Thanks Beth! Ahhh, if I could only teach her what I know about photography, I could spend a lot more time climbing eh? Anyway, I should catch you up to date properly. Honestly, right now everyone is cranking so hard that I feel like a walking, talking Hot Flashes Column ready to unload into a really heavy and fully bound book, but here we go: Daniel Woods opened the Sky Project from the start and aptly named it "Sky" V14. ( I have seen Daniel break through an important barrier in the last few weeks. He is just only beginning to relize the tools he is working with). Woods also opened another amazing project called "El Corizone" V13. This line was an old Klem Loskot project from years past that requires a very strong head and an even stronger hand. "El Corazone" sits like a beacon over the area as a perfect suspened heart shaped boulder with a sick line right up it's center. A five star contender for sure. Paul followed immediately behind his heels, digging deep, and pulling off an amazing second ascent. After the next rains, I predict this one may sit unchalked for a long, long time. The kids have bagged most established testpieces by now, including the long awaited second ascents of "Moiste Maise" V14, "Madiba" V14, and "Green Mamba" V13. Lisa had a big last day before heading back to England for her gitstone sessions. She had had her heart set on Black Shadow V13, having done all the moves on previous sessions, but opted on her final day for a milage instead and fired off a few new V10s before her flight. We miss you here Lisa!

If there were ever a line that suited Paul Robinson it would be Fred Nicole's Amadala V15. Amadala lies in the center of the sector called "Roadcrew." An area famous for its other classics such as Cedar Spine, Roof on Fire, and Ulan Batar. The boulder has a dramatic overhanging lean to it and is composed of a solid orange quartzite banded with a grey gritstone allowing a very resistant path of least resistance. The problem starts from two small crimps about head heigth and the business comes quick. Pull on, and pull right hand to a very sharp fingertip crimper. (Tony says you may only get a few goes off this hold before you will split your tip like a passion fruit.) If you have the skin for it, you will then bust high to a good hold, match it, and fire for a deviously sloping lip at 15 feet, match it, and mantle. The lure of the mantle has spread over the years and some have suggested that this single move way off the deck and over a downsloping hillside, may clock in at around v11! Blow it and you'll eat it hard for sure. Most climbers stong enough to possibly make it that far have saved themselves the heartbreak of possibly blowing the move and opted out of trying for the repeat. Paul crushed it an just over an hours work and seemingly made the fastest ascent of the grade to date, though he may call it V14. Not to mention, it was the very end of the day which saw him and Daniel make the 2nd and 3rd ascents of Matt Wilder's "Power of One" V13. Daniel repeated Amandala as well a few days later. I am both honored and elevated to have watched over the last few years Daniel and Paul grow into young men and become the strongest boulderers in the world, and now, here, each day, watching the two go neck and neck on the hardest problems in the world until the big red sun sets over the Atlantic. I have been watching less through me lens at them lately, and have been growing more and more inspired to push myself as a climber.