Upper West to 6/24

I've been remiss in keeping up with my writing once again. Time can really get away from you and the last two months have evaporated.

I've been doing some great climbing this spring. I found a new boulder near the Boulder of Love that we called Crackalickin'. Actually, Flynn found it, so it's not fair to claim that I had anything to do with it. It's a cool problem. I invited Kiel out to check out some of the boulders near my place. He crushed Mad, Mad Love on his second try by jumping through the crux. It was awesome! It's amazing how people's styles are so different. I have a substantial reach advantage over Kiel and yet he eliminates like three moves I need to do to hit the same hold. It's eye-opening. Kiel then onsighted Crackalickin'.

Kiel flashing Crackalickin'

Since then I've been teaming up with Seth to do new routes at Upper West. So far this spring I've done six new routes at Upper West- many of them are excellent. Sadly, I have no pictures yet; I'll need to get up there early on a clear morning to get some good shots.

The first route I called Full Circle. It's about 5.11a with a very cool bouldery start on a series of funky side-pulls. Terrific rock that looks more like limestone than schist in a few places. Paul discovered this mini-cliff in the woods about 10 years ago and it wasn't until CRAG-VT bought the cliff that I went back to see if it really was interesting. The name was inspired by the fact that we've come from a time when we were naming routes Private Property and Trespassing to a time when climbers own the cliff.

The next route I did I called Paradox. It follows the left side of the Against the Grain arete. Steep!

Seth spotted a possible line peeking out through the trees near the Rose crack and, after rapping in to check it out, I found three more fantastic climbs: Donkey Index, Once-ler and Why You Fail. The latter two routes are at least half trad gear (Oncel-ler having only 1 bolt) and they've quickly become some of my favorite routes on the cliff.

I've been climbing remarkably well this spring. All of my new routes I either flashed or got on my second try. I've been looking for something slightly harder to work on, but I've come up empty so far. I started trying Steppin' Razor again, but it's too painful and climbing it feels too much like work.

Looking for inspiration. Let's see what's next...