Beach Bouldering Video

Nick, from Eastern Climber is putting together a kick-ass video of our beach bouldering trip. Also, I have added his blog to the blogroll, he's got an incredible website with posts on areas, reviews, commentary on climbing and more! Be sure to check it out.

Beach Bouldering in the Northeast

Yes, you read that title correctly.

This past weekend, Nick, two new friends Amanda and Kevin and I set forth on an epic journey to the North Shore of Long Island. Our minds were filled with whimsical stories of incredible granite boulders that litter the coastline of East Marion... but I had my suspicions. Surely, such a place couldn't exist in New York!

We arrived at the Wildwood State Park campsite late on Friday and were greated by 7001 degrees Celsius heat and a 500% humidity. Every ten minutes or so a group of drunken men with a lantern who's brightness rivaled the sun would shout "YEAAAH!". And just to make sure we didn't sleep, an angry Chinese woman banged on our tent at around 3 in the morning, yelling in Chinese. We awoke at 5 to the sound of ducks quacking.

But us boulderer's are resilient, and after some chocolate chip pancakes and coffee, we were on our way.

Before we knew it, we were walking down the many steps, a landscape of winding coastline and... no, it couldn't be! boulders? Our paces sped up as we passed boulders that seemed to grow bigger and bigger until in the distance we saw it, a house sized, orange, granite boulder placed 10 feet from the water.

We began goes on a very fun V4 that centers around one dynamic move to a jug. After taking it down, we tried the low-start into the V4 that goes at V7. We worked out some beta and after several goes I pieced it together and sent! Probably my fasted sending of a V7 to date.

There is a certain laid back quality to beach bouldering... dips in the ocean between goes... girls in bikinis strolling by... and despite the hot Summer sun, the rock stayed full of friction!

Nick began working on his project from his last visit, an interesting traverse which we could not decide the grade on. He pieced it together slowly, and eventually took it down! I got to play around with my 50 mm lens on this one, and I'm very happy with the results.

We played around on a few more climbs, our bud Kevin took down a technical V6, our other friend Pat played around on a ridiculously crimp tall man project (probably like V10) and we explored the beach and found some great new lines on the most beautiful boulder I have ever seen.

After a night touring the streets of beautiful Port Jefferson, and observing the stunning sunset, we returned to the campsite and, against all odds, slept well with a day of sun, surf and bouldering pulsing through our systems.

The next day, we climbed on a different boulder and put up three new lines at V2, V2 and Vsomethinghigherthan4. I got close on the V6 traverse, but greased off the top-out, twice. We spent the last few hours bullshitting and taking pictures.

It was quite the adventure.

-WB

List of Problems at Gnarnia

The Wardrobe

• Prince Caspian Left - Project - V7/8?
  
• Prince Caspian Right - V2*
• Flesh Failures - V6*
  
• Crimp Line - Project - V8/9?
  
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - V6***
• The Wardrobe - V3***

Treeboob

• P.U.S. - V3
• Sleepyhead Stand - Project - V7/8?
  
• Sleepyhead Sit - Project - V9/10?
  
• Stuff of Dreams - V4****
• Vanilla Slice into Stuff of Dreams - Project
  
• Vanilla Slice - V6**
• Chilled Soup - V5***

Shark Fin

• Shark Fin - V5*

The Room

• The Room - V7****
  

Lightning Block

• Lightning Block - V0*
• Double Dog - V0
  

Pennyroyal

• Pennyroyal - V0
• Lip Traverse - Project
• Elephant Skin - V4*
  

Gnarwhal

• Unicorn of the Sea - V9****
• Unicorn of the Sea Super Stand - V5****
• Unicorn of the Sea Sit - Project - V11/12?
• Twisted Tooth - V2****
  

Chocolate Chip

• Benjamin Franklin - V1*
• Tollhouse - V3**
• Cookie Dough - V2*
• Ghetto Chip Malfunction - Project - V6?

Obvious Undeveloped Boulders:

• Impact Boulder (in the gully left of treeboob)
• Jungle Boulder (below impact)

This list is ongoing and will be updated as more problems get done. There's still a boatload of problems, hard and easy, to clean and climb! So get up to gnarnia and nab some quality FA's

You will be mine...

... in one to two business days.


Words can't describe my excitement to start taking pictures with this wonderful little device.

Oh fedex ground, you're cheap (kinda), but I am impatient, and you are slow...

-WB

P.S. I think I'll do more of these little posts, they are quick, easy and low-fat for those looking to read lighter... of course, I will throw in a large post every now and again, but with this camera you should be expecting MOSTLY pictures.

New Template

Yep, it's sexy.

Padanarum Road

And so the Adirondack Bouldering exploration continues, this week, Google Maps along with The Adirondack Topo Map Browser (free service courtesy of Wild River Maps) proved to be very good tools in the arsenal of the Adirondack explorer.

The Topo Map Browser combines maps from Google and property line information to produce a perfectly good map of the entire adirondack park that illustrates private, public and state owned lands...

I have selected several spots to explore using these tools, and today, we visited two of them.

The first was a mountain along Beaver Pond Road by Brant Lake. We hiked in a little, but were discouraged by the increasingly marshy and thick woods, we'll have to save it for another day when we can figure a different approach.

The second area is along Padanarum Road... an old, remote, unmarked dirt road that spurs off of Rt. 9. The road is incredible, and weaves through old, tall woods and over old one lane bridges with weight limits... ah, good times.

We parked at the intersection of Wardsboro Road and Padanarum Road... also unmarked besides an old wooden sign, felled right in the middle of the intersection.

After hiking along Northwest Bay Brook and up along the hill, we were beginning to lose hope, there was a rock, but very scarce and not too promising... and then we saw it, down the hill was the the huge grey silhouette of what could only be a boulder, a HUGE boulder.

The Dihedral Cave on the First Big Boulder. Much more impressive in person.

The first feature we noticed was an incredible dihedral cave on the front of the boulder with an obvious hard line on it, and a beautiful 10 degree wall full of crimps and edges.

10 degree Crimp Wall on the First Big Boulder

What followed were what always follows upon finding new boulders, fondling of holds, screaming "CHECK THIS OUT" to eachother, and exploring more and more...

We found 10-15 boulders, all with 2+ problems on them. The first boulder alone probably has 20-30.

This area is very promising, as there are a good deal of holds, on very angular, overhung rock with little choss and an easy hike in.

More on this area as we clean this week.

-WB

4th of July and Gnarnia

Since I was at my wonderful camp on Brant Lake all weekend, I spent a good 3 days at the developing boulderfield, Gnarnia.

Saturday was a half day of climbing for Spook and me and all of our focus was directed at a problem we had eyed on previous visits, what would be dubbed The Room Project works up and left on a crimp seam.

The moves proved incredibly interesting, and we both got all the moves, but failed to piece it together.

The problem starts on good crimps and then utilizes a high foot to reach left hand to a gaston, following a fall in to a strange crimp pinch sloper thing. This crux sequence is then followed by a very low percentage jump move and a not so easy top-out sequence.

After a little bit of work, I nabbed the FA of The Room - V7 alone in the woods with only my little metolius pad under me for comfort on the top-out. So pumped.

Also on Saturday I hiked to Gull Pond, an area described in Adirondack Rock and several other guides as a beautiful pond with sheer rock cliffs. Turns out there are cliffs, and boulders, large, overhung boulders with incredible features.

Gull Pond Cliff. And Boulders.

And due to a beautiful setting and the 0.5 mile, DEC maintained approach this area holds some promise...

Adam came to gnarnia today and got the second ascent of The Room and also cleaned a few lines including 3 new V0s! Gnarnia's first V0s!

New V0s
- Pennyroyal - FA JP Whitehead
- Double Dog - FA JP Whitehead
- Lightning Block - FA Adam Catalano

Pennyroyal is kinda dumb... but Double Dog and Lightning Block are very fun slabs with cool features. Finally some good warm ups.

The bugs were horrendous... if you're going to Gnarnia... bring bug spray.

Bathe in bug spray.

-WB