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Installment #3 |
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10/02 -City of Rocks Idaho. Lander WY is covered in snow. We left. I would like to thank everyone who has ever put up a sport route and actually thought of putting bolts where they can be clipped and in places that prevent death. Routes bolted in 1987 by trad climbers are enough to make me think bouldering on a busted ankle is a good idea. City of Rocks has no shortage of these routes. Some of the routes looked great. Most of them climbed beautifully. But when I want to look at 20ft ledge falls protected by a bolt 15ft below the ledge, I'll go trad climbing. This is just me, and I'm aware that I'm a sissy. Prior to our visit there, I was under the impression that there was good sport climbing City of Rocks, but had heard nothing of any bouldering. After a couple of days trying to clip bolts in the middle of cruxes, looking at death falls, with the two best sport crags at the place closed, we decided it was time to look for some boulders. Now obviously City of Rocks is not a national bouldering destination. But this fact does not explain the fact that we found endless hillsides covered with highly featured granite boulders. I'm not usually very good at guessing how many jellybeans are in the jar, but I'd say there'd have to be a couple thousand problems put up before the place was tapped. Think the Peabody hill at the Buttermilks x100. Maybe a lot of it isn't any good. But that's what I saw. Anyhow by the time we had to leave, I was getting the feeling that I was the butt of a practical joke. There's no way there could be as much good stuff there as I thought I saw and nobody know about it. I kept waiting to walk around a corner and find a dozen other people with pads laughing at me and my ignorance. But it didn't happen. In fact there weren't even that many roped climbers. So I took pictures to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. My pictures sucked. So I had Alyssa take some and they turned out much better. Here they are. Judge for yourself. I think we're all nuts for not going bouldering at City of Rocks. But that's just me. By the way, for anybody keeping score…
Van:
Puppy:
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