Getting Isolated

It seems that a good sign of spring in the Boulder Batholith is when the Isolated Boulders come into season. Set up against McClusky, this area, though it's great for spring, it typically holds more snow than the Trailers and the Desert. April is usually when folks are able to head in without trouble.

Midweek I was able to get out for an afternoon session with Odenbeck, Whitmore, and Conrad. It was great to get out and fun to show Conrad some of the lesser known areas...some of the local gems may actually work their way into the design for the next Bozeman Boulder. A super fun day for sure, hopefully I can start to get out more during the week...



Thin



Knobbage Slabbage



New one


Down Climb


arete



'Don't Rip me Off'

Saturday, Kalah and I loaded up the trailer and headed out to meet Dom and many others to celebrate his birthday. A great weekend for it too, great weather, BBQ, keg of beer and lots of great folks! We ended up exploring a new stretch of woods southeast of the Lower Isolated Boulders for the majority of the day...

New ones














Back at the trailer we met up with Emily, P.Wolfe, and Ari and headed upto the Upper Isolated for an evening session. For more pics check out Emily's blog.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come...looking forward to moving higher in the hills...


Cheers!

Callous Building

[kal-uhs]

–adjective

1.

made hard; hardened.

2.

insensitive; indifferent; unsympathetic: They have a callous attitude toward the sufferings of others.

3.

having a callus; indurated, as parts of the skin exposed to friction.

The last week saw me out in the Batholith a cumulative five times. Once to the Isos and four times to the Trailer Boulders. The Isos are pretty much in season, with just a bit of snow to posthole through in the deep trees. Fruh and I worked out the majority of the beta for a classic vertical testpiece in the Upper Isos and plan on finishing it off this upcoming weekend. The Trailer Boulders have seen significant development this year and are shaping up to being one the best areas in the entire batholith. All of the following photos are from the Trailers.

Z crushing the sit-start to Coming Down


Crimp nasty project on the 7 Gram Rock


Fruh on Airstream Vhard



Cruxing



Still Cruxing



Patrick working out the beta next to Airstream



Rehab on the backside of Popup Rock

Gotta Love the Trailers

On April 2nd the Trailers had probably the biggest crowd to date somewhere around 15 people. A lot of new stuff by Dagmar's Hot Pants went down (pardon the pun), including the sit start to Dagmar's and a fantastic lunge problem called Blood Feather. In the main area Pat Wolfe sent the razor sharp right side start to the Aristocrat. The Trailers are getting to be quite rad!

Last week was very wet here in Bozeman. I kept my fingers crossed for the weekend and was not disappointed- the Batholith came through once again- gotta love that rain shadow.

The initial plan was to go with Tom on Sunday but he has been sick/rejuvenating for the past week(s) so it ended up being a solo mission. I found myself at the Trailers once again to check out some of the newer blocks Tom had discovered on the West side of the ATV trail- notably a beautiful overhang. At first I lacked any motivation but somehow ended up putting up five new problems in the area and gave the overhang project a good cleaning and a couple really good goes. When I first saw the overhang I thought it lacked enough holds to climb- but it is all there- it is going to be a classic!

Later on I found myself wondering North of Dagmar's for some new blocks- no surprise I found a couple really nice ones, this block I call the Cyclops and it is pretty freaking cool.

The Cyclops (the Crack/Face is called Polyphemus)

The Cyclops (the Horizontal Crack is called Galatea- its a project)

I am not sure how many problems are in the Trailers, currently I estimate 50-60 maybe more. The area is certainly growing quickly we shall see in the next couple weeks what else will be revealed.