Nine Corner Lake: Point Break (V7)

  Last Saturday on March 26, 2016 we had an absolutely beautiful spring day at Nine Corner Lake. The dry conditions were about a month ahead of last year (snow lingered at Nine Corner last year into the third week of April!), the sun was abundant, the boulders were completely clear and dry, and everyone was very anxious to jump start the 2016 outdoor climbing season.

  I couldn't wait to join up with everyone in the afternoon once I completed work for the day especially since a handful of the climbers that I was meeting up with had requested that I bring a copy of the new bouldering guidebook so they could buy a copy for themselves.  Everyone seemed more than impressed with the final product which was a huge relief and I could literally feel the weight of the guidebook project being lifted off of my shoulders!  After a good warm up at the first set (Zone A) and getting shut down on a repeat send of One Might Think (V6), I convinced everyone to venture back to Zone E where there were some remote problems that I established in the previous years that I thought deserved some climbing attention.  Everyone seemed eager to get on some new stuff so we traveled back to the Wave, Tsunami, and Paradise Boulders.

  The boulder problem that I was most interested to see everyone try was a line that I established back in 2011 on the backside of the Tsunami Boulder.  Point Break (V7) is a dead vertical face climb on small crimps and sidepulls with some tricky footwork and body positions and ends with a long reach to the top of the boulder.  I was able to successfully repeat both the stand and sit starts to the climb but to my knowledge, nobody else has repeated this problem.  Some of the crew on Saturday made some excellent progress and a majority of the guys were getting into the crux sequence.  I am confident that it will see some more action this spring and some much needed repeat ascents.

  Other boulder problems that everyone got on were Rip Curl (V8) and a long slopping arete problem called Hawaii 5.0 (V5).  The latter is a line that needs to be climbed by more people because the movement is so much fun and I think it saw a half dozen or so repeats that day.  We ended on the Cave Wall as the sun was setting and everyone's bodies were starting to shut down.  It is always a great feeling when you can no longer hold your body weight due to complete exhaustion and fatigue.

  Saturday was an epic session for sure and one hell of a way to start off the spring season for 2016!!!  Let's stay psyched guys, this could be a year of epic proportions...

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