Bishop Bouldering: We spent most of the winter in Bishop California. Nestled between the Sierra Nevadas and the White mountain ranges it makes for spectacular views. The mountains also soak up much of the weather, leaving the plateau relatively dry. Quite wonderful winter conditions for a rock climber. Kyle and I got into a routine of sport climbing down in “The Gorge” (Owens River Gorge) and then bouldering in the Happy’s.
The Gorge requires an arduous approach, complete with microspikes and cold weather gear. To access the climbing one descends a steep gully which is covered in ice and snow throughout the winter. Once you access the bottom, where the river flows and the sun shines, you can climb in a t-shirt all winter long.
There are many long routes as well, which is nice to keep up one’s endurance. Kyle linked many a pitch to stretch out our 80 meter rope end to end before making at least 2 rappels to get back to the ground (about 260 feet of continuous climbing)! I would follow him on a couple of these long pitches, but not many. I stuck to the ‘moderate’ 90-100 foot routes.
One days we didn’t go sport climbing in The Gorge and we still wanted to climb, our favorite spot was the Happy’s. Quickly we each picked out boulder problems that we wanted to work on. Bouldering days were becoming structured. Upond discovering that Kyle’s route, Ketron went into the sun earlier, we always started with his problem first. Our goal was to get there early enough before the key hold on the upper crux went into the sun.
Most days we timed it right, trudged out to the boulder, set up the pads and started our warm-up routine. Other days we would get out there too late and the key holds would be baking in the unforgiving sun. If that were the case we often went to my project, or scrapped it all and found some other fun boulders to maintain our fitness.
Kyle would work Ketron as many times as he could, unlocking moves and beta with each attempt. Often times a session ended with notes to help us remember what to try next time. Then we would take a break, have a snack and move the bouldering pads to my problem, Coors is Light. I would start warming up while Kyle ate lunch and went through the sequences with me. Bouldering was tough for me to get used to as it requires immense, all-out-effort on pretty much each move. Some days I really had to convince myself that I COULD try harder. Often times you think you are giving your all, until one attempt something kicks in, and you give it another 5-10% and you see the possibilities of what you can do! (If only it were easier to tap into that potential more often.)
Failure after failure we endured. Failure isn’t a bad thing, if you let it, it can teach you something every time. I tried the same moves over, and over, and over again. Each feeling impossible as the next, but somehow I keep climbing and another sequence unlocks. Once exhausted after a handful of attempts on my problem, I reflect on the session and realize those moves that originally felt impossible, I’m hanging onto 95% of the time (mind blown). With this knowledge in my mind, I can come back to my problem again and chances are I’ll stick those opening moves. Sticking those opening moves saves energy and makes the next moves more efficient. It’s a wonderful snowball effect, the only downfall is, you can’t let up. You have to try HARD every single movement.
After weeks of sport climbing in The Gorge, bouldering, and finger strength training, we went out to the Happy’s for another “Boulder Project Session”.
We arrived at Ketron for Kyle at a great time, nice and early before the sun. Kyle starts trying Ketron and is making great progress. Two girls come by to try it as well (it’s a very popular problem in the area) they also bring with a few more bouldering pads which we welcome. Kyle rests and the girls warm-up, chat with us and climb up and around the boulder. Finally Kyle feels ready for another attempt. He pulls on, and before I know it, he’s on top of the boulder! I was too busy enjoying the climbing to record the full send on video, I felt immensely guilty (I had ONE job…). He was ecstatic to have finally climbed this boulder problem! Kyle executed each move flawlessly and really made it look easy.
Now that Kyle’s project was done, it was time to put up a few attempts on mine. I was thinking to myself, how many more times will Kyle have to come out here for me to finish up my project?? Turns out, zero, zero more times were needed. After I warmed up, I fired off the entire sequence of moves with a few hesitations, but no falls. I was on top and around before I could process that it was done! What are the odds that we would both finish our projects on the exact same day?! We packed up, exhausted, exhilarated and Happy.