I just returned from a week long trip to Tuolumne Meadows. While I was there I visited and climbed with my friend Matt Arnold. Matt has been doing lots of bouldering developement in the Yosemite, Tuolumne, and Bishop areas over the past years. I hung out with Matt at the High Sierra camp that he works at. I got to meet many cool people and eat lots of great food. One of the main boulders there is called the Battletanks. There was an awesome roof on great rock that I became obsessed with. I climbed there 6 days in a row. While there I repeated a few of Matt's problems including Big Guns v9, Belly of the Beast v11, and Heavy Artilery v9. I also established two new lines out the roof, the Hand Grenade v8 and The Art of War v12. The Art of War starts at Heavy Artilery and climbs out that line past the crux, but then takes a rightward path which doubles the size of the roof climb. From there a few easy but pumpy moves lead to a 2nd crux to match on a slopey gaston/undercling. After fighting to stay in control for a while to establish on this undercling you find yourself at the start of another v9 problem called Big Guns. It then finishes out the climb with compression moves. This link up is one of my favorite long roof climbs. I felt lucky to actually get this one before I had to return home. In between I got to go look around at a few other areas in Tuolumne that also looked really awesome. That place has a lot of great bouldering potential. I look forward to revisiting one day.
On another note, I hope all are psyched for Meyers Climbing Festival this Saturday September 17. Registration starts at 9am at the parking lot by Divided Sky. Check the website for the comp at
http://www.tahoebouldering.com/. The festival should be really fun. If anyone's wondering, I will not be competing. Most of the areas are my backyard zones. Some of the hard problems are really familiar to me and I felt it would be better if I helped instead. I'll be millin' around at the comp with Brad Perry and company. I'll be taking pictures, heckling people, and drinking heavily. This is the first comp/festival for climbers in Meyers/south lake tahoe area. It would be rad to see lots of people participate so as to make this a yearly event.
In this entry I've included a couple of short videos from the trip. I would have made them a bit more fancy, but I have a cheap computer at the moment and this is all that it could muster at one time.
Belly of the Beast from Jesse Bonin on Vimeo.
The Art of War from Jesse Bonin on Vimeo.
