On the road...

Erika and I are currently in Lake Tahoe. We've been in Joe's Valley, Las Vegas, Joshua Tree and Bishop over the last twelve days. I know that sounds like a lot of places but that was mostly due to running from bad weather on our way to Bishop. Bishop was getting too hot, so we shifted to Tahoe for a few days. We're heading to Yosemite tomorrow where we'll be meeting my parents to show them around and spend some time in San Francisco. I'll have a video up at some point, but in the meantime here's a little stripped down version of one of my current favorite songs...Enjoy!

Telluride Bouldering Beta- Ilium Boulders Video

Here's some footage that I've shot over the last few weeks (a warm & dry March created some stellar climbing conditions) of some of the best problems in Ilium. There are certainly plenty of great problems that I didn't have the time to climb/film, but I tried to choose some testpieces, as well as some more obscure problems in order to entice people to check them out! My hope is to eventually do a movie like this for the Mine Boulders and the Tree House as well. We'll see.

The grades of several problems are different from the guidebook. These grades are just my thoughts after having the last five or so years to refine the grades a bit. Any comments/thoughts/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

A few notes on the last two problems:

-'Frogger Dyno' has been done by Scotty Michels and probably a few other people. It's actually the way the problem was originally done. Though it is somewhat contrived not to exit right towards the top, it is a great mental and physical challenge to attempt the direct dyno. The day I filmed this was actually the first day I ever tried it this way. It's exciting! There is a bolt on top (that you might want to back up) for working it out on top rope, if desired.

-'White Wizard Right' I started trying this when I went up to film 'White Wizard' because it seemed hard but plausible. It is somewhat forced as one of the hardest parts is avoiding the boulder behind you, but the moves climb beautifully. The moves aren't super hard (maybe v6?) but I needed to figure out a little more beta to avoid having my feet cut. Jim Hurst informed me the other day that Paul Pierce had come up with an exit similar to this recently, apparently using a heel/toe cam of some sort, though I think his exit took a different path since the exit holds I brushed were covered in dirt and lichen. If I find out more about this, I'll update this post...