Climbing – Page 8 – The RV Project

My BDC- Long Term Beatdown

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Bolt Clipping, Bouldering2 Comments

“Just so you know, Georgie, I’ll be sprinting this one as fast as I can, since I’m training and all that.” “No worries, you can go ahead of me.” And so I sprinted up the first set of stairs on the trail that eventually gains 700 meters of elevation, bound for the 3rd Peak. About 150 stairs later, I was cooked. My legs felt like molten slag, and the air I was sucking didn’t seem to contain any oxygen, despite being at sea level. What began as running quickly turned into plodding. “I think you’re hosing yourself by not warming up” No shit. And so Georgie and I huffed our way up to the pinnacle of the 2nd Peak, arriving exactly 36 minutes after we began the hike. There is a trail, you see, that goes directly to the 3rd Peak, but it is vicious. Roots and rocks. The type of terrain that eats inferior ankles for breakfast. There is no moving quickly over that kind of trail. I think that, physically, the single hardest part of my birthday challenge will be this run, 36 minutes or less to the 3rd Peak. So why did we go to the 2nd? To see if the trail was faster, if longer. And it was. Despite lingering on the top of the 2nd Peak for a few minutes and dawdling over to the 3rd, we made it to the 3rd Peak in 51 minutes. That’s 1 minute faster than when I did the 3rd peak trail…

July 7, 2014

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Kelowna | The Boulderfields

By VikkiClimbing, Local Beta, Road Trip Beta2 Comments

Last summer was all about Squamish, but we knew British Columbia had more boulders to offer. When we found out about the 2nd annual Rock the Blocs Boulderfest outdoor bouldering competition in Kelowna, we decided to take a mini road trip East and give’r a go. The town of Kelowna is located on the eastern side of the massive Okanagan Lake. The Boulderfields are just south of town and take about 45 minutes to get to by a windy dirt road. There’s some rocky spots, but we took it nice and slow and were able to make it with the trailer. The Boulderfields have a seemingly endless expanse of gneiss rock (think Chaos Canyon at Rocky Mountain National Park). The area is highly concentrated but some hiking is involved, many choice areas require a bit more of a commitment to get to with some scrambling over talus à la Chaos Canyon. Contrary to Squamish bouldering, there are holds! Tiny crimps, textured slopers, good edges- whatever your heart desires. In previous years, a few sport routes have been put up across the area and now, with the hard work of a few developers, there’s also the up-and-coming bouldering playground. Both Spenser and I had a blast at the comp, quickly forgetting we were running on just an hour of sleep. Spenser got the second and third ascents of a couple spectacular steep lines, while I struggled a bit with some of the top cruxes and fell off more climbs than I finished. Nonetheless, I took in as many easy and moderate climbs as the…

June 25, 2014

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Hair on Fire

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Gym Climbing, TrainingNo Comments

I’m not ready to turn 30. The saying goes that time flies when you’re having fun. Strangely, I find that time flies when I’m standing still. Take the past two months for example. The RV Project moved its headquarters into my parents’ house, where we soaked up the comforts of a house and a doting mother and father who love to cook delicious food. A 2 month hiatus from the road seemed like a great chance to catch up with the videos we’re making, do some needed maintenance on the trailer, see our non-nomadic friends, and for me to prepare for my upcoming Birthday Challenge. The problem is, it feels like I’m just starting to train, and we’ve already left. It’s now less than a month from my birthday, and I am already dreading many of the elements I’ve set for myself. I’m not in poor shape, but the list of challenges is long. Time is fast dwindling, moreso as I’ll want to taper for a week or so before the challenge. I spent most of my time in the gym lifting weights and gaining endurance. I followed the format of Phase 1 of John Long’s Workout From Hell. I’d done the entire cycle once before, and remember feeling much pain and suffering during the 30-rep phase, but I also recall that my body felt as solid as a tree, as though bullets would bounce off my chest. I figured this would be a good way to train for my 300,000-pound lifting day,…

June 19, 2014

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SF in the SE

By SpenserBouldering, ClimbingNo Comments

Climbing is about trying hard, pushing your limits, and getting out of your comfort zone. Right? By surrounding ourselves with climbing all the time, we sometimes conflate the importance of our sport. Sometimes we forget that it’s also about fun. That’s why it’s refreshing when our hometown homies come out for climbing trips. We don’t know many crews as tightly knit and as motivated to just have fun as our San Francisco friends. On top of that, they also climb hard. You may recall Highball Day, in which Mark Heal, Josh Horsley, and literally dozens of other climbers sessioned on 7 of Squamish’s best tall problems. Despite many different strengths and ability levels, the SF crew has the uncanny ability to work together and stay psyched, rain or sub-zero temperatures be damned. This past winter, the crew descended upon Chattanooga. On one particularly frigid day at Rocktown, a day that also happened to be Josh’s birthday, the San Franciscans swarmed all over the classics and dispatched a whole lot of stars’ worth of boulder problems. Please take a few minutes and check out the video we made for Organic Climbing, because it’s never too soon to get psyched and start planning a Southeast Sandstone Bouldering Rampage for the upcoming season! And when you’re done with our video, check out Will Wolcott’s awesome edit. More shenanigans, more sending, and some epic fails on Flying High.

June 10, 2014

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Birthday Challenge Episode 1: Alex Johnson

By SpenserBirthday Challenges, Bolt Clipping, Bouldering, Film2 Comments

EpicTV’s newest series, Birthday Challenge, went live today! Episode one follows Alex Johnson as she hits the quarter-century milestone with grace, humor, and optimism. She also manages to climb 25 routes and enough boulder problems to amass 25 stars in Las Vegas’ incredible Red Rock Canyon. Check it out below, and share with your friends, because we want as many people doing birthday challenges as possible this year! (Speaking of which, if you have done, or are going to do a birthday challenge, let us know! Also, there’s a BDC group on Facebook you should probably join.) We mentioned earlier that this year was going to be quite an adventure…all of a sudden we are making films…professionally! We dove into this one. Drove across the country to one of our least favorite cities (Las Vegas), and spent a couple of days filming Alex, interviewing her and her awesome mom Trish, and gathering some ridiculously cute footage of Fritz. When it came time to edit, we wanted to tell a story. We wanted to inspire. We wanted to give you Alex in the raw. Several long nights yielded a great 8-minute film we were proud of, and better still, that Alex was psyched on. We sent it off to EpicTV. EpicTV responded that they wanted something a bit more “action-packed.” So it was back to the editing station to chop it up again. The result is a totally awesome 4 minute video showing some of the gorgeous sport climbing in Red Rock, classic boulder problems from…

May 23, 2014

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Climbing to Repair a Child

By SpenserClimbing, Stuff We're Psyched OnNo Comments

People climb for many reasons, and there are so many appealing reasons to climb. It’s fun and satisfying. For the die-hards, it’s a way of life, a lens for examining philosophy, a medium of self-expression. I’ve always loved to climb, but there was something about it that grabbed me in a deeper way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I think you climb, and therefore I think you know what I mean. On the front page of the SF Chronicle (April 29), I saw an article that hinted at exactly what I’m talking about. A therapist by the name of Dr. Clifton Hicks was having success treating children with PTSD by taking them rock climbing in Glen Canyon Park. I admit that part of me felt a bit of pride upon reading the headline, as though I were somehow ennobled by the therapeutic benefits of the sport I’ve chosen. But we know that – adventure-based therapy is not exactly new – but here was a psychotherapist running climbing-specific outings to treat a specific condition. I wanted to learn more about this utterly cool phenomenon. I was able to get Dr. Hicks on the phone. He was fascinating to talk to, and he’s the only person I’m aware of to write a dissertation about rock climbing. He explained that when a trauma occurs, it severely damages relationships in the child’s life that are critical to development. The child has been robbed of safety and security, and treatment involves reestablishing…

May 14, 2014

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Top Rope Tough Girl

By VikkiBolt Clipping, Climbing, Staying Healthy, The Interior, Trip Journal5 Comments

Who can forget this amazing climbing classic?! I have a confession to make. I’ve been toproping. Frequently. I feel as though I’m cheating on bouldering. It’s been my obsession for years- unfortunately, my bouldering confidence wanes at times. One day I feel like I can climb to the top of anything I set my mind to. The next day, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I totally suck. How well you climb is directly linked to your confidence level. There’s no way around it. Just like with any other discipline, knowing that you can do it is a vital to success. I’m very aware that everyone has bad days, but I’ve come to the conclusion that my mental (and physical) struggle is not based on probability: it’s my lack of endurance. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been living on the road, rock climbing, for over 2 years and have gained little endurance. I am certainly much stronger than when we began the road trip, but I still get the feeling that one, or both, of my hands will spontaneously open up if I’m on the wall for over 30 seconds [not an experimentally acquired measurement, but a good estimate]. I also do not have a good gauge as to how long I can hold on once that inevitable pump sets in. I’ve never committed to climbing past it. Yep, I’m a sucker for letting go. This is further detrimental to my climbing since I am predominately a static climber who…

April 18, 2014

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Fear, Loathing, and Escape in Las Vegas and New Mexico

By SpenserBouldering, Climbing, Local Beta10 Comments

I got the fear. And the loathing. Vikki and I were approaching Black Corridor, a popular sport crag in Red Rocks, NV. We were still fifty yards from the entrance to the narrow chasm, and we could plainly hear the cacophony of a popular crag. I flashed back to college parties that I knew would be no fun, but that I wanted to go to because, well, because it seemed like everyone else was there. And therefore so should I. We had been dreading the Las Vegas leg of our trip. This city doesn’t suit us. There is a long list of reasons for this which I need not elaborate upon. Its redeeming feature lies west of that iconic white spear of light the Luxor hotel hurls nightly into space in a pathetic gesture of grandiosity, as if Las Vegas was rejecting the sun’s blistering rays. Red Rocks and the canyons surrounding it are, and there’s no denying it, stunningly beautiful and full of stone. And so we drove to Las Vegas. The routes in the Black Corridor are more or less stacked on top of one another, making it a perfect location for practicing roped climbing. We need this practice, as much of our filming over the next year will require rope work. And so we joined the Saturday crowds. The next day we visited the Kraft boulders, a very easily accessible collection of blocks that would, on a Sunday, be similarly crowded. This translates, inevitably, to polished rock,…

March 25, 2014

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V-Point Challenge

By SpenserBouldering, ClimbingOne Comment

Projecting one particular line gets tiring, physically and mentally, and one of the hardest parts for me is having to shut out all the other tantalizing pieces of stone nearby. Chalk it up my FOMO, I guess. So I decided to take a day off The Shield and try to climb as many problems as possible in the best way I know how. Why The V-Point Challenge? First of all, everyone should do one. I know that climbing is held by many to be a sort of zen thing, that people often abhor a climbing partner with an agenda. It’s not about climbing hard, it’s about having fun. Don’t get me wrong; there’s no good gonna come from “forcing it,” unless you’re Patxi Usobiaga and self-torture defines your climbing career. And I don’t fault anyone for wanting to go out, climb a few things, have a beer and call it a day. I enjoy those days occasionally as well, but to me, climbing hard is fun. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all have goals, even if they aren’t tied to a number. We want to feel stronger, more fluid. We want to suck less at mantels, or crimps, or heel hooks. We want to climb that awesome-looking feature, and it happens to be hard. We want to climb more without getting pumped, because climbing is fun. Sometimes the process sucks, and we adopt an attitude of False Non-Chalance to cover our unwillingness to trim the literal and figurative fat that keeps us from doing…

March 13, 2014

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Photo credit: Sebastian Kaulitzki/shutterstock.com

Inspiration Found

By VikkiClimbing, Food, Musings, Staying Healthy, The Interior, Trip Journal3 Comments

After a week of California vacation binge-mode, we are back in Chattanooga and feeling motivated again. Sometimes a forced break really helps put things into perspective. Spenser talked a bit about our climbing haps in his last post, and this post is going to about another things we can’t live without: food. [No matter how much traction the Breatharian movement gets! Okay, but seriously, I know food can be an addiction, but this as a long-term sustenance plan is nuts.] While in San Diego, we figured we’d take advantage of our locality and head up to Encinitas to visit a company we were first introduced to at the OR show in January, GoodOnYa. Spenser knows that I am always on the lookout for good gluten-free products, and during the OR show, he happened upon the GoodOnYa booth. We were able to snag a box of bars during the show and devoured them over the next week. They were delicious and, for once, we were pleasantly surprised by each and every ingredient. My stomach is incredibly irritable, even beyond my Celiac Disease. I also don’t do well with soy (read: mad indigestion), so it’s an annoyance to find a gluten-free snack bar that fits the bill. Since we loved the bars and, even more importantly, the company ethics, we decided to pay the GoodOnYa office a visit and see if we could figure out a way to we could work together. They have a small office on the 101, and an…

March 6, 2014

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