have to explore in the Lander area.  And if you'd like it to be updated in a few years, I hope you get copies as gifts for your friends.  Ashley won't let me write and print a second edition until we're running out of boxes of this one.

The new guide is 200 pages and has over 500 problems.  It is currently available at Wild Iris Mountain Sports in Lander, and it will be available from Fixed Pin Publishing, and ClimbingWyoming.com very soon.  Order it now, or check it out in your local climbing shop when it arrives.  And thanks for your support!  

Spring Break Wrap-up

Jesse climbing his new highball "Silver Bullet."

One of the reasons we didn't travel far over Spring Break is that the Bouldering in the Wind River Range guidebooks were supposed to arrive yesterday.  Unfortunately shipping to Lander appears to be more complicated than shipping to the rest of the country, and the books haven't gotten here yet.  I've been told that they should arrive on Monday or Tuesday.  

In hindsight, we could have gone on a trip.  But really, I can't imagine a Spring Break climbing trip that would have been better than the days we've had at Sweetwater over the break.  I did three great V7s, seven first ascents, discovered four new projects, and the weather was wonderful up until today.

Lindsey on "The Banquet." 

 Sophia on "Silver Bullet"

 Lindsey deciding that she's high enough on "Silver Bullet."

 Today started overcast, cold, and windy.  The weather didn't look good enough to risk two hours of driving for Sweetwater.  But we drove up Sinks Canyon and were able to get a breezy session on the Lizard Lab.  The girls were happy to be able to do a few problems that they couldn't do last time.

And that wraps up the Spring Break climbing this year.

My feelings are completely split right now.  I'm so happy about the climbing we did over break, and excited by the upcoming bouldering season at Sweetwater, Oz, and the Rock Shop.  But waiting for the guide is driving me crazy.  It's difficult to work on something somewhat obsessively for over a year, invest a lot of money into it, and then feel like it's out of your hands for over a month.

The next post better be about the arrival of guidebook...

New Three Star Lines at Sweetwater

Jesse's been establishing some amazing lines at Sweetwater lately.  Today I climbed one of them, and watched Jesse climb two more.  Sophia, Lindsey, and Jesse's new friend Buddy all came out to see the area, sample the new lines, and add a couple pads to the stack.

I'll post photos soon, but the highball first ascents in this video are so good, I'm posting the video tonight.  Enjoy!

Spring Break at Sweetwater

 We decided to stay home for Spring Break this year, and it's been a great decision so far.  When you hit perfect weather at Sweetwater, the sessions are as good as I've had anywhere.  I've spent three out of the last four days in the Norwegian Wood sector at Sweetwater, and each day has been more productive than the last.  In those three days we never saw another soul, watched cloud shadows move across the plains, and soaked up the sun.

On Saturday, I'd planned to visit the Land of Oz with Cameron in order to find and clean some problems that I could climb with my family on Sunday.  Oz still looked snowy in the distance, so we went to Sweetwater instead.  Cameron made an inspiring ascent of "Take it Easy."  It seems like I'm the only person that the problem fits well.  Cameron also climbed "Norwegian Warmup" and then we started work on a project on the right side of the Norewgian Wood face.

 After about an hour and a half of attempts "This Bird Has Flown" V7 was finished.

 I also added an up problem near the start of "True Grit."  It's a SDS under the roof called "The Roof is on Fire." V5/6

Cameron and I ended the day by cleaning up a wall with some warmups and a pumpy traverse on jugs.  On the hike out, Cameron made a flash ascent of "Gimme Three Steps."  

The next day Ashley and I named the juggy wall "Coffee Wall" after it's dark patina, and that it gets you started in the morning.

Ashley got the first ascent of the full traverse and named it "Mocha Machine" V3/4.

Ashley did the second ascent of "The Roof is on Fire," worked on "Norwegian Wood" and then started working on a new line.  A traverse below "True Grit."  It climbed surprisingly well, and the start wasn't as low as it initially looked.  We both worked on it, and worked ourselves in the process.

 Then we took a rest day.

We returned yesterday for a surprisingly perfect day.  I found and brushed a good new warmup, and Ashley climbed the first ascent on her first try.  "The Walls are Coming Down" V1.

 Ashley found a new traverse project to the right, but we still had another project to send.

Ashley beat me to the first ascent of "Butterfly Traverse" V7.


It took me three more attempts, and I felt lucky to be able to finish the second ascent yesterday.  It was surprisingly difficult to finish it off after doing the start.

In over twenty days spent bouldering at Sweetwater I've only seen one rattlesnake.  But ever since our dog Sundance was bitten by one during a Spring Break in Colorado, we try not to take any chances.  A couple months ago we had both our dogs vaccinated against rattlesnake venom.  It helps us be a bit more relaxed out there.

Sweetwater has so much potential.  In just this one sector, there are many boulders to be climbed that I haven't gotten to yet.  At the moment, I'm enjoying the views and patina found up on the formation.  I'll probably finish developing the formation before moving back to the boulders in the gully.

 While hiking around I was surprised to find three new lines in close proximity to "Norwegian Wood."  Two were quite inspiring, but looked too difficult for how worked I felt.  So I jumped on the easiest and shortest of the three new discoveries.

The Sleestak Project was done from a stand start yesterday.  The SDS is still a project.  

 Here is another project found down in the main gully below the formation.

The other two projects are prettier, but I'm going to try them before I post about them.  The wind forecast isn't as good for the second half of Spring Break out at Sweetwater, but I won't let the new lines wait too long.  I'm so psyched on this sector right now!

Winter Returns

I'd planned to take a bouldering trip this weekend, but I guess two good weekends in a row was too much to ask for this time of year.  Cold and snow returned, but the sun was out today so we decided to try climbing in Killer Cave.  No one else had hiked up to the cliff yet, and sometimes it was difficult to remember exactly where the switchbacks were.  

 Sinks got a lot more snow than Lander did.  Knee deep in spots.

I warmed up by onsighting "Elmo's Fish."  It's such a popular route that I've never been able to get on it until today.  It's a good route.  For our next route we wanted to get out of the snow.  Only the central part of Killer Cave was snow free, but the sun wasn't hitting "Bush Doctor" yet.  So we jumped on the first corner pitch of "Zero Degrees" which was just coming into the sun.  The rock was still too cold though, and we ended up suffering our way up it with very cold fingers.

On the bright side, it set up a perfect rope swing for the girls.

 Devlin and Ana made it up to the crag today too, but that was it.  I'm guessing that a lot of climbers are tired of fighting the snow by now, and know that if they just wait a little bit, it will all be gone soon.  The cliff was busy on some colder days mid-winter.

Devlin warming up.

 Ana finished "Bush Doctor" recently.  And today she began working on "Ring of Fire."

I looked around for another climb to do, but there was a cold wind outside of the cave.  We decided that it was best to just hike back to the truck.  We didn't end up getting much climbing done today, but I'm still happy that we went up to the cliff.  Sometimes just getting outside for an afternoon, and getting a little time on the rock, is all that is necessary.

Guide Update: The books should be here in less than two weeks!

Early Spring Climbing

Life and climbing haven't slowed down at all.  Lately only blogging has been put on the back burner.  Getting the guide as perfect as possible, and going over all the proofs took some time.  School has kept me busy, and we've been getting out climbing.  Late February and early March can be somewhat difficult for outdoor climbing, but we've been able to climb every weekend.  Some sessions were a little cold, but others were perfect.  I can't complain.  We spent one session up at the Dolomite Band with Ana and Devlin.  They're a climbing couple that moved to Lander a few months ago.  It's been really fun getting out bouldering with them, and our kids get along great together too.  Our session at the Dolomite band included some T-shirt weather, but it ended with snow.

Ana reaching the crux of the B1 traverse.

 Ashley and I had a really nice day of sport climbing on the Squaretop Boulder.  German Girl doesn't get any stars in the guidebook, but I think it's a worthy climb.  It isn't too sharp...if you make really big moves.

 And it's one of the steepest lines around.

 Sierra is getting good enough to get a workout on our climbs, even if she isn't quite able to finish them yet.  It's been fun watching her improve so quickly.

One crisp day I was able to send the extended B1 traverse at the Dolomite Band.  It felt good to finish off a long term project that definitely wasn't my style.  Somewhat pumpy climbing leads to a powerful finish.  It felt V8 to me, and I lost track of how many sessions included some work on it over the last couple years.  Somewhere between five and ten.  Here's the video if you're interested.

 Daylight savings time has allowed more exploration after school.  It's a little painful in the mornings, but definitely worth it.

I'm always checking the weather to catch as many good days in the desert as possible.  With a bit of snow and mud around, we decided against a trip to OZ last weekend.  No need to mess up roads that aren't messed up yet.  So we went to Sweetwater instead, where the roads were completely dry.  I was just hoping for a relatively pleasant, climbable day, but we hit perfect conditions.

Jesse working on a new dyno problem.

 Jesse getting set up again.

 Jesse getting the first ascent of "Tappin' the Rockies."

 Just when things would start to get too warm, a gentle breeze or a few clouds would come by.  It was so nice.  And I just can't get over the wide open spaces out there.

 The rock is great too!  Solid, but with very little friction.  You need to have good technique, and grip pretty hard to stay on.  Even short problems can pump you out, and get your heart rate up.

Devlin on "Old School."

 Ana, Devlin, and the Sweetwater ambiance.

It feels good to be blogging again.  Now that the book is truly finished and just waiting at the press, I should be able to blog more regularly.  It's a good time of year for climbing too.  If you check the weather, and think about micro-climates, you can get conditions that are almost as good as the Fall.  More news next week.