Sat's our typical climbing day but with the weather dumping 10 inches of snow 2 days before, we weren't sure if we were going to get anything out of LCC. But we went anyway. Place turned out to be pretty decent. Boulders were right off the pullouts. I had set my sights on Shingles V9, Copperhead V10, and possible Bully V11 at the Secret Gardens. I was pretty psyched to try Shingles first of all but the day turned out to be pretty damp with the snowfall, which made the Shingle move feel pretty impossible. I was kinda depressed cos it didn't looked like I could do Copperhead having seen how small the crimps were. But with nothing of interest around, I decided to try it anyway. Turned out I could pull the first move to the right hand crimp within a couple of tries but with the moisture, I was shutdown pretty quickly. Plus my cuticles were starting to tear from all the crimping. This was when a local came over to tell me not to beat myself up and return on a colder, dryer day. Spent the rest of the day checking out the Cabbage Patch and getting on "easier" climbs like the hardest V5 on earth...Fungus. My day pretty much ended when I couldn't get off the ground on a V1. NEGATIVE!!! I was really starting to believe in the curse of LCC.
We got news during the following week that Kim Boon was enroute from Yosemite to pay us a rare visit. And with him wanting to sample the best snow on earth, we headed out the following Sat to Snowbird Ski Resort to checkout the conditions and stopped by LCC again for another sesh.
Setting up the landing zone at the warmup boulder.
It's pretty amazing that with his extensive climbing experience, this was actually Kim Boon's first shot at REAL bouldering.
I take it that he likes it!
Tanleng on some V3 warmup.
I wasn't gonna waste any time getting back on Shingles, so I headed straight back to Copperhead and hoped that the temps were on my side this time.
Pulling the first move on Copperhead.
Copperhead has essentially 2 hard moves, which involves the first move into the right hand crimp off the ground, followed by cranking and getting the left hand on a semi-gaston lefthand crimp before busting the right hand to a decent incut flake. The second move to the semi-gaston wasn't exactly working out for me so I decided to switch my sequence out. I remembered vaguely when sussing out beta on youtube of Aaron Shamy busting right off the right hand crimp all the way up and hitting the decent flake with his left hand. I gave that sequence one go by stopping on the left hand semi-gaston first before moving off for the jump. And when I almost stuck the jump to the flake, the plan was to rest up and SEND!
Busting to the good flake.
SENDING!!!! YEEAAYYUUHHH!!!
Here's a vid of Aaron Shamy getting on a buncha climbs in LCC. There's one of him cruising Copperhead among other hard blocs. He didn't have to stop on the left hand semi-gaston. The bloke pretty much cranked down on the right hand crimp and bust straight out to the flake.
Managed to flash Barfly V9 (which I felt was V8) and Crystal Pinch V6 at the Gate boulders, which made for a pretty sweet day! Flailed on Superfly V8 cos I was so done by then but it made me pretty psyched to get on Pro-Series V11 the next time I'm there.
Here's Tanleng sending a pretty tricky V2 mantle. Rather decent effort considering the fact that she's still recovering from her back injury and didn't want to risk falling.
So the verdict is....LCC really isn't so bad afterall. The features weren't too different from the Tramway up in Palm Springs and Black Mountain, CA. Plus it's literally in my backyard and I don't have to pay for any tramride. Heck, I'm even considering getting a lamp and getting some night sessions in!
