Christmas Day Bouldering: Pena Blanca

Liz and I wanted to go for a hike with the dog, and the hike turned into a bouldering session for me. It's been a while since Liz came bouldering with me and with her as photographer, I actually have a number of decent pictures. We went to the Asian Boulders at Pena Blanca, and I tried some of the steeper lines that I wasn't too bold to try last time without a spotter. I still wasn't too bold on them, but had a good time none-the-less.

Here's me trying a "Annihilator". Lowell rates this V5 with a sit-down start. I didn't try the sit-down start, nor the top-out which looked like small holds over a bad landing. But the middle was fun.


And here's a traverse with Sasha spotting me.


I spent a while on "Asian School Girls", a V7 around the corner. The starting moves were really fun to puzzle out, and involved a diagonal slot which I had to transition from a side-pull to an undercling as I moved up on it. The top of the problem looked like the hard stuff, tiny crimps the rest of the way up.

I flashed the V2 that I did last time I was here. Then after working the other problems, I got back on the V2 for a photo and couldn't send it any more. Bouldering is hard for me like that. When I'm fresh out, I can hit moves relatively easily even without warming up. Once I'm "warm" I can no longer hit the moves. There was nothing terribly pumpy about the V2, it was mostly technical with tricky feet, but I somehow couldn't repeat it.