Saturday, October 6, 2007

An Unexpectedly Good Day for Bouldering.


The weather report looked bad for the weekend. I hadn't planned to get any climbing in. Then on Friday afternoon the forecasts changed. The predicted storm wouldn't hit until Saturday afternoon. We decided to head up Poudre Canyon to an area called the Bog.

The weather was perfect till the late afternoon. We warmed up on an unknown problem. It's a low traverse on sloping holds out of a cave made by two boulders about 50 feet west of Simple. It tops out on a slightly high, but casual V1 face. We didn't figure out how to do a couple moves in the cave, but there was chalk on all the holds. If you have any information on whether the problem I just described has been done or not, name, or grade, I'd like to know. From there we got on some other unknown problems that turned out to be pretty easy. I still can't read Poudre problems without trying them. Some easy looking things are hard, and some hard looking things aren't too bad.


I looked around a bit more, but didn't find much to try. We decided to head back to the Dynesto boulder. The video "Solutions" had Jay Shambo doing a cool looking dyno problem on this boulder. The problem consists of two dynos to get up the boulder. The first between the two best holds on the left side of the face, and the second to the pointed top, out right. All intermediate holds are off. I had tried this years ago, but couldn't stick the first dyno. I'd always hit the hold and spin off. Today I dynoed further to a better part of the hold, stuck it. Eventually I managed to do both dynos in a row. Dynos aren't my specialty, and I'm only 5 foot 4, but it felt about V6 to me. It could be easier for taller people. For me it was absolutely classic. Each dyno was right at my limit. Ashley did a left to right traverse of the Dynesto boulder. I repeated it, and would rate it V6 as well. A couple sharp holds, and an iron cross move are the crux. Fun problems, at a beautiful place in good weather. What more could you want?

Dynesto. I had to hang out while waiting for the camera flash to charge so it looks posed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love it when you think the weather is going to stink and then it is beautiful.

I really liked you climbing pics especially the dyno one. You should upload your best to http://www.rock-climbing-for-life.com/rock-climbing-photography.html
and you could win $75 shopping spree to backcountry.com.

Check it out.