Disappearing in a Fog

After a couple of weeks of rain, the sky opened up and we decided to caravan our little behinds out to Leavenworth for some good old fashioned granite groping. We piled as many people as would be comfortable in my Suba-ru and made the red eye drive to L-town, arriving at 9:00 in the morning. It’s a three hour drive, you do the math. Groggy, yet feeling unclogged after a nice stop at the Safeway we headed to the best spot in Icicle, Forestland. We were supposed to meet up with four other guys, Jesse, Al, Mika, and Evan, all greeners and all around good guys, but they were still packing up camp seeing as how they decided to come down the night before, bbbrrrrrrrr! They eventually made it to the spot and we all congealed to form a bad ass bouldering blob of goodness. On a strange note, the weather was not cooperating at all, and while the boulders were bone dry and velcro in a frictionable nature an incessant fog blotted out all hope of a sunny escape or any chance of seeing the beautiful Fall scenery. First time I have ever been to Leavenworth and not been bathed in the wholesome goodness of the sun. Oh well, it didn’t do much for my psych, but we all got off to a good start.

Evan on The Real Thing

I ran laps on my favorite problem ever, The Real Thing, while Dom sent the crouch start to One Summer, and Jimmy ticked off Drill Sergeant and the broken version of Busted. We all eventually gathered around a cool problem called Feel The Pinch and everyone in the group worked on de- mystifying the sequence, nice send Jeremy! I gave my work horse a few beatings, which means I did The Shield a couple of times (get your mind out of the gutter!!). We also gave Cruise Control a go or two before eventually heading to the uppers.

Dom reaches on Cruise Control

Upper forestland is where it is at! Huge boulders with tons of problems on them. We ran laps on Lovage, one of the best anywhere, I committed to the highball slab Fedge, as well as everyone else, and then we slapped the heinous slopers of The Physical around for a while.

Mika tops out Fedge as we all gawk in amazement.

These three pictures are all of The Physical:

Jesse

Mika

Dom

We then moved to a sweet round boulder with sweet round slopers and incut jugs. We ran laps once again on Sunny and Steep, and then a few of us managed Funny and Cheap, a sweet dynamic problem with awesome slopey holds and rails. A good time was had by all, and while I didn’t manage to really get into the hardcore focus of sending anything gnarly, I loved just climbing all of these wonderful boulder problems. I have a new found respect for Forestland and will always love the boulders here.

The crew.

We packed up with very little skin left and headed to the Scrambled Egg boulder. More good times ensued as we sent a cool slab thingy, and a sweet little slopey arête next to it. Then everyone gathered around Twisted Stone and wasted what remaining skin they had left by crimping hard and slapping for victory on the perfect grained slopers and crimps of this light blue giant. It was a good way to end the day and I’m excited about getting back out here in the Spring.