B3bouldering.com

Black Hills Part 2

Posted on 08. Jun, 2007 by B3 in Black Hills

We woke up to a warm and very sunny morning. After mulling around a bit we went to the KOA down the road for a $2.50 all-you-can-eat breakfast. Maybe not the best way to start off the day, but certainly cheap.

Very conveniently, the trail head for the main bouldering area (Old Baldy) is the parking lot of the camping. It was a pleasant 25 minute stroll through the woods.

Brian gave us a tour, and the first place we stopped to climb was The Prow V10. I was very impressed by this problem. It is quite nice. We “warmed” up on a couple problems to the right of the Prow, both of which were of very high quality. One was called 4 on 6 V4 and the other was called Sol Avec Deux V7. I say “warmed” up because it tooks us about two hours to do both of these problems. Conditions were very horrendous and the temperature must have been getting up near 80. The slipperyness of the rock reminded me of Little Cottonwood Canyon, outside of Salt Lake City. I finally sent both and started trying the Prow. It seemed impossible to squeeze the open handed holds while my hands were sliding on the grease. I tried fairly hard for a while but it just wasn’t going to happen.

Jason Pinto

Pinto on Sol Avec Deux

The Prow V10

Trying to escape the heat, we walked to an open ridge that had a nice breeze. It was still hot but there were some other problems to climb on. Here is me flashing a short but fun V8 called Black Roughy.

Black Roughy

Black Roughy

We walked around and looked at a few more problems before heading over to Virgin Martini V9. I had heard a lot about this problem and the obvious comparisons to Hueco. I was very not impressed. I figured out different beta and sent it in a few goes. As with a lot of the other problems we saw, it was short, sharp and not really very good. Fleshwound V8, its counterpart to the right was very short as well, but it was fun enough.

Camp low ballin on Fleshwound V8

The heat never really subsided all day and as evening rolled around we decided to head into town and get a nice meal. Our meal was very sub-par, and we all got large Blizzards from DQ. We had a little picnic outside and it reminded me of home.