Steps on the path

In the past couple weeks I've come to the conclusion that I don't have bad days, only good days and very good days.  No matter how many things go wrong, there always seems to be something redeeming, if nothing more than the fact that I go to bed still breathing.  Yesterday was a very good day, starting off with finally getting a pumpkin donut from Dunkin Donuts after weeks of craving one, and concluding with an awesome four hours of watching Emily's band perform while hanging out with good friends.  It was a day worth every bit of the tiredness that I now feel!

It was also the day that I finally sent my project for the last week, or at least the stand start to it.

Last week while trying to decide what to climb at Bushwhack over the weekend, I came across an old email that I had sent a friend after my first visit there, with photos attached of the three boulders that I was most excited about climbing.  One of them was the Switch boulder, home to Brian's brilliant Flipping the Switch that I climbed a couple weeks back.  Looking at the photo, I realized that when I took it the lines that had attracted me the most were the two prominent seams rising up and left across the slightly overhung face.  Although they're admittedly eliminates by nature, I also can't resist seam traverses, and decided that the lower one would be the perfect project for a Friday session with Vince.

Despite my original intention to start the problem in the seam itself, I had enjoyed Flipping the Switch so much that I decided to use the same start to move into the crimps, and then branch off left from there.  The crux would remain the first move of the stand, but the sit would add in the fun kneebar sequence and give an extra couple moves to an already great looking line.

After making sure I could stick the crux and working out the beta for the rest of the problem, I set to work from the beginning.  With daylight fading fast, it soon became clear that it wasn't happening in one session, but I packed up confident that I would send the line quickly the next day.

Morning came, and Emily and I headed out to meet up with the Adventures in Pebble Wrestling crew on their first Bushwhack trip.  As I wrote last week, they had a day full of good sends, while I walked away disappointed in my lack of success.  After hours of throwing myself at the initial sequence, each attempt only compounding the scratches and bruises on my legs, my thoughts as I sat down each time became less "this is going to be awesome" and more "do I really have to do this again?"  In my obsession with doing the line from the start, it had ceased to be fun.  Trying to salvage something from the day, I decided too late to just do it from the stand as I had originally intended, and took fall after fall as I threw ever more desperately off the crimps.  At times like that, it's good to have a wife to save me from myself!

Thursday I went back out with Dan to knock out the stand, fully anticipating a quick send, but once again excited just to work on it.  Sometimes people think it's crazy that I'm willing to drive an hour after work for just two hours of climbing, especially with a twenty minute approach thrown in.  When the leaves are turning and the last sun is falling on cool rock though, the trip is absolutely worth it.  Somehow it even seemed worth the trip after setting up our crash pads only to discover that I had left my shoes back at the gym.  Sadly, despite my initial hope, Dan's shoes weren't a viable option.

So yesterday with morning temps in the 30s, my mom and I fortified ourselves with donuts and coffee and made our way back out to Bushwhack.  Arriving to find a couple friends already on the rocks, we went to Diagon Alley and warmed up on Butterbeer, a problem my mom had put up last April on one of our early trips there.

We also played on the thin line in the center of the slab that had been an unfinished project that day, which had evidence of recent traffic.  I'd love to know if someone sent it!

Finally we went over to the Switch boulder, where I ran a few laps on the middle section of the seam, trying to warm up a sore middle finger in anticipation of the initial moves.

After sticking the crux on my first attempt only to chicken out and drop off the finish, I eventually managed to make the move again and hang on for the send.  Trying to think of a good name to fit with Flipping the Switch, the returning pain in my middle finger made Flipping the Bird seem like the obvious choice.

Topping out was a great feeling, and in hindsight I think those initial experiences of walking away empty handed made the eventual success all the better.  It was a lesson I needed, and one I hope I won't forget anytime soon.  The best part is that the sit is still there waiting, and it's going to make a great problem even better.  And with yesterdays send taking the mental pressure off a bit, I have a feeling it will go quickly.  But if not, at least I'll have fun along the way.

Here's the video of yesterdays sends.  Enjoy!

Prioritizing obsession

Walking hurts today.  Not just the stretching of the muscles, but even the gentle flap of my shorts against scrapes and bruises, bringing fresh pain with each step.  The shorts that, incidentally, have a rip in the back from a poorly predicted fall into the talus.  The same fall that sent my hip bone directly into a sharp rock, a fall from which I walked away lucky to be no worse than bruised.  Usually all of these would be signs that it's been a great weekend.

Yesterday as we were driving away from Bushwhack to meet some friends for dinner, my wife asked me if I had fun climbing.  The answer was obviously yes, but what scared me was how long I had to think about it. Why was there any question?  In short, I think it's because my priorities have started to change, and not in a way I like.

Years ago, I remember saying that Bitch Slap Arete at Coopers Rock was the perfect boulder problem, because it was one that I could happily work on every time even if I never managed to finish it.  I'm sure it would go quickly now, and it's been three years since I've even tried it, but I've been content just remembering the enjoyment that the motion brought me and knowing it's still out there.

After several weeks of knocking out projects in a single session's work, this weekend I finally found myself shut down again.  Not physically, since I can make all of the moves on this particular problem.  Instead the difficulty seemed to be believing that I could make the moves when I needed to, and expecting to hit them rather than easing off in anticipation of a fall.  At the time it bothered me because I interpreted it as giving up on myself.  Really it just means I've gotten on something that's an appropriate level of challenge... within my capability, but not guaranteed.  My mistake was walking into the day having already finished the problem in my head, and then having to reconcile that with the reality that I walked away empty handed.  That I had all of those bruises and scrapes, ripped my shorts, and had nearly broken my hip, but had no send to show for it.

Yet somehow I still managed to answer yes to Emily's question, slow though that answer was in coming. What I remembered, and should never have let myself forget, was the fact that when I think back to days out on the rocks I usually think about the people I was with more than any particular climbs I did.  Aside from the obvious advantage to actually having spotters, the beauty of going out with others lies in the bonds formed and the community created.  In the shared food and occasionally drink, which in this case included homemade dulce de leche cookies that were one of the most addictive things I've ever tasted.  It lies in the satisfaction of watching others succeed even if I fall short.  And this weekend there were many successes.

Less than a week after I worked through it, Vince managed to send Flipping the Switch, flying through the same sequence that had puzzled him less than a year ago.

Max, fresh off dispatching Stank, Stunk with Esten, climbed Mr. Miyagi and Drunken Hamster Style before sending the harder roof between them and then thrilling the group with the committing final throw on The Elephant.

Meanwhile, others breezed through various lines on Rattleflake Roof and the Bird Boulder, and Ben put together this video of Jeff's run up Stunk.

Combined with the cool sunny afternoon that materialized despite an early threat of rain, and a spectacular flyover by a pair of hawks, it really was a perfect day of climbing.

So what should I take from all of this?  Is the lesson here that I shouldn't let myself become obsessed with climbs?  Perhaps, but I think the better answer is simply to prioritize.  In itself, intense focus on a single climb can be productive.  The trouble comes when the focus on success replaces enjoyment of the process, ironically leaving the eventual send feeling empty, not so much a feeling of elation as of relief that the climb is over.

The answer then (for me at least) is this...  Set high goals, but enjoy the road to reaching them.  Accept that failure is not absolute, but a sign that goals are appropriately challenging.  Enjoy those who I find on the road with me, both new friends and old.  Celebrate their success as fully as my own.  Remember that if I'm going to risk harm to myself, I'd better be having fun in the process.

People often ask me if I'm going to be a teacher for the rest of my life.  I tell them that I'm going to do it for as long as I can wake up and be excited about it.  If that's the rest of my life, awesome.  And if not, I hope I'll have the courage to leave what's familiar and seek what excites me again.  Climbing should be no different.

Time to get back on track.

A hint of orange at Bushwhack

Yesterday with a free afternoon and only a 10% forecast of rain, the question was not so much whether I would climb after work, but where.  Initially considering Northwest Branch or Murray Hill,  I decided to save those for the shorter days coming all too soon, and instead took the opportunity to get in a couple hours at Bushwhack.  The walk in was beautiful, with newly yellow ferns carpeting the forest in many sections. Arriving at the rocks, I found many more leaves down than had been there less than a week beforehand, and was simultaneously enjoying the added color and cautious about the less than adequate footing in places.

After looking around for a few minutes, I settled on Flipping the Switch as my project for the day.  About ten months ago I had tried the original stand start, The Rider, but even with several pads and spotters didn't quite have the confidence to make the committing final move.  A few days later, Brian went out and sent the full line, and right away it went on my list of things to do this year.

I did a quick warmup on the nearby Crystal Odds, named for the fragile seeming holds leading out of the difficult to protect pit.  Not very hard, but delicate and enjoyable.  Then I went over to finally send The Rider, and I won't deny that it took me at least ten attempts to suck it up and make the last move.  Even with 2.5 pads on the ground, and the hold obviously within reach, it definitely got to my head!

After eventually sticking it I set to work on the sit-start, a beautiful kneebar sequence leading to crimps in a seam, and a big throw up to a jug to join the main problem.  Somehow despite the greater physical difficulty, it went much more quickly.  In fact, I cruised through the crux on my first full attempt and would have sent it right then had my hand not slipped off the final move just enough to shake me up.  Two tries later I finished it, just in time for the sound of raindrops to send me back to my car.  With a month left before the time changes again, I'm excited to know there will be more afternoons like this!

September Bouldering Videos

It's been a great week of climbing, starting with a good trip to The Acre on Sunday.  I didn't get much climbing in myself since I was still coming off a rest week, but had fun watching Ben and Vince work on a hard crimpy line in the lowest pit, with a huge press off a two finger crimp to a high sidepull and razor crimp on a questionable flake.  Vince managed the first and only send of the line, pulling hard enough on the flake to detach it another 4-5 inches, making it unsafe for further climbing.  The flake later came off with minimal pressure, and although the line still seems doable, it'll be even harder than before.  Meanwhile, Emily and my mom chose to forgo the overhang in favor of more delicate climbing on the slab nearby.

Yesterday my mom and I went back out to The Acre, thinking it would probably be too wet to climb, but planning at least to get some decent photos of the boulders to start putting together a mini-guide.  With over 70 problems there now, put up by at least 17 different people, things are getting confusing!

Arriving to find most of the rock pleasantly dry, we grabbed the photos we needed and headed to the corridor area to get a couple climbs in.  My mom made a couple attempts at Woozle, then got frustrated and climbed the arete to the left of it, which was slightly easier but way scarier!  I also got on Jon's Intro to Bellydancing to see if I could find a prettier way to work through the slopey topout that had earned the problem its name.  No luck making it look any better, but still a fun problem.

Content with our daily highball fix, we walked over to Bushwhack so I could try Stink, Stank, Stunk!, another of my intended winter projects.  After working on it for a while, and watching a stink bug (appropriately enough) mocking me by effortlessly walking up and down the left arete, I figured out two key bits of beta and was able to send shortly after.  From there, we walked back to the car by way of the After School Special boulders where the trail crosses the ridgeline.  I climbed the beautiful slab problem Bitterness & Shadows, and my mom also tried it and thought it would be a good winter project for her.  Since we were already there, I also decided to try the overhanging arete on the left side of the slab, which I had been curious about for a while.  After figuring out a good starting position, I sent it on the first actual try, calling it Atonement.  I'd still like to get back and try adding another move or two to the start, just to make the fun last longer, but for now here's a video of the day's climbs...

A couple weeks ago I also had the pleasure of climbing with the Adventures in Pebble Wrestling crew at both Coopers and The Acre, where they've recently been busy repeating problems and putting up some great new ones of their own.  Here's a video I put together featuring some of their work...

And one from Tenni...

And another from Max with problems from The Acre, Coopers, and Grayson Highlands...

Finally, I was happy to see that there's also been some recent traffic at the Murray Hill boulders, with Brian putting out this video of a new line there...

Gonna be an exciting Fall!

***Just a reminder that you can check out the Maryland Bouldering Videos Page for links to over 80 videos from Maryland, and a few more from locals on the road.

New pad review- Pro Spotter at The Acre

Coming off some great weekend bouldering at Coopers, my week got off to an even better start when I came home Monday night to find a new crashpad waiting at my door.

One of the new Pro Spotter pads from Asana, I've been looking forward to getting one ever since hearing about them back in July.  While it's not something I'd take huge falls onto by itself, as a part of a multi-pad system it's easily the most versatile pad I've ever seen.  At 36x22x3, it's roughly the same size as the Shorty piece of my Sir Lands-A-Lot pad, making it great for sit starts or narrow corridors.  While I've also used the Shorty as a spotting shield, keeping a good grip was often difficult, and the handles of the Pro Spotter really make it ideal for that purpose.  As if that weren't enough, the solid foam core has been replaced with a foldable 74x44x3/4 mat.  Fully deployed, it can cover two standard crashpads, safely sealing the gap to create a single landing surface.  Folded in half, it makes a comfortable sleeping pad.  And that's not all... Used in shield mode, the Pro Spotter is the ultimate in personal protection during chalk bag duels, perfect for all of those climbing partners who are also closet LARPers!

                                                                                                                                                                   Photo: Jon Alexander

Yesterday Dan and I drove out to The Acre to put my new pad to the test, meeting up with friend and photographer extraordinaire Jon Alexander for his first visit to our new favorite boulders.  After putting in a bit of work clearing out a couple of sharp stumps, we spread out the mat over my other pads while Dan made a run up Beehad.  Although he never ended up falling, we did conduct a thorough jump test, finding that the mat sealed the gaps tightly enough to have withstood a fall from the top.

                                                                                                                                                                             Photo: Jon Alexander

Next I moved around the corner to a new line I'd been looking at, starting off by laying back the left arete of Beehad to a good pinch, then turning the corner to traverse a rising crack across a tall slab.

                                                                                                     Photo: Jon Alexander

                                                                                                      Photo: Jon Alexander

Although Dan was ready with the Pro Spotter to deflect me away from the rocks behind if I fell off the upper portion of Heffalump, the pad instead got its first official use when the intended start hold blew off, sending me careening backward directly into my stunned spotter.  I can't really say how it felt on the spotting end, but as the falling body I can honestly say I've never been so comfortably redirected onto a crashpad!

As the sun continued down and we realized none of us had flashlights, Jon wanted to get a couple shots of Dan on the nearby roof, which he had originally climbed with the sharp stumps below the slopey topout fully intact.  Even though the landing was significantly safer this time, and he still didn't fall, I at least got to take a turn with the spotting shield.  While I had initially thought that the handles seemed a little high, I realized as soon as I was spotting that their position allowed the pad to naturally lay down along my body, and the dual handles allowed full control of the pad while still keeping a free hand if I needed it.

                                                                                                                                                                             Photo: Jon Alexander

Realizing we could barely see our scattered belongings to pack up, and knowing we had a mile between us and the cars, we decided to call it a night slowly make our way back out of the forest.  As we picked our way though the trees, I enjoyed the lights of Frederick twinkling below us, a sight I'd never seen before in any of my trips out there.  While we didn't get as much climbing in as usual, it was probably my most memorable visit to The Acre to date, and I'm more excited than ever to get back out there.  More to come soon...

Welcome to The Acre

Sometime around February, I took a walk through the woods near Frederick to check out some possible rocks I had spotted while looking at aerial images of the area.  Roughly a mile from Bushwhack Rocks, I was prepared to make the walk for even a couple new boulders, but was shocked when I saw how much was really there.  Rather than two or three decent lines, there was obvious potential for several visits worth of climbing.  While much of the beauty of Bushwhack bouldering was in short powerful lines, most of the obvious lines along this ridge were slabby to vertical, many in the 15 to 20 foot range.

As I walked around, I noticed that several of the trees in the area had been cut down at some point, but oddly had often not been fully detached from the stumps.  Whether that was done to prevent some infestation, or maybe to open them to view from above as a landmark, I never really did figure out what had happened.  Judging by how many of the trees were left against the rocks, and the lack of broken holds, none of the tree cutting seemed to be related to climbing in any case.

I climbed several problems that day, a few of which I edited into the following video.

A few days later, my mom and I went out and did several more appealing problems, eventually joined by Emily as well.

I made one more trip there in the spring, not doing as much climbing myself that time, but enjoying watching Vince and Myqe going to work on the blank canvas.

After that a few months passed without returning, as I mistakenly thought the approach would become too overgrown until colder temperatures returned in the fall.  One day in July, Dan and I decided to check it out anyway, and found that it was in reality a perfect year-round climbing area.  Once I returned from my summer roadtrip, we got out a couple more times, with others including Alison, Ian, and Bryan coming along to add their own touches.  It was during this period that the area's potential started to become really apparent, with the number of problems climbing quickly from somewhere around thirty to almost double that.

We started to explore a little further down, finding several problems in the jumbled pit just down from the main concentration of boulders, hosting a fun variety of short slabs and overhangs, as well as a couple of taller problems and some really cool offwidth options.

One of our favorite problems in the pit area was Crimps for Breakfast, a slightly overhung crimpy face that made use of a slopey right inner arete to reach a good right hold before the topout.

Part of what made the problem so fun was the completely different beta that Dan and I used to get through it...

We also started to clear out some of the fallen trees up in the main area, opening up several highball lines in the Beehad corridor, named for the apparent religious war between the bees and hornets taking place at an already unnerving topout on an earlier visit.

I've been meaning to post about this place ever since the spring, and sadly the main thing keeping me from doing so was not knowing what to call it.  After talking to several people about it, and eventually considering Indy's advice to just steal a name from Lord of the Rings, I ended up taking another literary route.  Since I (along with my brother Chris) am named after Christopher Robin, and these are the woods where I go to play, I said half-jokingly that we could just name it after the Hundred Acre Wood.  When Dan said that he would just call it "The Acre" for short, the name just stuck.  So barring any reemergence of lost ascentionists from decades past, The Acre it has became.

At some point this fall I'll put together a mini-guide of the area to post on mdguides, but in the meantime here's a little video with footage I've compiled over the past several months.  Welcome to The Acre.

Bushwhack Revisited

I've had a great few days of bouldering this week out in the Frederick area, mostly on new stuff, but yesterday started itching for a visit to Bushwhack Rocks.  Even with a humid temperature of 90+ degrees providing less than optimal sending conditions, it turned out to be one of the best climbing days I've had all summer.  Whether it was the relative solitude or the feel of familiar rock under my hands, it felt great to be back.  I only say "relative" solitude because, to be totally fair, there were others out enjoying the rock too...

After a quick walk around, I decided to warm up on the beautiful compression lines of the Stunk! Boulder, going from the stand start a few times before moving on to the crouch.  While I haven't really worked on the full sit start to the boulder yet, it's high on my list of winter projects.

I then went over to start working out the sequence for Constructive Winter, which I had intended to be another winter project.  Conditions couldn't have been more different than when Brian established it back in February, but I was surprised at how quickly I went through it.  After figuring out the individual moves, I was able to send it on the third full attempt.

Still having a good bit of energy left, I went up for a nostalgic run up Tourette's Razor, the first problem  I ever did at Bushwhack and still one of my favorites.  I then headed back to work on Tauntaun Sleeping Bag, which I had failed to send on a previous visit with Brian, during which we had later put up Westermarck Effect.  This time seemed equally hopeless until I applied the same technique that has gotten me through so many other bouldering problems in the last several months: climb it like a crack.  Realizing that the bump I was pressing my toe against had a slight protrusion above, I switched to smearing and torquing the edge of my shoe into the angle, and suddenly had a secure platform from which to make the move.  From there it was just a matter of controlling the slopers to move through the topout, which was far easier than the initial move.

It felt great to already send two of the problems I had intended to get on a few months from now, and it really left me with awesome feeling about this coming winter.  In the meantime, here's a bit of video from yesterday's fun...

Scouting in the fog

"Okay, it should be about 500 feet that way."

Somewhere in the fog ahead, our target was a 100 foot wide clearing in the dense forest.  A talus field at the top of a small rise, it appeared from the aerial maps to contain three large boulders that I was sure would be worth the trip.  My mom was not nearly as confident as I was that I had remembered the map correctly.

As it turned out, the "500 feet" was more like 1250.  Fortunately we came across a network of small paths after a few hundred careful feet down the steep hill.  Not that it helped the visibility any.  In fact, the first path we followed paralleled the top of the rock field, just enough beyond the edge of sight that we continued on to explore other directions.  After well over an hour of searching, we were just considering giving up when the fog lifted enough to reveal a promising ridgeline.  Leaving the trail, I followed it to the top and found my rocks.  Which weren't as big as I'd hoped.

To be fair, the larger boulders that I had spotted could be climbed.  They just weren't the highballs that I'd anticipated, and not at all worth the approach considering the much better bouldering areas that we had passed on the way in.  So after carefully extracting myself from the jumbled rock and returning to the trail to find my mom, we set off to salvage the day with some bouldering.  Heading off toward another new area I've been visiting (more on that soon), we found that although the rock itself was dry, the thin layer of lichen was still just wet enough from the fog to be really slippery.  The swarms of bugs didn't help either.

Sometimes that's how it goes.  I love going out and looking for new things to climb, and for every trip that yields something exciting, another two or three turn out to be just a good walk in the woods.  But even one of those trips I consider to be a success from a scouting standpoint, if for no other reason than there's now one less area for me to wonder about.  Plus, just as one can't know light without knowing darkness, the experience of walking through the woods to a disappointing end makes finding good rock all the more sweet.  And there's so much of it out there to be found.

Bushwhack Rocks 1/29/12 video

Well after two weeks I finally managed to edit together the video footage from my January 29th trip to Bushwhack.  Not a masterpiece by any means, but it was fun to play around with.  Enjoy!

February Flakes at Bushwhack

So I've come to the conclusion that the best way to ensure snowfall on a bouldering trip is to bring Vincent Faires along.  Our last time bouldering together was back in December, when the forecast of 44 and sunny somehow changed to three hours of snow, which admittedly worked out since we ended up climbing Sulfur Cave in our attempt to stay warm and dry.  Yesterday we again went out to Bushwhack expecting sunny mid-40s weather, only to be hit with large swirling flakes by early afternoon.  Joined by Vince's friend Myqe and fellow Bushwhack veteran Brian, we had a strong crew for a short but fun session.

After warming up on That's not a Woodpecker and the neighboring slab problems, we decided to try our luck on the adjacent small roof that had injured both Colin and me last March.  We did two problems there: one moving from low ledges to pinches, then following the lip up and left to a slabby topout...

                                                             Photo: Brian Spiering

                                                                                             Photo: Brian Spiering

                                                                  Photo: Brian Spiering 

                                                            Photo: Brian Spiering

                                                            Photo: Brian Spiering

                                                            Photo: Brian Spiering

And a problem on the opposite side making a long move from low pinches to amazingly fun slopers on top.

                                                            Photo: Brian Spiering

Next we moved to a boulder directly across the alley, where Brian channelled his inner monkey to clean the holds.

And a few minutes later another problem was sent.

And that's when the snow hit.  We went over to work on the sit start to Stank, Stunk! and to have Vince try Westermarck Effect, but the snowflakes had made everything too wet to climb.  Going into the Sulfur Cave for one last ditch effort at dry climbing, I made a single attempt at repeating Firecracker before deciding I should stop abusing my already bleeding hands.

                                                           Photo: Brian Spiering

Oh well, a short day is better than none at all!