RawCandy

Well, well, well. It seems as if Olympia isn’t quite boulderless after all. I had heard tales of rock sightings at a place called Rock Candy Mt. just 10 minutes or so from Evergreen but didn’t think they would pan out until my friend Kyle showed me a video of a mutual friend of ours doing a boulder problem on what appeared to be perfect granite. He told tales of another boulder as well, smaller in size but promising and another boulder trapped in the confines of a locals backyard. That was all I needed. I swooped up Kyle and we headed out to Rock Candy Mt. to see what fortunes we could find. First we checked out the boulder in the backyard of a rather large man’s property. His pit-bull chained to a line that ran horizontal along his property in order to create a moving, and biting animal fence. The dog was all front though as he buckled before my unwavering sense of pack leadership, yeah I’ve seen an episode or two of the dog whisperer. It turned out the dog was the least of our worries, the rather large man shot down our attempts to scope out the lonely boulder that stood slouched in the corner of his property begging for our attention. It wasn’t exactly an amazing piece of rock, besides the fact that it was at least 8-9 feet tall and looked like it had some promising lines up a nice overhang on bullet stone granite. We gave up on that prospect and headed to the boulder I had seen in Kyle’s video. Up and over some steep muddy roads we finally arrived at the pinnacle of Rock Candy Mt. with a great view of Mt. Rainier and a nice little boulder just off the side of the road.


The majestic Mt. Rainier, almost brings me to tears.


Our little boulder, awwww.

Kyle gave me the run down of the line he and his friend Evan had established on it. A cool little traverse that ended on a slab. The rock quality was amazing, salt and pepper granite very similar to the kind of granite in Squamish and Mt. Home road. A nice jug undercut to a big flat jug side pull, led to the crux pull around on crimps to a cool little slab finish, not bad. I flashed the problem as a warm up, felt pretty hard, I’d say on par with many of the V.2’s I have done. Then I did the slab by itself, a cool V.0, and then I manufactured the direct finish to the traverse utilizing a cool pinch and a high step, probably soft V.2.



Me on my direct finish, Right Handed Pinch Shooters


Kyle on Left Handed Six Shooters(V.2)


Comin' round the Mt.


Almost...



























It's slab time, yeeehaw!


All in all not a bad little boulder at all, after running a couple of laps and Kyle coming close to sending the traverse, which his friend Evan, the first ascentionist called Left Handed Six Shooter because of the shallow divots made by drunken locals blasting their ‘six shooters’ at the poor boulder.
Kyle wanted to show me the other boulder they had found at the base of the mountain. He told me it wasn’t as good as the previous boulder but worth a look. We arrived, and he was right, but I could spy a short one to two move problem on the steeper side of the boulder, which was also of extremely high quality granite, a little darker though. Perched on a small mound of weeds I plopped down chalked up a small slopey right handed pinch and a crimpy slopey pinch for the left and tried beasting it to the lip.


GET SOME! Take that boulder!


I think I'll just take a nap.


I didn’t manage to send so we packed up yet again and went marauding about the various dirt roads that swirled and intersected up the Mt.’s face. We found nothing, unfortunately, but it was a beautiful day and I was just glad to get out and do some climbing on a nice granite boulder and pleased my finger didn’t give me any trouble. In the end, if you’re looking for a good V.2 drive up there and check out this boulder. Don’t be afraid of the random gunshots in the distance, or the pit-bulls on chains, they’re just there to scare rock starved climbers away.

Electric Mayhem

Yo yo yo yo! Wazzzzup to all my dogs in tha’ house?! Throw your hands in the ayer, and wave them like ya’ just don’t cayer! C’mon now, ya’ll know me! Well, I guess it has been a while. All my fans are stark raving mad because I haven’t posted in such a long time, but we discussed this in the beginning. This is a C-L-I-M-B-I-N-G blog, and well, in the last two or three months I just haven’t been doing a lot of the stuff. Inside climbing yes, but I don’t really count that as ‘real’ climbing.

I have finished my first quarter as a true blue grad student, and am currently half way through my second quarter, yet another excuse for not blogging as much as usual.


My professor holding up a dead chinook, god I miss this class


a foot print

I’m trying to remember all the intricate details of the last two to three months in order to convey them in written word so as to entertain any of my ‘readers’. I guess I’ll pick up where I left off. Returning from the year’s last trip to Leavenworth. I couldn’t actually believe we got any climbing in for November, usually a very wet month here in the Northwest. Of course it was the last bit of climbing for me anyway for the last three months. December was a wretched blizzard, more snow than I’ve ever seen here in Washington, or at least this part of Washington. But the sessions at the Warehouse were pretty sweet. Nick came in from the east coast and showed us all why taking three months off to go to nursing school was well worth it by sending problems I could only dream of projecting. He also set some pretty sweet routes before returning in early January to DC to start his second quarter in pursue of his BSN.
Jimmy, well, I don’t really need to say anything about Jimmy, his climbing has done all the talking lately and he and his rock crushing sister are off to Boulder, Colorado to compete in Nationals. I predict they both will do very well and represent Olympia to the fullest.
Dom and Laura both got jobs (finally!) and Dom actually got out climbing on one of the more perfect days a couple of weeks ago in January, due to another bit of odd weather. He managed to tick all the Gritscone routes and solo Rough Cut.
I, on the other hand, have been suffering from old age related injuries (shoulder and finger) and have greatly missed out on some nice weather in January and some good sessions down at the Warehouse. I did however; manage to hike to the top of Little si, a feat I had not yet accomplished. I’ve probably walked half the trail, just to get to World Wall One, 50 or 60 times easily in the past two years but never realized the other half is quite a nice hike. Not to mention the view from the top, pretty amazing. I also grew a crazy beard, shaved it, did yoga for the first time, found a new place to live, finished the first draft of my candidacy paper, rescued my cat from behind a water heater, and scratched my balls.


picture of said 'crazy' beard


picture of the winter wonderland that graced the NW for a few weeks

Currently I find myself sitting in bed writing this blog and bitching and moaning about my damn finger that just refuses to heal so that I can get back to training for the upcoming climbing season. Speaking of which I just couldn’t be more excited about. I had compiled this huge list of tentative goals for the year but I decided that my main goal is just to stay HEALTHY!!! In fact if anyone reading this has any tips for avoiding injuries, specifically finger injuries whilst training for power crimping, please drop me a line. But, I guess I shouldn’t leave you hanging in the goals department, I know Dom is clawing at the screen right about now. I’ll just give you a quick run down: Chronic, Propaganda, PC7, hopefully a trip to Mazama, Sesame Street, Mind Bender, Golden Boy, ATD, The Back Seat, Defenders of the Faith, Droppin’ tha’ Kirschbaum, Lonely Fish, Atomic Energy, Musashi, Batman, Smith Rock (anything), and hopefully, maybe, another trip to Bishop. But this is just a short list, I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of things and I’m sure that a lot things on this list will have to wait for many, many years.


Little si trail


Fall on the TESC campus trail to the beach


Little si again

So, to end this post I think it would be fitting to re-cap the 2008 climbing season’s achievements to give some perspective to the 2009 goals. Olympia was represented quite proudly by everyone this past year.
Jimmy: Sent multiple .12’s outside, including a flash at Chekamus. Absolutely killed it bouldering, sending a number of hard V.8’s and V.9’s including a V.8 flash, sent his first V.6,7,8 at Squamish plus a stout flash of Tim’s Sloper Problem, and helped establish some nice lines at Rattlesnake lake. Now, he is dominating the comp scene and is off to Nationals.
Nick: Sent his first V.9(Coffee Cup) before sending his first V.8(Resurrection), cleaned up multiple projects at Squamish including Gibb’s Cave and Golden Boy, as well as a sweet send of the Doja at Gold Bar and made an impressive solo pilgrimage to Bishop. On the rope he sent .12’s at Red Rocks including a flash of Fear and Loathing, here at WW1 he cleaned house, Techno, Psychosomatic, Hydro, Viagrophobia, and made some nasty links on Californicator, in one day he managed to send all the letter grades in the 5.12 range.
Laura: while on her Euro climbing tour sent a staggering amount of routes and boulder problems, including numerous 5.11a flashes, as well as numerous V.4 flashes, by far the hardest she has ever climbed. I’m jealous.
Dom: pre Euro trip sent in one day V.4,5,6,7. While on the Euro trip turned into a crazy onsighting mad man with onsights of .11d through .12d, and came back with his first .13a. Post Euro trip came back and quickly dispatched an old Squamish project Immunity Challenge (props), then cleaned up some classics at 38 and 32, Stihl Fingers and Passage, plus Hydro at WW1. Best year on the rope? I think so.
Whitey: Went on the Euro trip as well and came back with a smile and his first .12b’s including a .12b flash (I haven’t even managed that feat), and his first .12c in three goes (!!!). Post Euro trip, came with us to Gold Bar and sent multiple V.4’s and his first V.7, GET SOME!
Me: Became addicted to the Leavenworth day trip, sent 10 V.8’s, 5 V.9’s and an unconfirmed first V.10, and got busy on the rope with Techno, Hydro, and Viagrophobia.

Okay, that’s enough from the master spray lord I have become. I know I have left out many climbers in Olympia that are now stronger than me, but their accomplishments outside are still waiting to be seen. Super duper props to everyone at WRG and a special thanks to the people listed above for setting the bar high, really high! Can’t wait for camp fires at Leavenworth, no hospital trips in Squamish (Nick!), a new generation at Little si, working bathrooms at Vantage, a trip period to Smith, and a chance to blog about it all right here.