ROAD TRIP!!

So I am currently on a road trip to visit my best friends in Colorado, Texas, and Arizona and I am having the time of my life!

I started this trip on September 30th and have traveled roughly 2000 miles since it started 8 days ago talk about a long trip, haha and it's only about half way over!! 

The first big stop for me was in Las Vegas Nevada where I spent some time climbing at Kraft Boulders in Red Rocks.
I had a great time and met a few people including Catrina Sisco a cute girl sponsored by Mad Rock. It was a bit warm so I didn't really finish any hard climbs but I did try some fun ones on the warm up boulder. 

From there I headed out to Arizona and stayed at some random free campground where I slept in the back of my car for the first time on my pads staked on the back seat.(add pic) This was definitely a change since my pads are maybe a foot from the roof of my car but it was comfortable enough, plus sleeping laying down beats sleeping in the driver seat anytime! haha From there I drove to the four corners monument and took a couple pictures there as well as read all of the cool little tidbits about how and when the state lines for AZ, UT, NM, and CO were drawn as well as by who.

 

 

From there It was just a short hour or two drive to my friend Nicks house in Durango, CO. I stayed at Nicks house and met a bunch of people at his weekly cultural night on Wednesday. The next day Nick and I went to do a bit of bouldering at Turtle Lake in Durango. Got on some fun stuff and I'll post the vids and links to them when I get the chance. 

 The next day Nick had to go on a class trip for the weekend so since I no longer had a place to stay or people to chill with I headed to Denver. I didn't make it all the way there in one shot though, due to tiredness I ended up staying at Antero Reservoir. 

Some bugs decided to mate on my car the morning I woke up. haha

That morning I drove into Denver to explore the city. One of the first things I noticed about Denver was the horrible smell it gave off as I entered it. I hadn't really thought about big cities smelling bad until I entered Denver. I think a lot of that has to do with me living out in the wilderness of bishop for a month prior to my road trip. Haha It's funny how things like living out doors can change you even if you don't realise it.
















As I was driving through Denver I tried to get a hold of my friend TJ who lives there. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to meet up so I ended up going to a brewery he recommended in Golden, CO called Mountain Toad Brewing. Due to my lack of food that day the two pints of beer put me over my limit and I had to sleep in my car for a few hours. lol

After my nap I drove towards Boulder, CO to meet up with my friend Mike. Since it was so late I decided to sleep at this free camping I found way out in the middle of nowhere called Gross Reservoir. I even had trouble finding the place because I was using my gps on my phone to locate it and there was no service. So it was a bit hard to find out where I was going and had to pull over at one point to find out if I was going in the right direction. But it was beautiful when I woke up to see I was on the top of this hill looking down into endless forests.

I found this cool looking log that was burned by some previous occupants that looked just like a horse leg!!

It was a bit windy that morning so I took a little video showing the surrounding area plus capturing the wind noise.

When I got to Boulder the next morning I found out that Mike was sick. Since he was sick and couldn't come out to climb with me I ended up going up to boulder canyon to climb by myself.

I wandered around for at least an hour trying to figure out where I could climb and how I could make it across the river to boulder on the other side, which is where most of the bouldering was. lol
I was only able to really climb on one boulder, The Graham Boulder. Sent a quick few problems on it and checked out The Game(v15) that Daniel Woods did the FA of a couple years ago.

That Climb is ridiculous I checked out the holds and angle of the climb and am baffled on how he climbed it! Plus the landing gets like every caution in the book! lol

My first rain

So I went to Mammoth on Sunday afternoon to just chill and camp for the night so I could hopefully climb at Way Lake on Monday morning. Unfortunately I got a rude awakening at around 3:30am and it started raining on my face so I had to jump out of bed and throw my rain fly on. Quite the adventure for so early in the morning. But it didn't stop there I woke up and it was raining off and on so I thought I'd chance the trip up to Way Lake anyways. When I got there it was dry so I used the restroom real quick looked at the trail map and what do you know it started raining AGAIN! It continued to rain for the next 45min or so when I was there waiting and then I decided to go back to bishop where it looked to be much more dry.

I first went to the Loony Bean Coffee shop to charge my electronics and check my FB and email then uploaded the vid of me at night after I put my rain fly on. After that I headed to the buttermilks and wandered around for a bit then I found another guy(Steve) who was doing a little dusk bouldering and and we messed around on the smooth shrimp boulder. We got some easy stuff, tried some hard stuff and then went our separate ways.

Today(Tuesday) I woke up at like 730, ate a little and headed to the milks. They were just across the road from me. =) I started by warming up with some guys(Jay and Alex) I met at the birthday boulders. I got to show them how to do birthday left and then headed to iron man, so I could work it before it got in the sun. I probably spend an hour with a Sweedish couple I met there and this guy Wayne who was briefly at the birthday boulders. I gave Iron Man two goes and was still falling then the Sweedish guy and Wayne sent it so I gave it one last try and SENT IT!! This project has been eluding me for the past two years and I finally sent it, the vid will be coming soon. After I left Iron Man I messed around trying to repeat Cave Route but couldn't repeat it for the camera. I also messed around on a couple other climbs on cave boulder and then headed to tut boulder to see if I could get any new lines there. I got some easy stuff like a V2 and V0 but couldn't get anything harder because it was so hot by that point. Luckily I'm camping in the milks so I don't have to worry about having to go far to climb. =)

Tomorrow I'll be headed to Rock Creek to climb with Wayne and then heading back to the milks for the, from what I hear, weekly local climber get together in the milks. So hopefully I'll meet a few more peeps tomorrow.

'Till then peace out!

The Irish King

The new adventure!

I am officially on the road living the dirtbag lifestyle that I have been thinking about for the past year or two. 

This was my base camp for the first week. But before I was in the tablelands in Bishop I went to planet granite's Bloc Party bouldering competition and then spent the weekend in Tahoe with some friends at the secrets. 

PG's Bloc Party was a blast with some truly difficult lines. It didn't help that I had only been climbing about one day every couple weeks so I went into the advanced category instead of open. These are the results of the comp.

http://www.planetgranite.com/climbing/competitions/blocparty/results/2014_BlocParty_SV_Results.pdf?utm_source=SEPTEMBER+2014&utm_campaign=September+2014&utm_medium=email

I ended up getting 5th in advanced but I hope to do much better in the next few comps. It was great seeing all the familiar faces of my friends at the comp that I haven't seen in a few months. Telling them all of my plans about moving to Bishop and they left me with promises of trips they would plan to come climb and visit me. 

This is the end of the comp when all of the awards and raffles were being done. I even won with my single ticket that I got for entering into the comp. haha I got a new guidebook, chalk bag and some jtree salves. But I gave the chalk bag to Carissa since hers was stolen at the comp and I didn't need another one since I have like 5 from previous comps. 

After the comp I headed to my brother Steve's house near Sacramento and headed to Tahoe early the next morning. Tahoe is great at this time of year, smelling the fresh pine in the air, feeling that coarse granite that will shred your skin in no time and enjoying conversations when the ganja and whiskey is flowing. Ahh good times. Although I didn't get to many high grade problems because my left ring fingers been bothering me I did still get some fun mid grades under my belt. I even managed to flash a few V4s and a V5. 

On Saturday night KJ made us all some fantastic grilled chicken after a good day of crushing. Who would've known that grilled chicken could taste so good after a long day of bouldering? A few beers and some amazing cooking will definitely put you in the mood to talk about everything and nothing in particular. 

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of our climbing. I'll have to link the videos from YouTube once I've edited them. But the two area we went to in The secrets were the sticks and the mystics. Both areas had some good lines and all of the climbing was fun the best part of course was all the buds that I got to meet and climb with. 

Having friends on trips like these is definitely the most ideal. 

After our afternoon sesh in Tahoe on Sunday I headed to Bishop ready to embrace this new dirtbag life.