B3bouldering.com

Check out momentumvm.com for a great new short with my good buddy Ben Scott, climbing some classic highballs at Mt. Evans.

Sean McColl has made the first flash ascent of Riddles in the Park V12, second flash ascent of Next Friday V11 and also climbed L. El Jorge V11 in one day. Nice effort. In fact news is happening at such a fast rate I’m having a hard time keeping up. Actually, maybe these V11 flashes and V13 sends aren’t so news worthy anymore. Anyways, Ty Landman has made the 4th ascent of Don’t Get Too Greedy V13, of course. Now that there are no more unrepeated problems in the Park, I wonder if the boys can put up a B3.

Interesting that in the first few years many of the problems in Chaos Canyon went unrepeated. It seems at the time the problems were too hard for the climbers. In those years, individual climbers stood out. Now everything is getting sent all the time, and the climbers have finally caught up. There is not so much one climber that stands out amoung the rest. This trend will probably continue for a while until someone jumps ahead. Maybe it will be Daniel or Ty or Paul or maybe someone no one has yet heard of.

In other news I had a very nice dinner at the OR Show with Brian Capps, The Chancellor Brothers, Nicros Nic and James Litz. Dave Chancellor is hilarious and I hadn’t seen James in almost 3 years! Sounds like he has been climbing and training very hard again. James came to Colorado in 2004 and did the second or third ascent to almost every single problem in Colorado V11 or harder in a month or so, not to mention the FA of Freaks of the Industry V13. At the time he was very far ahead of the curve. I climbed a few days with both him and Dave in 2004 and it was obvious that James was stronger. Don’t get me wrong, Dave is very impressive, but I saw what I saw. Maybe a trip to the park for him this year? Maybe Jade has five ascents by the end of this year and gets the downrate.

The other day Olson and I marched up to the Green 45 AKA Jade, to check out some of the new problems in the Area. Earlier, I reported that Nick Sherman had done the FA of Wildcat on the backside of Jade. This has been repeated now several times and it seems the consensus is coming in at hard V12. A while ago Chad and Dave put up an arete on the left side of the Green 45 and called it La Reve de Wills V7 or so. Paul Robinson has added the sit-start which he suggests V13. It is called Don’t Get Too Greedy. It was quickly repeated by Daniel Woods and Sean McColl, in a day. This is a very nice add to the boulder which now holds three problems V12 or harder. Maybe the Gang Bang boulder of Upper Chaos?

Jade V15

There are two massive boulders in this area (the first having the Green 45) and the second boulder, which is right behind the Green 45. It holds some fine problems as well. In 2001 Dave Graham climbed a line out the west side of the cave called Leviathan Style V12. It had gone unrepeated after Hank Jones broke a hold off of it, until last week, when Daniel and Paul both climbed it. The grade has not changed. Seth Allred dispatched a steep problem to the right known as the Ahab Project. His new problem is called Two Ton Tongue and he has suggested V11. Seth’s problem starts on two flat underclings but there are certainly more holds lower in the cave. The same goes for Leviathan Style.
On a more moderate note, a few years ago Chad Greedy added the Suicide Season V8 on the back side of this boulder. Very tall and very proud. The jug haul to the left in the black streak is outstanding as well. Upper Chaos Canyon continues to produce classic, steep hard problems and it seems that is where the focus of the new development for hard bouldering has been taking place.
For my efforts, I tried a bit of all them but in particular Jade. It was dark early and our session was certainly cut short. I am very psyched to put in some serious effort on Jade.

Green 45

Tyler Landman made the second ascent of Jade V15 last week. A very impressive effort indeed. Ty is 16 years old and certainly one of the strongest boulderers in the world. Nice work! There is video of his night time ascent on Momentumvm.com.

Last week I was in Alaska for a fishing/hiking/family trip. It was my first time there and I was blown away by the stunning granduer of it all. It is by far the most amazing place I have ever been. It seems that if you are psyched on grizzly bears, glaciers, and specatular scenery then Alaska must be one of the best places in America, if not the world, to visit. I thouroughly enjoyed every bit of it. It was a very nice break. Here are some pictures I took. Enjoy.

We did visit a very nice bouldering area called Hatcher Pass. The rock there was similiar to Mt. Evans, but generally better (more polished, less flakey). I saw several hard projects that looked very good in the V12 to V14 range. The scenery was of course amazing. The road to the Hatcher Pass boulders doesnt open until July 15, making for a very short season. Unfortunately, it rained the whole time we were up there. We were forced to go down the hill to a small area called Chikaloon. It wasn’t the best, but we had a nice time with the locals and I got to climb a problem in Alaska.

Thanks for the tour.