Long night, beautiful night.

Yesterday, we headed out to try and finish that one last problem/project on the Thunder Egg boulder, the sit start that heads out right instead of Jill’s left line, A Sound of Thunder. Aptly called Spider Egg, due to the regular web development under the roof and the occasional spider egg sac, I bagged the FA and Jill sent right after. Given that she worked it that one evening and I took 4 days, I think she was being nice. 😉

The sends finally came by 2:30am, and we headed out by 3. The night was still, save for a gentle breeze, and a 59% illuminated waning gibbous after midnight offered a surreal view of a quiet desert. The problem felt hard to me, but I’ve also been feeling finger weak. Jill had only the crossover move to work. She thinks it’s a hard v6! I feel it’s like an 8. Call it a 7.

Though the gB calls it a “yabo” start, v3, and states it starts as low as possible, we used the obvious slanting ledge deep in the roof corner of the short and low cave as the beginning. We used different beta to reach where she is in the first image. In a previous post, we did a low start from above where we started this problem, but as I’ve mentioned previously, the key foot broke making our original beta much harder to execute. Now, it actually flows well given how near the ground is. No video, but I shot a few stills for your enjoyment:

reaching these two holds is the first crux

sustained crux through to next move

the end of the crux… a very clean line

We warmed up at the Texas boulder, and noticed one new line. Referencing the gB, between problem #20 (sit to Western Roll) and #22 (Don’t Mess with Texas), there is a new line that can sit start on the big, rounded side pull and move right until you reach a thin crimp, then go big to the lip, mantel.

A guy we met in Josh a while back when Jill did Igneous Ambiance, Justin, asked me about a sit to La Migra, v3. The gB says:

“Cool problem! Stem into an overhang bowl from the right, then toss for better holds over the top. 10ft tall.”

On the right is a small boulder. I assume he means to start from this boulder in order to start the problem stemming, but we did a stand start just left of the boulder by using an overhead high incut and mantel of sorts with the right hand on a low sloper. We then tried the sit, and here are two images: one of the start holds used and another of the crux to reach that overhead high incut. Avoiding the boulder on the right makes the most sense to do the line as either a stand or sit. Justin thought the rating was the same, and we agreed. Actually, I felt the stand was a 2 and the sit was a 3, for the record.

start holds for the sit

this is the incut used for the stand.

On a side note, the gB says the yabo start to Border Patrol is:

“Yabo start at a low horizontal crack with incuts and no feet, then crank up to the regular start. Photo page 63.”

Long ago, I had done this problem as a sit by starting matched on the far left crimp then bumping right to the next but longer crimp, matching then going long to a far right sidepull crimp. As you can see from the description, there’s no reference to where one starts along the horizontal crack. starting in the final position makes it a one move problem before doing the stand at v1! That one move is not a 6, I don’t think. In fact, I’d say if one started as far left as possible, traversing and reaching the far right crimp is in itself as hard as the big move. I’d call the big move a v4 or 5 and a 6 would be starting left at the match crimp and doing the big move right first. If starting all the way left, it might be a 7. All versions are worth it, but having that knowledge is equally worth it. Details, details, details.

One final note: there looks to be a traverse into a hard finish on the backside of the boulder where there’s an overhang and block that fell out of that overhang. Some chalk is evident, but I don’t know anything about it. If you know something, shoot me a line at Joshuatreebouldering at gmail dot com.

~ by r. mulligan on 2013/05/30.