Driving the miles

Yesterday I had my longest drive yet of my trip. I was in my car for a total of 18 hours! Luckily I was not that tired during the drive even though I had only gotten about 4 1/2 hours of sleep the night before.

The trip was from Fort Worth Texas to Glendale Arizona and was probably only about 16 hours of driving maybe even 15 1/2 the rest was eating or I took a nap about 2 hours outside of phoenix for 45 min. I was good to go after that, I did grab a monster just in case and was listening to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and then started Star Ship Troopers.

Some of the other Audiobooks I've gone through on this trip are: the maze runner series(), the divergent series(Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant), and the casual vacancy. I can't remember if I am missing any at the moment but that's the majority of them. 

In Arizona I got to chill with my long time friend Antonio for a couple days that was a ton of fun getting to see him and his brother Sam again. They showed me around the city and all their favourite bars and such. 

After my short stint with Antonio I headed once more off to bishop the drive was around 11 hours and boy was I tired when I finally got back. Plus this weekend I'm off to Yosemite to climb for the weekend. I'm sure I'll have more to say after that. 

Till then peace out!

The Irish King

Durango Livin

So since I've been in Durango, Colorado for a few days I've gotten the chance to edit and upload a few vids of some of the trips I've been on since my days of being a dirtbag have started. One of the days I went to check out the loaf boulder in the buttermilks in bishop and sent some fun problems on it. One was called The Rising and another was called Nan Bread I also did a few warmup problems on the boulder that can also be found on my youtube page as well as all the other vids I've been able to post so far.

I'm probably about 100 vids or so behind in my posting but I'm doing my best with my limited internet access. =) So keep looking and I'm sure you'll see plenty more videos in the future.

Also if you know I have video of you sending some of your projects make sure to contact me if you want the video out sooner than later. That way I can make sure to prioritize your climbs because the way I'm doing it right now is completely random with me editing what ever I feel like at the time.  If you don't already have my number then message me on facebook or keep looking on youtube for your vids to come out.

Peace from Durango!

The Irish King

Big comp weekend

This past weekend(9/26-9/27) I got to take part in two sweet competitions in the Bay Area. The first one on Friday night was at the Planet Granite in Belmont. I felt really strong going into the comp havig flashed a v6 called The Twilight Zone in the happy boulders in bishop the day before. Just found out the score today and it turns out I tied for 11th place overall out of 313 people!!

Super psyched about it!!! The pic above shows one of the problems I liked but couldn't finish, it had three dynos in it two vertical and one horizontal. It would've been nice to get it but oh well it was fun anyways. I got to meet up with a bunch of peeps I haven't seen in a long while so it was nice catching up and getting to climb too. 

These are the top few scores for the men's category, the women's top score started lower so I didn't include it. But it looks like three of us tied for 11th place in the comp. I'm still not sure if I'll make it back to Ca in time to go to the next PG comp on the 17th of next month but hopefully I'll be back in time to see if I can  make it. 

This is a breakdown of my attempts for that night. They changed the scoring from the way they've done it in the past to enable fewer attempts before the climb is worthless witch is kind of nice because it makes moving on to other projects easier. Another high note is there was still plenty of beer by the end of the comp and that's one of the first time I've been to one where they didn't run out shortly after getting it in the building haha

Well time to crash, I'll share more adventures from this weekend tomorrow. 

The Irish King

Double days are full of win!

So today I went to rock creek for a morning sesh and then after eating and talking a long nap I hit up the buttermilks for some dusk climbing with Robin, Celine(some peeps I met yesterday) and Tod this strong Israeli guy.

I ended up getting a couple fun v4s at rock creek and after getting some beta from my new friend Tod I sent flyboy arête!! Heel-toe cam for the win! Haha

The 4s I got in Rock Creek were Pull Down Like De Jesus and Choice of Weapons. They were both really fun and I definitely had a blast pulling down on granite.

Unfortunately I dont have any footage of my flyboy arête send but hopefully when I get some people to visit and spot me I'll do it again and get the footage of it too!

The Irish King

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.

Crushing Yosemite

This thanksgiving weekend(12-8-13) I went to Yosemite with some fiends. But unfortunately everyone's phone was dead the first day. I was feeling weak anyways so it was ok to just mess around on some easy stuff. But I did take a look at a v7 at the cathedral boulders called the king. I gave it two tries and then left to go grab lunch with my step dad Greg. The rest of the day I set up camp and walked around camp 4 checking out all the different boulders I hadn't seen before. 

On the second day I went back and after a few goes I finally got it! The temperature was perfect for the attempts but if you weren't climbing it was a bit cold as you will see towards the end of my video when some friends have to jump around and dance to keep warm. 

http://youtu.be/5La2Jnf4zVI

For me this climb overshadowed anything else I did that weekend.