More Sinks Canyon Sandstone Bouldering

The Ice Age Area as viewed from the road.

The sandstone in Sinks Canyon isn't quite as solid as I would like. It also has a lot of lichen, the holds are often sandy, the problems are pretty spread out, and there isn't a guidebook for it yet. But conditions were perfect today. We had a fun session, and the problems will clean up with some traffic. Here are photos of the problems we did.

We warmed up right off the road. I'm pictured on an easy and fun slab problem. A variety of up problems, traverses, and even a hand jam crack can be climbed on this boulder.


Just uphill and to the west is this boulder. The problem shown below is the most classic line we topped out today. I'm pretty sure it must have been done before, but we needed to clean a few holds. I'm calling it "Inversion" for convenience until I learn its original name.

The starting holds.

The inversion move.




After warming up we drove a short distance to a pull off just before the Sinks Visitor Center parking lot, and hiked up to the Ice Age area.

We tried a difficult sloper problem. Powerful compression and frustratingly sandy, we moved on pretty quickly.


We wanted to make sure we got a good workout. So we jumped on the next boulder uphill a little ways, just because it was there. We did a sloper lip traverse from right to left. Then we got to work on a short line using two hole features. We couldn't quite do a sit down start, so we started as low as we could.

Right hand in the hole, and left underclinging the bottom of the boulder. It's short, but the move going up to the second hole was the hardest single move we did all day.

Ashley beat me to the top for the first ascent. It's called "The Hole Deal."




We hiked east to a boulder I'm calling the Tusk.


This might have been cleaned a little since my last trip. I couldn't be sure. Until I hear of a previous ascent I'm calling the problem below "Right Tusk."



It tops out by traversing out right. The Tusk still has some lines that need to be done.

Just left of the Tusk boulder, we climbed this interesting feature from a sit down start and called it "Drum."


We ended the day on an arete just west of the Tusk boulder.

"Airete"




Enjoy.