Boulder & Breakfast

This last weekend we headed up north 4 hours to Eric's family cabin near Orr, MN to check out this new boulder he had finally found last winter. It's a short 7-8 minute hike from the cabin to the boulder, shortest approach besides the minnesota side of Taylors! The cabin was warm and the temps were cool...we'd wake up to Eric cooking us breakfast, wait for some of the frost to clear, and then hike out.

The boulder is HUGE! Kris and I discussed it, and including the basement of our house, we figure they're the same size. I think the boulder might be bigger. It's cracked in half, and every portion of the boulder, even inside the crack, has awesome problems!



I started working on this V2-3 call the 10th Plauge...super fun climb....perfect movement, if I wasn't so short, I probably would have flashed it, but the second to last move had me stretched to my limit, and taking quite a few 10+ foot falls. The falls were actually really fun!

We cleaned off a lot more problems, and there's still more to do. Nic put up a nice slab he calls Coffee & Cocaine, he says because he had the shakes something awful near the top. Then there were a few put up on the backside of the boulder, Squeaky Clean, a tall, sketchy V1 arete that moves into the crack between the boulders before the top out. Then there's Mr. Clean, a slopey arete that tops out at around 12 feet. Next to that is Sneaky Pete, a few slopey crimps to the 12 foot top out.

The top of the boulder was still heavy with moss, so Kris and Nic did a bit of work pushing it off, along with a large loose boulder.



Kris really did more cleaning than climbing...his hand is full of blood blisters from the board he was using to shovel moss, not from the problems he was climbing. He did send Dragon Fruit, a couple moves on tiny little slot crimps, and the 10th Plauge, but he spent most of his time on top of the boulder. Wish I could get that to translate to our house!


This is the "skyway" at the top of the boulder...

This is the last side to get cleaned...I'm super psyched, cuz there's already a couple really fun looking lines! One goes from the bottom left corner on the big chalked up jug, to the right across the bottom, then up into the arching crack! I wanna climb it and call it "C is for Cookie", even though it's a backwards C...




This is definately going to be a destination for a while! It's really nice to be off in the woods, where no one else is going to show up, AND still being a short hike from the warmth of the cabin! Not to mention, the cleanest, brightest, whitest Out House I've ever pooped in!

I don't know how to edit videos yet, so here's 2 of me on 10th Plauge...The first one isn't the send, but you can see what the bottom of the problem looks like...the second on is from above, and topping out...I sent it my first go on Sunday...





Then here's one of The Sycamore, a 20ft tall slabby arete.



To see Kris doing Dragon Fruit in a really cool video put together by Niel, check out his blog post @
http://borntobreathe.blogspot.com/2007/10/cabin-boulder-weekend-1026-1028-2007.html#links

Kris sends Cave!

I'm soooo slooow at posting stuff. Anyways, a couple weekends ago, when it WASN'T continuously raining...Kris and I headed to the Wisco side of Taylors to both work on the cave traverse. It was pretty warm out, close to 80, and humid. I was working out the hard drop move in the middle to connect the two halves, and Kris was complaining about having forgotten his beta. He hadn't been to the boulder for over a year now. He'd been building our boulder wall from early July on, so he hadn't even been climbing for months. He'd only worked on cave a few times before, and was never that inspired by the line. But being that it is kinda the testpiece of Taylors, he worked it with me. After a few goes, we got his first half of the problem worked out. He was feeling a little more interested in working the problem now. My skin was peeling off, and we were both a bit tired, but he sat down at the start one last time. I grabbed my camera, just cuz something made me, and I caught his unexpected ascent. He was good and strong through the whole hard part of the problem. Then, once on the jugs, he started to pump out quick. But he held on and finished it. I was quite proud. I love it when the problems go unexpectedly, and you fight to stay with it. Good work Kris...the video is too big to post on Youtube right now, so until Neil can compress it for me, you'll all be held in suspense!