Ten Percent Gains

In just a few visits to NB's best bouldering spot this spring, we've managed to increase the total number of problems by nearly 10%.  In the previous post, I only mentioned some new problems in passing, and concentrated on describing the road conditions.  This time I'll do the opposite:  The roads are slightly more compacted, but still very rough and also soft in places.

The first new problems of 2013 are in the Slab Area.  Crack Head follows a thin shallow seam up a near-vertical slab, and Butthead comes up from underneath the boulder to a rounded slabby arete.  From there I went to the Middle Area to add a traverse to the right face of M, as I'd finally managed to leaver a backbreaking block out of the landing zone on my last visit of 2012.  The last addition from day one was Spongiform, whose landing had been too wet to attempt in the fall.

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Last Tuesday, I'd hoped to cut a trail for Megacrystals Area.  On my way out, I passed a couple of guys trying to find the boulders, so I ended up doing some guiding instead.  It was probably just as well, as rain was threatening the whole afternoon, and I didn't want to stray far from the car in case the skies did open up and I had to make a quick exit before the road turned to mush.  I did work a few moves on one project, but didn't get it.

I spent this past Friday trimming branches and hauling rocks to remedy a very bad landing below the north arete of How The West Was Won.  I scrubbed it a bit, but still don't know if a line is possible.  After lunch I cut about 200m of trail at the northern part of Megacrystals leading to this beauty.

Those two big flakes sounded very bad when touched, and easily popped off, fragmenting as they hit the soft ground. The rest of the rock is solid, and though there are not going to be any juggy sit starts, I think some nice problems will soon be established.

On Sunday, Pierre and I put in a 10 hour day that started with climbing about 10 established problems, then moved on to trail work, scrubbing and 10 FA's.   The first of this new bunch is an absolute gem that I couldn't quite get when Mike and Jono helped me scrub it in the fall.  After the winter, the sloping finish is a bit cleaner, but still just as long a reach.  It took a bit of work to figure out the last part, but I got it.  Found on the Houdini boulder, it's a 3-star V4/5 called Escape Coat.  The features are atypical for granite and the sequence is incredible!

Next, Pierre put up Holy Weed Stacks, which is a neat addition to the slab side of M.  We followed this up with parrallel finger cracks on a boulder we discovered while cutting the trail from Houdini to M.

With a couple of detours, we eventually made it along the Middle trail to the Bad English boulders.  This is what we ended up dubbing those that Mike, Jono and I worked on late last fall.  After lots of scrubbing and laughter, there were 7 new problems, and plenty of variations and eliminates up the heavily featured south-west one.

Road To Munson Not Good

Since it’s been so dry, with a province-wide fire ban, yesterday I thought I’d try to drive out to the Munson Lake boulders.  Being ultra cautious, based on last year’s experience, I stopped many times to test the road on foot prior to attempting sections by car.  Eventually, I made it, but even the return trip took at least twice as long (and three times the focus) as usual.  Here’s a detailed report:

Seven Mile Lake Road is firm and dry.  Some sections are riddled with brick-sized rocks, others pot holed, some deeply rutted, and there are a few eroded washouts.  Collectively these make for a rough, but uncomplicated drive.

Munson Lake Road is wet at the turn-off, but passable.  The rest of the road is dry, and rough.  Early season ATV traffic stalled in some of the uphill sections.  Their side-slipping tracks, and 3-point turns have left deep scars in the road surface.  Typically muddy sections are dry, but still deform under weight.  The bulk of the remainder is very soft and sandy.  There are fresh moose (and now human and tire) tracks as deep as 10cm in places.  Since the weather changed so quickly, what I think happened was as the frost came out and moisture evaporated, things dried in place, with lots of air space between the granules. Driving isn’t very good, and with the bit of rain forecasted later in the week, everything could turn to deep mud for quite a while.


Overall, I’m glad I made the trip.  A sandwich box, which I’d forgotten out there in December, was especially happy to see me.  (I didn’t have the heart to tell it I didn’t even realize it was missing.)

It was really nice to finally get some harder climbing in and tenderize the finger tips a bit while in the process of putting up 4 of the 10 or so new problems I ran out of time for in the fall.

Spongiform one of the new problems goes up the right, and a traverse (once clean) looks possible as well.

Oh, and my training outcomes... Generally, it feels like I’m climbing rather sloppily, which I’ll attribute to early season rust.  This should get polished off with a few more days on the erratics.  On a positive note, for all but the most balancy and technical problems I attempted, strength and stability gains more than made up for my (temporary) lack of grace.  The strength increases were very noticeable, along with how quickly and thoroughly I would recover between attempts.  With a bit of luck, I’ll soon be able to get on some of the harder projects and really put the training programme to the test.