Next it was off to Boulder for a few days before going to meet Natasha in Joe’s Valley for her spring break. Again, we scored splitter weather for the first few days before it crapped out on us and started snowing. We did manage to get a couple good days in though. Our first day out was at the classic area, Flagstaff Mountain, where there are many old school test peices. I did a really cool, slightly scary V8ish problem called Hollow’s Way. The next day, after waiting until 1 p.m. for Daniel Woods to get out of school, we made the 2-hour drive (2 hours because Daniel was engrossed in conversation with his g-friend, Lara, the entire time instead of paying attention to where we were going, and we kept getting lost) out to Poudre Canyon for a short session. Warming up, I felt like I probably wouldn’t be able to climb anything above V6 and had a terrible ache in my forearms from my last climbing day in Arkansas, so when I got on the test piece, Circadian Rhythm, it pretty much felt impossible. But like a lot of climbs that feel impossible at first, I was able to figure out beta that worked for me, this time that beta involved doing one big move to skip the first three, and ended up sending the climb in about an hour. So the day turned out to be one of my best of the trip, even thought it started out as one of the worst. 

After the snow started to fall by the foot in Colorado, it was off to Joe’s Valley. Joe’s has really become a major bouldering destination over the last couple of years, although I’m not sure I would agree that there are 10 (or, was it five?) reasons that it is better that Hueco. Anyway, it was cool to hang out there for a week, relax in the desert sun, spend time with Natasha, who I hadn’t seen in a month, and just climb on boulders that were new to me. It was cool to do Black Lung just because the rock and the holds on it are so unique — even if I did use the beta that made it heaps easier than the way it was originally done.