Falling in Frederick

The trees have turned to gold out at Bushwhack, and I was lucky enough to get in two days there this weekend, first on Friday with Chris Irwin and then yesterday on a solo trip.

Chris did really well for his first visit to the area, flashing Tourette's Tantrum,  coming really close on Tauntaun Sleeping Bag, and doing the high start to Stink Stank Stunk pretty quickly.

Tourette's Tantrum

Tourette's Tantrum

Tourette's Tantrum

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

Stink Stank Stunk (High start)

Yesterday started with Jon Alexander giving me a tour of a couple other nearby areas.  Even though I've spent the last few years telling people that the Frederick area has a lifetime of bouldering, what Jon showed me blew me away.  You can see some of it on his Frederick bouldering site, but that's only scratching the surface of what's out there.

Getting to Bushwhack, I had my mind set on a project that I had started on Friday with Chris.  Before I had been able to stick the first move to a bad sloper, and this time was hoping to match on it, and maybe even get through the next few moves to the top.  Couldn't even stick the first move this time.  After about an hour of futility, I cursed the extra gravity from the previous night's beer, and went up to try Peter's double toe hook start to the Tourette's problems.  No luck.  I've only recently started really stretching again since my summer foot injury, and my lack of flexibility showed.  At least I figured out that my Solutions work better for the start than my Miuras did.

As weak and useless as I felt from those two climbs, it really wasn't a bad day.  I had warmed up with laps on Stink Stank Stunk (middle start) and Tauntaun Sleeping Bag, and finished the day with sends of Constructive Winter, Flipping the Switch, Atonement, Bitterness and Shadows, and was still able to stick the crux of Flipping the Bird even though I didn't climb the rest of the problem out.  In hindsight, I guess I wasn't really as weak as I felt at the time.  Just needed a reminder that falling means I'm trying hard.

Atonement

Flipping the Switch

Stink Stank Stunk (middle start)

Tauntaun Sleeping Bag