Friday, May 30, 2014

Friday Knot for Thought

I want to try this out. Each week I will post a knot that every climber should know. Whether that knot is for climbing or just a must know outdoor knot. I would love to hear feedback from you about what knots you would like to know or what knots you find most useful when out climbing.

So here is one of the first knots that I learned for climbing and helps when connecting two pieces or tying off a piece of webbing.

The Water Knot
— easy, basic

Essentially if you think of tying an overhand knot in the one piece of webbing and then take the other piece and like a follow-through figure eight you will have a water knot.
Getting the knot untied can be a challenge if it has been stressed or tightened down a lot. But taking hold of the tails of each piece of webbing and pushing up and in on both sides can release the knot.

Hope you enjoy, and keep climbing!

Tape Glove

So if you are wondering how to make a tape glove here is a link to two sites that I follow:

The One time glove design that they have here holds up very well on long climbs and I will be looking to test it more in a couple weeks when I meet up with my friend Tane to climb in Needles, CA.

The Reusable Tape Glove is one thing that I tested out at my home last summer and found that it was fairly useful and worked well.

While I was climbing the boulders at Folsom Lake I just used one layer of tape and really just laid the tape on the back of my hand so that it didn't get cut by the rock.

Hope you enjoy, and keep climbing!

Folsom Lake Bouldering

     Had some fun bouldering in Folsom Lake Recreation Area, CA. I was surprised at how many boulders I actually found to climb. Overall I thought that this was a lot of fun.

Although, it is not a mecca of bouldering by any means, there were three boulders that I found to have some good crack climbing training to work finger jams and hand jams each about V2-V3; so not too difficult.

     So the actual place where I went is called Beeks Bight. There is a parking lot that puts you right by the boulders. Mountain Project doesn't have to much on this place so I may have to make a map and post some more photos because I found more routes than they had.

 This was the first boulder that I climbed and it had some great finger cracks. As you may see in the picture to the right, the middle crack doesn't go completely to the top which adds some fun to this problem.

I found that there were multiple ways to start this main problem. Each way was fairly straight forward with little power needed in order to pull yourself up off the ground.

When I exhausted the main crack I moved to using the crack on the right to tech the top. Friction was my best friend on this problem since there wasn't a lot of options for feet because the crack was quite small.

The second problem that I did on this boulder was on the left side of the face in the crack formed between the main rock and the broken off piece.

From a sit start, an un comfortable fist jam above the small overhang allows you to place your feet to grab the edge before you traverse to the top.

When you get near the top the boulder becomes a sloping side pull with sketchy tips cracks for your right hand with little feet.

I loved these routes cause they weren't too challenging but got the adrenaline pumping so I had to do each one twice.

I would strongly recommend a crash pad or two if you are going to climb here. This way you can cover up a lot of the rocks that are at the base of the problems in case of a fall.

This was the definition of a hand crack boulder problem. I had to tape up for this one. This crack was raw with some sharp edges but fun.

There was a good technique work on this crack for me cause I typically climb finger size cracks and haven't had the opportunity to try various hand crack techniques outside the gym.





— Keep climbing! —

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Bouldering in Folsom

Hey I'm heading to Folsom Lake Recreation Area today because there is supposed to be some boulders there that have some fun easy climbs. This will be convenient since I am at my grandparents house visiting on my way back from school. Stay tuned for more about my bouldering adventure and climbing in the Cathedral Spires in Custer State Park.