Monday, January 11, 2010

A Wonder World Called Hueco

Moses potter on Focus v10

Walker Emerson on Diabolique v13

Ngan Nguyen crushing DDD v7

Mike Abell swimming through the Diaphanous Sea v12



When Mike and I got to Hueco he told me he was gonna do a double digit boulder problem every day.

-We drove into the desert with one thing on our mind 'we're gonna be climbing in hueco tomorrow' blasting through the sun baked lands of Arizona and New Mexico we quickly arrived at our destination, fueled by our imaginations, I dont know how many pictures,
movies, stories, legends, adrenalized our minds. The road become dirt and we pulled into the
Rock Ranch, our camp for the next three weeks. Before I knew it we were warming up on the syenite porphyry, getting out first tastes. We warmed up on some not so nice classics. ok im ready lets go crush this place, where's Chablanke, where's Diaphanous Sea, where's Slash Face, where the hell is Martini. We quickly realized hueco is not the place we had quite imagined. Being forced to sit and patiently wait while your compadres huck them selves at something that is either to hard to or to easy for you. And while you wait you go over the moves in your head beating your self up for falling two days ago on the last move of your project. Lets go soon guys, you say to your self, trying to stay warm so that you can crush first go. The sun is dipping, lets move.
Dark Silhouette is a proud line at the tip of the spur that we went to on one of the more enjoyable days, accompanied by my friends Nick and Jenn, and our new friends Chris, Jason Abbey, Collete and Joe.

This is a video of mike sending Dark Age which he did in two quick session, After he sent I said good job on the v11 "what that was v11 i thought it was v9, no wonder it felt hard." The boulder problem See Spot Run v6 starts half way through the climbing. They say the hardest part is just finishing up the v6.

dark age v11 from walker emerson on Vimeo.


The first day: We had reservations for North Mountain, so north it was, We warmed up and made our way to the top of the chains, Mike and I flashed See spot run a nice crimpy tall v6 with a good landing. Just around the corner we stopped to run a few lapse on a fun v2 called nobody gets out of here alive and Ngan showed us how campusing can be so easy. Dodging a few tourists we made it the Daily Dick Dose cave, once the holds become to warm we decided we were warmed up and were ready for a challenge. We marched over to Load with power, I flashed to the two crimps got my feet up and then punted. A few minutes later more pads arrived and things got serious. I jumped on the problem for another go. crossed off the huge jug undercling to the shitty left hand crimp put my heal in and floated out to the sloper flipped the heal to a toe hook and lunged for the other nasty crimp caught it with my two middle fingers cranked it down and swung my feet over pulled down hard and SNAP, a my left hand experienced a hard jerking sensation accompanied by a muffled but distinct popping noise. I dropped down thinking did i break the hold or was that my finger, no the hold looks fine, but my finger doesn't hurt.
As you might have guessed i tore the pully on my left ring finger.
Good thing Mike sent the rig next go.
Although mike didnt do a double digit a day, he did have a really good trip!


Mike also sent Diaphanous in a few quick sessions, and Ngan surprised us by throwing down the first few hard moves.

Diaphanous Sea from walker emerson on Vimeo.



Out of all the boulder problems Mike threw down this one took him the longest, i wanna say 5 or 6 days of trying.
Rightly so, everyone we spoke to said that it was the hardest v10 ever.

power of silence v10 from walker emerson on Vimeo.



Finally something without nasty little crimps.
This is El Techo de los Tres b. you might recognize it from Dossage 4. Since then it has broken and become easier. v11 is what is agreed upon these days. You might notice some differences in our beta.

El Techo de Los tres B from walker emerson on Vimeo.




Although i couldn't crimp on anything, this just fueled my climbing, I found boulder problems that had none of this and crushed. I tried this problem with Mike Bockhino, and managed to send it in about an hours time. Mike was super psyched for me, we were both really suprised. Mike at the end of his trip was so close to sending. next time for sure!


Watch video on Dead Point Mag here


Diabolique v13 from walker emerson on Vimeo.