Max and Hayden enroute to Area A

I kind of have this long standing relationship with Mt. Evans; it was the first area I ever climbed at in Colorado, my first trip there (October, 2007) I did the hike from the Summit Lake to Echo Lake hitting Areas E-A (which is a blog post of it’s own) and it is home to my longest standing project, Dali (which I have slept under.) Following the madness of the Bouldering World Cup in Vail the majority of the climbers I knew, who didn’t compete were jonsenin’ to pull to down on some real rock. Conveniently, Mt. Evans is located on the way back to Denver/Boulder so it just so happened to be a stopping point for many returning climbers.

Nick Duttle sticking the Dali Dyno with Ease

We arrived semi-late in the day, around noonish so we didn’t exactly start out right. The weather started out decent, overcast and a bit chilly but great for climbing. Wouldn’t you know it, as soon we hit the boulders the snow started to fall. It was intermittent at first, still allowing for some climbing but of course as soon as I was warmed up and ready to hop on Dali it started dumping. So much so that after trying to sit it out for 20 minutes we decided to start hiking out but by the time we got to the ladder warm up we were able to see blue skies coming over the peaks. I was surprised how quickly the boulders dried off once the sun came out. The weather stayed schitzo pretty much all day giving us burst of sunshine and flurries of snow at indeterminable rates which always makes things much more interesting. Classic Colorado weather; if you don’t like it, wait 5 minutes.

My first go on Dali I tried using my old beta which involved a very reach-y foot and I got shut down at the same spot I always had. I noticed someone using some different beta which involved a deep flag off a decent crimp, my forte. This worked much better then the beta I had been using and I got to the last hard move which is a straight forward dyno but after the opening moves I was worked and just couldn’t stick it. *Note to self - Train endurance* Seeing as how I’ve now done all the moves on the problem I am convinced I’ll send it next trip, which hopefully should be sometime this week. On a side note, I only stuck to area A but everything looked climbable. The trails have been improved and are much more noticeable so let’s try to stick to them!

Me on Dali ©David Jones

David Jones aka Lordscience got this great shot of me on Dali. Check out more of his photos here on Flickr.

]]> http://www.boulderdiaries.com/2009/06/10/first-of-this-seasons-mt-evans-epics/feed/ http://www.boulderdiaries.com/2009/06/08/world-cup-semi-finals-and-finals-images/ http://www.boulderdiaries.com/2009/06/08/world-cup-semi-finals-and-finals-images/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:43:13 +0000 boulderdiaries http://www.boulderdiaries.com/?p=343 As promised, here are some of my shots from the Semi-Final and the Final rounds of the IFSC Bouldering World Cup. You can see the full results for the Men here and the Women here. If you didn’t catch my photos from qualifiers you can check those out here.

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Well the results are in and it was an epic battle! All the competitors put out 110% and put on an amazing show. Special shout out to my buddy Kyle Owen for crushing it and coming in 5th!

Here’s the top 3 in both categories, for full results check out the ISFC site

Mens

1. Jonas Bauman - Germany
2. Daniel Woods - USA
3. Kilian Fishhuber - Austria

Womens

1. Alex Puccio - USA
2. Alex Johnson - USA
3. Akio Noguchi - Japan

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With RMHb having been in production for quite some time a lot was expected of this film. They not only had the mission of showing the some of the best highball bouldering in Colorado but they also had to ensure they accurately told the history of highball bouldering  and explain why these climbers take such obvious risk. Being a subgenre of an already semi-obscure sport I can imagine this was somewhat of a daunting task. They handle that crux in the best way possible; they went right to the source. To me, this was one of the most valuable aspects of the film. Having the commentary from legends like John Gill and John Sherman give the film more value then your average climbing flick. Scott Neel does an excellent job of editing together more then 30 different interviews to tell the history of highball bouldering using Colorado as his canvas.

The deeper purpose of this film is to explore the ‘why’. Why do climbers push themselves past that comfort zone? Every climber has different reasons why they take that inherent risk that comes with highball bouldering and the film does a great job of illustrating and contrasting this. One of my favorite aspects of the film was that they had great audio from climbers while they were actually on the climb. You hear everything: obscenities, labored breathing, climbers talking to themselves, the whole nine. This really helps put the viewer in the mind of the climber. Scott also interviews most of the climbers immediately after the climb to get a fresh perspective on what was going through the climbers mind.

The film just isn’t a history lesson or psychological exploratory piece. When it comes down to it, it’s a climbing film. Plain and simple. And the footage is more then capable to backing up that title. There are more then 70 boulder problems featured in the film, a feat that is astounding for any climbing movie.  The fact the collection of problems, classics and first ascents, are varied in difficulty is another plus. Easy, moderate and hard - they’re all there and they’re all tall. There is something alluring about a climbing film that has problems that aren’t off the charts in difficulty. Most of the problems themselves are amazing and even the ones that aren’t aesthetically perfect they can still be respected for the commitment it takes to conquer them. Young and old, male and female, the climbers that ascending these proud lines are just as diverse as the lines themselves, another aspect you don’t get to see in the majority of films these days. I am not sure if the footage was HD but it looked good, maybe not as good as some other climbing films I have seen recently but it wasn’t lacking either. The shots looked well thought out and the cuts flowed nicely too. I didn’t like how there was a little bit of black and white footage that seemed randomly inserted, maybe there was a theme to it but I don’t think I caught it. My only other complaint was the audio tracks, they just weren’t my cup of tea and some of tracks didn’t seem to fit with the climbs and sometimes it battled with the audio from the climbers on the boulder.

I have seen A LOT of climbing films and I would be hard pressed to select a definite favorite. I think they have to be taken in the context they were made and in that sense this movie is a success. Scott, Alden and Andy did a great job of, explaining “why some climbers choose to push themselves to boulder at the vertical limit.” This could have ended up being a video guidebook for highball’s in Colorado but I feel it is much more then that.  Nonetheless I can’t help but wonder who is going to be the first to send them all…

Tom over at All Climbing has his review up

Sock Hands has his thoughts up as well

Trailer

Tomorrow evening we will begin the first in a series of four discussions about PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Suicide Prevention/Awareness and Secondary PTSD.  We have a panel of speakers who will present these topics as they have personally lived and experienced them.

The event will be held at Calvary Bible Church (I included the address at the bottom of this post) in Boulder and is open to the public so I encourage those of you who have any interest to join us. I hope to see you there! If you have any questions you can contact me by email.

Veteran’s Family Talk
5:30-7:00 PM
Calvary Bible Church
3245 Kalmia Ave
Boulder, CO 80301

So for those of you that don’t know, I am currently a member of the gimp squad. Long story short, my amazing girlfriend surprised me with a new Sector 9 Wedge Platinum Series Longboard because I have been regretting the fact that I left my other one in California (yeah, she’s that cool.) Now I have a severely sprained ankle and am hobbling around on crutches (I’m not that cool.) I don’t do well with injuries. My last injury kept me out of climbing for almost 9 months and it was probably the worst 9 months of my life, obviously aside from Iraq. I have been working pretty hard as of late trying to get in shape for the alpine season, which is rapidly approaching. A confession: I’ve lived in Colorado for over a year, spent almost a month here before moving and I have never been to RMNP. Even though my good buddy Max Krimmer, who lived on my couch for the summer, was constantly nagging me to go with him, my finger injury last year kept me out of the game for the whole summer and into the fall. By the time I was climbing again the season was pretty much over and Max was no longer staying with me. I am determined not to let that happen again. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think this ankle injury is going to keep me out of the game for that long, 2-6 weeks is what I have been hearing. That isn’t a long time, but in terms of training that is an eternity. Determined not to be kept out of the game, again, I have decided to train even harder.

Obviously I won’t be climbing. I have made a promise to myself to not actually climb for at least 4 weeks, no matter how my ankle feels. I have learned that I can’t trust my own judgment when gauging how my body feels, I am just too stubborn. So welcome to my non-climbing training regiment, bouldering is a power sport so that’s what I am focusing on right now. It will consist of a mixture of campus boarding, gymnastic rings and weights. I had my first session last night at The Spot and it was honestly one of the most intense workouts I have had in a while. After a nice long warm up on the pull up bar, some light weights and a bit of stretching I attacked the campus board. I spent about 1.5 hours on the campus board, in two 45 minute increments with a 20 minute break between the two. The first session consisted of this training plan from Moon Climbing and my second session, which I put together with a little help from my buddy Ander Rockstad, was a hodge podge of campus exercises that aren’t covered in my other campus plan. By the end of the workout my forearms were thuroughly fatigued. I down campused anytime I was more then 2 feet off the ground because I didn’t want risk falling an my ankle and I am sure this helped add to the workout. Next I jumped on the gymnastic rings and did front and back levers to failure x4. Those were followed by 8 count ring flys, 3 sets of 10 reps. To burn my arms out completely I finished the work out with with 10-15 second one arm lowers, I did these to failure. The workout isn’t huge but it gets the job done. Doing this work out 3 times a week and filling in two more days with a weights workout should get me to where I want to be.

Knowing that I have to work extra hard right now to stay in shape is driving me harder then usual. I had conversations with a couple of my buddies about this last night after our session. We decided that if you’re injured (really injured) you basically have three options; stop climbing, climb through you’re injury or climb/train around you’re injury. Quiting isn’t an option. Obviously some injuries  just can’t be trained or climbed around, at least climbing related i.e. shoulder or elbow injuries; but some, like my sprained ankle can be trained around. This is key to staying motivated, at least for me. Being out of the scene can be a total mind **** for me, I don’t want to spend another 9 months playing World Of Warcraft 12 hours a day. Don’t ask.

Being involved with VHVnow has been a saving catharsis for me. Being the oldest of 3 brothers in a family where loyalty and brotherhood was key, I am constantly finding myself trying to save or protect others. I am learning that the reward I get from the time I put into helping others is a form of therapy for me. Through my service with VHVnow I feel like I am undoing some of the death and destruction I was apart of for six months.  The hard part for me has always been the part that matters most; real therapy. It’s something I am trying extremely hard to work towards and I am sure that in time I will be able to take that step.

After that extremely long segue (if you stuck with me thus far I thank you!) I come to the purpose of my post: Tweet to ReMIND.

More than 1.65 million U.S. service members have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11. More than 35,000 service members have been physically wounded. It is estimated that more than 320,000 have sustained traumatic brain injuries and more than 300,000 have psychological wounds. Tweet to ReMIND empowers Twitter users to spread this message and raise money to give injured service members, veterans and their families the local support and resources they deserve as they heal and reintegrate into their communities.

The event is being put on by ReMIND.org, an organization started by Bob Woodruff an American news anchor who was injured in Iraq by a roadside bomb. Mr. Woodruff suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury as a result of the blast and through his treatment had the chance to meet thousands of troops facing the same challenging recovery. The organization’s purpose is to disseminate funds to smaller local organizations that are on the ground working with Troops, Veterans and their families in their local communities. They are able to provide this service by coming up with ingenious ideas like Tweet To Remind.

ReMIND.org’s goal is to mobilize 400,000 Twitter users over Memorial Day weekend (Friday, May 22, through Monday, May 25). We want to send a message of support to the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families, and raise $1.65 million for local support services and resources to assist their recovery from the physical and psychological wounds of war. Each Twitter user must Tweet at least four times in order to attain our goal.

Lofty goals, for sure. But considering they have two full months of marketing ahead of them and couple that with the fact that they are utilizing the largest growing social media network on then internet, it doesn’t seem that daunting. I’ve added a widget in my left sidebar so you can easily sign up. Make sure you register on their site too!