Last week, before this sudden
winter storm rolled through Flagstaff and left almost two feet of snow behind,
I went up to Middle Elden with Spencer Church to see how my finger was doing
and possibly try Broken Symmetry. The canyon was warm, the sun strong and as I
warmed up my desire to give the old Proj a try was quickly dashed. My finger
was still not totally better, it was too hot, blah, blah, blah. Boulderers are
perhaps the best of all athletes at making excuses.
Spence’s
wrist has been in a cast since the first day of 2012 when he peeled off a wet
hold on a problem in Priest Draw. Rocks: don’t even try to climb them if
there’s water seeping down the face, bad things tend to happen. So, with that
days dream as no more, I decided we would trudge up-canyon to a problem I’d
found in my wanderings about three weeks ago. Spence, happy to be away from the
couch and cable, agreed to walk up there and take pictures.
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| Gaston |
This
problem is about 15 minutes past Entering Betsy way up on the west side of the
canyon. It climbs a tall, orange face on some of the best rock I’ve seen
anywhere on Elden. Days ago I walked up there with a few tools and cleared the
landing. I’ve been thinking of climbing it since.
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| The First Move |
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| High Step |
After
pushing our way through the Gambel Oak and Mountain Mahogany Spence set up on a
boulder over-looking the problem, the canyon, and all of Flagstaff. He opened a
beer and got out his camera and I opened up my crashpad and put on my shoes. The first move, a long throw to a good
pinch, is the hardest move on the problem, so after I’d tried it a couple of
times I started working the problem from the good pinch. After trying a few
different variations, I found a double gaston and balanced high-step to work
the best. After maybe ten or twelve more tries on the hard first move I sent
the problem in it’s entirety on what I’d just told Spence would be my last try.
The
only other people we saw in the canyon that day were almost certainly looking
for Bigfoot. We heard one of them say, “this is great Squatch country,” and
they were howling like animals, which is not really peculiar behavior for
Middle Elden at all. But it’s a small world, I guess, and everyone wants to
find Bigfoot.
With Cryptozoology in mind, I named the problem I climbed
that day Tree Lobster, after this crazy hand-sized insect thought to be extinct
for something like 80 years that was recently found on a remote island off the coast of Australia that
looks like an illustration from a Hardy
Boys book. After going to The Glorias and climbing Cross-Eyed Nurse,
Flyswatter, and Tombstone, I think Tree Lobster is somewhere in the V8 range,
but who knows. Once all this snow melts I’m going to take Matt and Danny up
there to see what they think.
The
snow is falling again, and now with that quiet urgency of a true storm. I think
I might go blow up the tube, or at least make something hot to drink.
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| Add caption |
