What's Happening?

It's been a few days here since I last updated, so let's see what's been going on...

Matt is back from his trip to New Zealand. He had a good time indeed and it's nice to have him back.

Shortly after sending Zoinks!! I went back to the C Chimney with a couple of buddies who had never been to Silver Lake before. Alex and Jack are both pretty strong, and I was still pretty psyched on Zoinks!! (how couldn't you be?) and so we decided to climb it. Rich and I had been talking about trying to link the pitches into one and had plenty of gear that day, so I racked up with triples of everything finger size and smaller and took off. I've got to tell you that those 180 feet are so much fun. A link-up is totally possible as long as you have enough gear and are conscious of rope drag. It's almost a completely straight line so rope drag isn't even really that big of a deal. All in all it was a fun day.

Matt, Rich and I met our friend Amanda a few days later at the Creature Wall. I had never been before so it was cool to check out a new wall. It definitely has some fun cracks. The highlight for me was climbing Arachnid Traction in my sanuks.

Then I worked for a few days, went to New Paltz, came back and worked some more. On Monday Rich and I made it out to Silver Lake for a little while. We went back up to the C Chimney cliff and hiked straight to the top. We built an anchor and lowered down over a potential new line and tried top roping it...

So, I've never really considered myself a fan of slab climbing. The climbing at Potter is slabby for sure, but it's not really slab climbing because of all the holds. The route Rich and I tried at C Chimney though is amazingly slabby. It's maybe 88.5° so calling it a slab may be a little misleading. But the climb is awesome. You start off a ledge and pull through nothing to gain a flake. The flake again leads to nothing, and you gain another flake. This again leads to nothing and then one more flake. The flake ends at a small overhang and a few more slabby moves leads to an out-of-the-swimming-pool finish.

I've never been on hard slab before and this was awesome. Way harder than the last move on Hippie Sticks. I didn't even try the start yet, couldn't pull through the next slab crux, and was able to pull the next crux once. So, out of four cruxes we were able to figure out two. It's going to need a few bolts and a lot of trying before this goes down but it will eventually I'm sure. I think we are going to call the route Half Shark Alligator Half Simuliidae. (Simuliidae is the family to which black flies belong.)

And then yesterday Matt and Pelman and I went to Beaver Brook. We climbed Beaver Fever (5.10a), Castor Canidensis (5.11a), Good to the Last Drop (5.10d) and then Pelman and I tried the project there, which is coming along nicely. Pelman figured out how to pull the last little over hang, and then I alllllmost pulled it, but not quite. I think this route is going to end up being 5.12b which is cool. I would be cool if my first 12b was a first ascent.

And now the work week starts back up.