Updatin’ Blogs is Stupid

Between the last time I posted and now, a lot has happened.  This is not to include me doing any hard rock climbs or editing loads of sweet videos, and especially does not include me ending my season-epic Apocalypse Prow up in Boone (surely nobody has done that hike more than me this year).  I went to Rocktown (a bunch), went to Boone (a bunch), went to Hueco*, went to Rumbling Bald (never again!), graduated college**, went to the Red***, got a job, and now I’m going fishing.

I did finally finish up the Hueco video.  Here it is.  2 months, a new record.

 

There is also a video of me putting down one of my long time projies (Pit!) up at Rumbling Bald, so be on the lookout for that now that I’ve got the Hueco video out to satisfy the needy masses.

*I did Moonshine Roof, only took me three years.  I rule

**With honors, I rule

***Rain, good thing I was strong enough to climb all the overhanging 5.12′s there****, I rule

****SIKE

Team Psyche-Fun-Crushfest 2013

We made another trip to Horse Pens 40 this past weekend, and ended up having a real rad weekend.  Team DAG (Dale Andy George) held down the fort Friday night and Saturday, with Team DL-OMJ-G-BAB (Dookie-locks-old-man-johnson-grace-b.a.-barackus) showing up on Sunday to close out the weekend.  Here’s the rundown.

Friday night, we rolled in and I couldn’t resist.  I haven’t been like that in a long time, lately I’ve been pretty patient about sleeping first and climbing the next morning… Anyway, we got out of the car and it was a bit warm, but my skin felt bullet-hard and the rock felt awesome, so Dale psyched me up to head into the boulders and warm up real quick to try Getcha’ Some (V5).  Surprisingly enough, I warmed up, did the crux move in a couple tries, then gave it a go from the start and ended up on top.  I wish I could do that with projects every time, it’s so nice to have the pressure off a trip quickly so the psyche remains high and you can try new stuff… Alas.

So the next day, we warmed up, team pooped, and got after it.  Standard procedure.  While Andy was doing his accelerated warm-up thing, I made my way over to Blue Justice (V4) and pieced it together in a couple o’ goes (this was the site of a punt-fest the weekend before).  After that, I walked over and Andy did No Tranquility (V9)  in like 10 minutes.  The boy is too strong.  We’re going to have to break his bones.  By this time, it’s like 10:15 and Dale is psyched to get on Slider (V9).  At 10:30 we decide Dale isn’t all that psyched on Slider after all and move on.  Dale is not in his happy place.  Andy heads off to open up every double digit project in the park, and me and Dale settle down at the Flow after we all tried the impossible Moon Arete (V6/12) for a bit.  After we bailed on that, Andy went to try Illusions (V11) and me and Dale stayed for him to do the Flow (V7) and myself to seal the deal on Mainline (V4).  Somewhere in the next 45 minutes, the psyche took a serious swing for the better, and Dale’s trip took off.  I did Mainline and then got psyched on Sideline (V5) which now has a tree that ends up in your anus as you top out.  We both dabbed (Dale would want me to tell you that he dabbed less than I did), but we both “did” it, then Dale gave the Flow the proverbial ‘one more go’ and sent.  This is where he started to send every V7 in the park.

Dale climbing on some of those classic HP40 slopers… The Thief (V7/8) in impeccable focus. Adam Johnson Photo.

Between then and the end of the trip Sunday afternoon, Dale ticked the following (all V7):

• The Thief (which Andy also crushed)
• It’s a Natural
• Slabalicious “oh, that’s V6″ SHUTUP
• Slush Puppy Low
• Cuts Like a Knife Low “oh that’s 5.12+” SHUTUP
• Sweet Spot (has anybody ever done this before?)

He also did Gadget Direct (V4/5) and flashed Spirit (V3) for good measure (and to round his Sunday V-point total to north of 50 points… sheesh).

Saturday evening, right before we went to shove Mexican food down our gullets, Andy did the impossible Landslide (V8/13) and the crew left very psyched.

Most of Sunday was spent following Dale around and watching him piss on everything he touched, with the exception of an hour or so spent letting me take sports-action whippers off the top of Mortal Combat (V4) which finally, with the psyche of Andy, Adam, and B.A. Barackus, went down.

A nice shot Adam snapped of me on Mortal Combat a couple of years ago, maybe my first session on it?

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt as good as I did sticking the top hold of that climb.  Here’s a video:

A couple other things happened.  I tried Popeye (V5) and remembered that I can’t campus, I’m not flexible, and I’m a bad rock climber.  Whatever.  I also did a nice problem near Ten Pins for the first time called Plinko (V3) which I would recommend to anyone.

Very psyched lately.  Hueco training regimen is in full swing.  Only 3.5 weeks left til we’re on our way out west.  Until then, I’ll be in class poking my eyeballs out and watching the second hand until we’re loading up the cars for the trip.

For now, it looks like the weather’s gonna be trash for the next coupla days… gym seshes… maybe Boone this weekend?

Happy trails.

Punxsutawney Phil is a Tool

This jerk (well, perhaps not this one in particular, but another stupid furry idiot who is clearly blind or doesn’t know well enough to be afraid of his shadow) has sentenced us to an early spring.  Between Al Gore’s global warming and weather predicting varmints, we may never get another day of good conditions for as long as we live.  Naturally, this will cause an inflation of grades, and soon, Millipede will be V7 again, meaning I won’t even have to rock climb next year to improve my 8a!  Maybe Punksuthak;dflj Phil ain’t so bad after all…

I’ve been doing pretty well about getting outside, and even managed to get up to the Bald for a day of demoralizing efforts on projects that I’m not sure I’ll ever do.  My efforts on sandstone lately have been much more rewarding.  I finally made it up Honky Tonkin’ and Uniball at HP40, both really nice problems (despite the dirt-burgling start on Uniball) and have almost come to terms with the fact that anything harder than V4 there is impossible.  I finally had my payday at Zahnd a couple weeks ago and managed to shut down all four problems that remained on my list there (The Turret, Solar Flare, Chisel Chest, and Razor’s Edge).  I even remembered to bust out the camera for R.E.!  My broski Dylan also managed to put it down just after me for his first of the grade.  Nice work bruh!  He won’t see this, because a) nobody reads my blog and b) he probably can’t read, but I feel obligated to give him a shout out anyway.  Here’s a video.

In other news, it appears as if La Sportiva has discontinued the Speedsters, which is devastating.  I broke down and bought a pair of futura’s.  Now I’m broke, but on the bright side, Doug says I’m ready for La Dura Dura, plus my shoes match my eyes, which will no doubt have throngs of women chasing me down at the crag.

Hueco is coming up in like 6 weeks, I couldn’t be more stoked.  Ready to (hopefully) put old projects down quickly and get psyched on some new ones as well.  As for now, I’m feeling trashed.  Need to recover and get psyched on getting strong in the coming weeks before heading to Texas!

Happy trails.

Deuces 2012

Well, 2012 is over, which means:

a) I’ll be 23 soon, another foot in the grave…

b) I’ll be graduating from Clemson in 5 months or so

c) I need a job soon

d) It’s time for a tick list evaluation

Since Christmas, I’ve made a handful of trips to the Chattanooga/North Georgia area to dispatch a good bit of stuff from my most recent list, especially from Rocktown.  Even managed to do a couple unexpected classics along the way…  I’ll leave the spray up to my scorecard (and yes, as a matter of fact, there are people out there logging easy rock climbs…) It’s funny how it feels like doing one boulder problem (Throttle, in my case) can send the season in the right direction.   So after a couple 1/2 week or week-long climbing trips, I came back to Lexington to go to my roommate Jon’s wedding.  I got word that it was raining in Chatty from some friends, and decided to make it a late night and go do some karaoke with the Lex-bros at Main St. Bar and Grill.  We wished Jon and Liz the best, met the black Lt. Dan (who told us Richard Pryor jokes and directed our pursuit of the fairer sex), and I exploded my knee singing the Darkness.  I’m not sure what exactly happened to it, but it hurt like hell yesterday.  Improvement today was exponential.  Hopefully it’s a minor speedbump in an otherwise successful season.

I’ll be heading back to Clemson after I publish this post, to chill out and unpack for a day while I get ready for the next semester, which I hope will be as light as it’s supposed to be.  12 hours, an english class… pretty excited to see what the next semester holds.  2012 was pretty rad, and I’d be stoked if 2013 was half as good.

Rainy Post-Finals Week

Well, school is finally out for a few weeks, and now I’m sitting at home staring out the window waiting for the world to dry out so I can get my hands back on some rock.  I did squeeze one dry day out this past weekend and made it up to Boone to invest some time in Zen on the Mad Skills Wall at Grandmother Mountain.  This thing suits me surprisingly well.  The crimps don’t hurt my fingers, I guess they’re just big/sloping enough that I don’t have to close off on them.  They almost climb like fingertip-slopers or something.   Really rad holds.  Anyway, no luck on it this weekend, but I hope to get back to Boone one more time (I’ve been saying that for like 4 trips) to finish the area off for the season and move on to sandstone!  It’s hard to turn Boone down when it’s been so warm everywhere else and the highs have been in the 50′s up there…

(Upcoming spray warning) One trip prior to this past weekend, I finally did Throttle.  I couldn’t be more excited to move on from it.  That thing was HARD for me.  It’s nice to finally be able to try other lines at Grandmother without  having that thing looming over my head in the warmup area.  </spray>  That same trip, we also made the hike up to Apocalypse Prow to work that thing out, and surprisingly enough, I was able to do all the moves on it.  This thing could be the best line in Boone, if only the hike didn’t put your knees out of commission for the following week.

That’s most of what I have to share lately.  Just watching the forecast for 4 or 5 different areas and trying to decide what’s next.  Excited to see what the rest of the season holds.

See you guys out there.

Warm Weekend

2 posts in 2 weeks…  I’m stepping my game up…

The Friday before last was spent taking Adam on a tour of the new(ish) lines in the Bearfields before the trail day up there the following Saturday.  We put some effort into one of the projects up there which should turn out really nice, besides a nasty spray paint mark right on the face.  CT… what were you trying to tell us?

Saturday was the trail day, which ended up having a nice turnout of 15 or so folks from Columbia and the Greenville area.  We cleaned up a lot of trail (the new approach will be quite a bit longer, unfortunately, especially to the areas west of the Bearfields.) and also hooked up Jedi with a nice set of steps up to the Use the Force boulder.  Several large downed trees were removed from the section of the trail between the logging road and the Bearfields.  I had to roll out at lunchtime, just as everybody started to climb, but managed to get a quick lap in on the meat grinder problems as well as a few others in the warmup area.  Here’s a video of a little circuit I’ve been running in the Bearfields this fall.  Slaaabbbsssssssssss

Needing some time on steeper ground, I daytripped Boone Sunday with Brazell.  It was warm.  65 degrees the first weekend in December? C’MON SON.  Despite the warm (but pleasant) weather, we managed to enjoy the day and climb some nice new lines.  We headed straight to upper lost cove and both got on a nice tall face called Foreign Land (V3ish) which was really nice, if for no other reason than to break up the heinous hike a bit.  We continued on up towards the top of the mountain to let Brazell get on his project, Downward Dog (V9/10).  While he spread out the pads, I ran up top to find and check out Apocalypse Prow (V7).  This has to be one of the finest lines I’ve ever seen.  Very psyched to get back up there and try it, if I can ever get someone to spot and try it with me psyched on the hike (which was harder than our V3 warmup, and way more sustained).  No go on Downward Dog for Ryan this trip, but I’m sure it will come together in colder weather.  We started chucking our pads down hill and chased them through the brambles back to the car.

My real hope for the trip was to get on Throttle (V5) at Grandmother, so we drove over to the parking only to find that the road was SOAKING wet.  We were going to hike in anyway and see what it looked like, but Drexel and Kelley passed us on the road and were kind enough to turn around and inform us that nothing was dry up there, and invited us to join them on 221.  We quickly jumped on board and drove down to M1 where Brazell began working on Instinct (V9) over a sea of pads and I finally nutted up and did M1 (V3).  What a classic line, even if it is a bit scurry.  Tons of big, jug-tugging moves to the standard Boone heel hook/mantle at a little over 12 or 13 feet.

We then followed Drexel, Kelley, and a few others in their crew up to the Iceberg, which I had wanted to get on for a long time.  After warming back up on a nice V3/4ish sloper problem around the corner, we padded up the middle line on the tall Iceberg face (V5ish) and started giving it some burns.  It turned out not to be so bad, particularly if you’re tall enough not to have to deadpoint it and you can just lock it off.  We spent the rest of the day at the Texas boulder, with me wussing out of the big move at the end of West Texas (V3) and Brazell getting close on What’s East of Texas (V6/7) around the corner.  I also tried Cocaine Highway (V5/6) a bit to no avail.  We dipped out, thanking the Boone crew for the tour, and wrapped up the day with Brazell quickly putting away What’s Up Arete (V6) and putting a bit of effort into the V7 direct finish.  Next time.

It’s almost finals week here in Clemson, which means a lot of stress separated by long periods of studying/climbing between exams, presentations, and projects.  I hope to make at least a couple of weekday morning trips up to the Bearfields before starting a long trip next weekend to sandstone and eventually going home for the holidays.  Hoping for cool and dry, but we’ll see… see you guys out there!

Edit:  I forgot to post this for a few days… I owe another update of the past weekend in Boone…

‘Tis the Season

So the weekends I haven’t spent climbing at the Triple Crown have all been invested in hiking and projecting at the local spots around Hwy 11.  Here’s some pics of some stuff I’ve found in the area, though it’s mostly blank, hard, tall, or some combination of the three.

Dylan checking the roof for holds.  There ain’t none, I chipped ‘em all off.

Highball slab in SC, shocker.

50 feet tall and blank *sigh*.  Maybe an opportunity for something on the right face, but it would have to be TR’ed.  Or maybe you could plug some cams?!  WHOOOOOO

New line I found and cleaned up to find that I can’t do the first move.  Looks like I’ll have to recruit a strong friend to come do it.  Big first move to a sloping edge traverse to jugs.  Hope the start hold doesn’t break with my fat arse trying to pull on.

Eric taking a stroll up a new classic in the Bearfields, Alley Oop Scoop (V3/4).

I’ve got some footage that I’ll post up soon of a little circuit of old and new lines I’ve been running up there that’s actually really nice.  The trail day is up there this weekend, it will be nice to see folks up there cleaning the area up and getting into the local boulders.

After stuffing my gullet last weekend for Thanksgiving with the fam, I made a trip up to Rocktown and Zahnd with Brazell to take advantage of the surprisingly cool temps (highs were in the 40′s!)

We spent Saturday opening up new projects for the coming season.  Brazell put some effort into the Womb (V10), Blackout (V9/10), and Swamp Sauce (V8) (which he was kind enough to leave unfinished so that we had a reason to go back down to Blue) while I punted off of Blue (V6), Big Bad (V5), and realized that the finger is not close to allowing me to get back on Nose Candy (V6).  I did manage to put down the line to the right of The Hobbit, Full Circle (V4/5) as well as doing some thing to the left of the Womb that was pretty dumb and a new warmup in the orb area that was real nice.

We went to Zahnd on Sunday as soon as we woke up and warmed up so Brazell could try Harvest Moon (V8) and I could put some effort in Chisel Chest (V5) and Razor’s Edge (V6).  Unfortunately we didn’t do any of those problems (typical) but Brazell did do the low start to Razor’s Edge, Gillette (V7/8) and I did a rad problem around the corner called Bear Hug (V3).

As it gets colder, I have a revised (long) list of things I would like to do this season (or next season, or whenever I get strong).  It’s similar to my New Year’s resolutions list from last year with the addition of some new ones and removal of a few I decided I was less psyched on…

HP40

Getcha Some (V5), Uniball (V4), Mortal Kombat (V4), Trick or Treat (V6), and Honky Tonkin (V4).  Most of these should be pretty reasonable this year, considering I can sack up on Mortal Kombat and catch Trick or Treat on a cold enough day.

Rocktown

This area houses my longest list, and I hope to spend the most time here this year.  The Hobbit (V5), Croc Block (V5), Little Bad (V4/5), Big Bad (V5), Blue (V6), Nose Candy (V6… need a working finger…), Pythagorean Theorem (V4, accdg to the new guide book…), Sinus (V3/5/wrong name?  Left of Pythagorean), Iron Claw (V7, hopeful…), Slaper (V5) and Soap on a Rope (V4/12).

LRC

My list is shorter here this year, mostly harder stuff I would like to break through with.  Special Agent (V7), Grimace (V7/8), SPACE (V8), White Trash (V5), and Rage (V5, still punting off the topout holds).

Rumbling Bald (ugh)

Maybe I’ll do some of these if I ever decide to go back to the land of the anti-George.  Pit BBQ (V6), Lewis Lunge (V5, will not happen with my finger as it is…), Green Knob (V5), and the sit? V7?  People say it’s not much harder?

Zahnd

Equally psyched on here and Rocktown.  Which is convenient, considering they’re basically next door to each other, minus a 30 minute drive down the worst road ever.  Razor’s Edge (V6), Chisel Chest (V5), Turret (V3/4?) and Solar Flare (V3, bad end of the day climbing going on here last weekend…)  Real pumped to get back.

Boone

Throttle (V5, finally close on this thing), West Texas (V3), Beasley’s Face (V5), Nitrous Oxide (V5), M1 (V3, ugh), Mighty Mouse (V5, ugh), Haptos (V4).  Probably getting too cold up there right about now.  Maybe next year, or maybe we’ll have another freak warm weekend and I’ll get back up there again.

Hueco

Everything.  Lobster Claw (V5), Moonshine Roof (V4), Sign of the Cross (V3) are priority.  There are lots more, but these need to happen quick next time or I’m gonna lose it.

I’ve got a list of lines locally that I want to do also, but I’ll keep those to myself for now (since nobody cares what my slab projects are anyway) and fill you in as they happen.

That’s enough blogging for one morning.  Before you slam it, fram it.

Fall Break

So this past weekend was the second leg of triple crown in Chattanooga, and it was a blast, as always. Chatt is an awesome town with good food, good people, and good climbing. I didn’t quite meet my goal of getting bumped into advanced, my project was wet, and it was hot, but it was still an awesome time. The golf course boulders were open again, so I spent a fair amount of time out there but did manage to make my way back into the boulders for a bit later in the day. Here’s the rundown of the day (beware of spray).

Witch’s Hat – V4 (on the fairway)
The Coven – V5 (on the fairway)
Titleist – V5 (on the fairway)
Right 45 – V4 (on the fairway)
Shotgun – V6
The Wave – V5
Unusual Suspect – V4
Big Mike – V4 (on the fairway)
Little Mike – V2 (on the fairway)
Gran Torino – V2 (on the fairway)

So all in all, not such a bad day. Would have liked to keep everything above V4 for the sake of competition, but what can ya do? I’m very excited to be back on sandstone as the temps cool down. Here’s a little vid of a George-style prob from Horse Pens 40 that I miracled my way up last spring.

Boogie Wonderland from George Evans on Vimeo.

If you were avoiding spray, you can start reading again safely now. We spent Saturday evening with our buddy Michael in Knoxville. Basically the whole time, we were preparing to bail on route climbing with him Sunday, and proceeded as such, breaking the news to him over a full stomach at Cracker Barrel the next morning as thunderheads rolled in over the Obed. With bowels gurgling we departed for Clemson for an afternoon round of disc golf and some quality grill time Sunday evening.

Monday I woke up, and realizing I was on fall break, started scrounging for somewhere to climb. I didn’t scrounge for long, quickly realizing that Boone was in the mid 50′s, and packed my things (which I really hadn’t even unpacked) and rolled out with Ethan, another Clemson bro. We hit some stuff on 221 in the evening, mostly getting manhandled, then slept through a hurricane and woke up early to get a morning Lost Cove sesh in. I finally did what might be the boulder problem I’ve been “trying” the longest of all, Patio Arete (V4). I remember pulling onto it 4 years ago and thinking it was impossible. Fortunately we’ve come a little way since then and it felt plenty reasonable at the grade today. Hyper-classic. After petering around for another hour or two climbing whatever I could still scramble up given the weekend’s events, we rolled out and headed back. The drive couldn’t have been nicer, the leaves are lookin’ sexy as hell right now.

So that brings us up to speed, I’m back in Clemson at work trying to keep from poking my eyeballs out while I wait on the wall to close so I can go home and watch SONS OF ANARCHY with my redneck roommates. Gotta love it. Happy trails.

Southern Ascents

Like all of my posts, I will start this one by apologizing to anyone reading for the lack of posts.

I finally finished editing some footage from last season just in time for a competition the American Alpine Club and Misty Mountain are holding during Triple Crown. Here’s the vid me and Adam are submitting, Southern Ascents (see what we did there?):

Southern Ascents from George Evans on Vimeo.

So this past weekend was the first leg of Triple Crown at Hound Ears and I was finally in (semi) healthy form and was able to climb some things I wanted to climb. Adam, Andy, and Greg all crushed, as did the rest of the crew. I’ll let you chase down their scorecards if you’re interested in knowing exactly what they sent (think of it like some sort of fun interactive blog post where you get to do more). The two highlights for me were the Heretic and the Claw (kind of totally different styles). The Heretic might be the most fun I’ve had in Boone. 20ish feet tall with a cruxy first move and a dicey move to the lip off of a crimp. It was excellent. The Claw was a nice face climb right behind Fuc Yo with really cool incuts up a tall face to an easy topout. Classic. I spent the rest of the day checking out the rest of the field and groveling falling off the Nudge, which is a terrible impossible v4 mantle that nobody’s ever done. Big shout out to those who put it on and make those events possible, they are awesome. The next leg (at LRC/Stone Fort) is next weekend, looking forward to it. I’ve got high hopes for that one. Happy trails.

Finals Week

So here we are, another month between updates.  Truth be told, I have a good reason this time.  I took a month off of climbing to recover after Hueco and have just recently started to climb again.  Can’t tell a whole lot of difference one way or the other so far, but time will tell if the time off pays off.  The real reason for this post, however, is that I finally finished up the first video (of what should turn out to be about 4 or 5) of the climbing we did this winter.  Adam shot all the footage, as usual, and I dragged my arse editing it for several months, as usual. Pretty happy with how it turned out though! As soon as the schedule settles down a bit and I get into my summer job in lovely Aiken, SC (land of horses and golf), the others should make their way off of my computer and onto the interweb for everyone to get a sniff on.

LRC/Stone Fort Winter ’12 from George Evans on Vimeo.