Thursday, October 25, 2012

The Wobbler

I don't condone throwing fits amongst the boulders, but this line was a perfect recipe for screaming.  I've been falling off this mysterious line on the north side of the Camera boulder for years.  It was cleaned before we moved here, but it isn't in the guide, and none of the locals I've asked have known the name, grade, or if it's been done.  So I wasn't sure that it was even possible, but decided to give it a try last weekend in perfect sending conditions.  After many attempts, I finished the top and knew the line was possible.  That's when things got a little bit epic.

I had set up my camera to record the send, but it was really hard to keep the really bad sloper after doing the bottom moves.  The first throw is a V6 move and I knew I might run out of the power to do it.  The sloper hold pops unexpectedly, uncontrollably, when you really don't want it to.  I kept hitting the record button to capture the send, and just kept failing instead.  The frustration built, as did the yells and screams.  This is a collection of the falls and fits edited together with the eventual send.  I decided to edit out the couple instances of explicit language.  Bouldering can be really frustrating, but there really isn't any excuse for a man my age to act this way.

The Wobbler

Click through to YouTube to see it in a larger format.

Once it was done, it felt V7 physically for someone my height, but very conditions dependent and much more frustrating than the average V7.  Please let me know if you have any knowledge of this line's history.

2 comments:

alan_pirie said...

strong work Dave. I saw chalk on the problem when I was on the line to the left on Sunday. I cleaned it years ago and did the stand start from the crimps and called it rewind. It felt unfinished without the sit. I fell off the start a hundred times. The person who may have done the whole thing was Aaron Steele

Lloyd Family said...

Thanks Alan! Nice work on the stand start! It's a really interesting problem. I've never done such a difficult blind foot switch with barely anything to hold onto. The sit move is powerful, but straight forward. It's the stand part that took me forever to figure out.