Autumn's Lament
A day projecting
For the past few years my climbing has evolved to focus on highball bouldering. Searching out for a perfect line, that is not only aesthetic, but fun to climb as well.
Two years ago I came across a boulder I had passed many times, but never took seriously. The landing isn’t the best, and it’s big! Really big! With the majority of the area developed it’s easy to think that if it hasn’t been done already, it’s either bad rock quality, or impossible. However I’ve recently learned, what is impossible at one time isn’t necessarily the truth for ones entire climbing career. At this time I took a closer look and found holds that I could actually grab. With some cleaning the line became apparent. Alas I was not strong enough to complete the initial vision. I did manage to climb the second half of my original vision. The movement was beyond fun, and completely within my style of climbing. I called this new climb, “She’s Definitely a Biter.” A play on the name of the other climb that was already on this wall.
Taken while doing the original 2nd half line two years ago. Photo by: Erynne Guevara
Fast forward two years, and original line had become more intriguing. I was now a little stronger, a little smarter, and deployed some new projecting tactics. Well it wasn’t easy, but after approximately 30 days on this boulder I finally connected the first half to the second part I had done two years prior.
This marked my most difficult and time consuming ascent to date! Putting a difficulty grade for this is not an easy task, so leaving it with a vague grade of V-Hard seems most appropriate. The new full vision starts on the right hand side of a severely overhanging rock. Latched onto an undercling to start, and traversing left with upward trend. Making big moves on a variety of small features. Eventually meeting up with the pockets on, She’s Definitely a Biter.” The climb is ~7m tall, and consists of about 30 moves.
The name of this new test piece is, "Autumn's Lament." I gave it this name because of how I was feeling at the time. I managed to send the project literally an hour before the snow started to fall, and mark the end of a long climbing season. But we'll get more into that later.
Heading to work
A view from the top
Pulling the extremely shouldery move
Selfie taken after sending