1/29/07

     Well, I just got back from the beach in Pacifica, Linda Mar, after a couple hours of surfing (and getting pounded by outside sets) and feel wasted. The days I have been surfing in the last week have brought forth relatively good conditions, with waist to head high waves and an offshore breeze flowing almost all day. What more could I ask for (a less crowded line-up, a new wetsuit and booties, skills like my seasoned surf partner and once off the couch, 5.13 climber Jino)? Surfing Is really good cross-training for climbing, but sometimes I think I just gain weight, because my body craves a lot of fat so I can stay warm in the frigid water. Oh, well.

     This weekend I made a trip up to Yosemite to boulder with my friend Scott Cory. On Saturday, I awoke at the ripe hour of 5:30 a.m. to get an early start on picking up Scotty and getting to the Valley. After stopping in Livermore to meet Scotty, we continued up Hwy 120 and got a call from Randy Puro, just after passing Oakdale. Randy was still in Berkeley and after hearing of my pre-dawn start he said, "Dude, what are you doing?"

     The Berkeley crew, normally consisting of Randy, Courtney, Paul, and Lynn, are some of the only people religiously making trips to the Valley to develop new areas and clean and climb hidden gems in well-established areas. As psyched as they might be, they usually never show up to the Valley before noon, even for day trips. But sure enough, the way Randy drives, he made it to the Valley only an hour after we did. Scotty and I parked in the now iced over parking lot of camp 4. My plan was too work on the dominator (a classic Camp 4 testpiece originally climbed from the stand by Jerry Moffat, and from the sit only by Chris Sharma and Tim Clifford second). Scotty, having never bouldered in Yosemite, was to get the grand tour. I wanted to climb Dominator from the sit, as it's the more obvious start, but would be psyched to do it from the stand since there were three or four moves I had not yet done at all. We ended up just climbing on the wine boulder all day. Scotty got sucked into trying the classic jump-start Stick It, which wasn’t much of a jump for him at 6’2”, but couldn’t get past the second move, which involves a scrunchy high-step.