Being that the days are longer and warmer Paul mentioned he was planning to do some bouldering after work on Thursday. I thought this was a great idea so I picked him up at the main plant, strapped his bike to my car and we headed over to West Rock. Unfortunately the road system is still blocked off so we had to hike up to Judge’s Cave. Actually now that I’m thinking about it, if the roads were open there probably would have been non-climbing people running all over the rocks making it tough to do our thing.
In any case Paul and I got up there around 5 and proceeded to do some bouldering. This was my first outdoor bouldering so it was a little strange at first. I am so used to the protection of an 8 inch mat at the gym that I was a little timid at first. It turns out that Paul’s ~3 inch pad works just fine for softening the ground, so I settled in fairly quickly.
After about 20 or 30 minutes of climbing Paul’s fiancé, Lauren, and two of her friends, Marie and Kate, showed up. Marie and Kate are students working here from Norway and England, respectively. Paul and I were working on a pretty difficult route when they showed up so we decided to go back to a really sweet route he and I had done a little earlier. This route proved to be a challenge for the girls, but they were able to do pretty well on it.
After that we did a few other problems that quickly tired us out. To finish the afternoon we all did the highball problem. This route was a little hairy. It was not quite dark but it was very poor lighting for bouldering. Seeing the holds was difficult and the feet were nearly impossible. Luckily the added safety of three spotters was able to get everyone through the problem. Well that and super beta from Paul.
Check out the pictures, which include me for a change!