Fun, Fun, Fun.

Some Weird African Plant



Eric Lookin' Sharp

What once was a month is now just a week. I felt like a month was an eternity until the end of this trip got closer. The whole thing so far has been a blast to say the least. There has been a bunch of climbing going on, a lot of sends by a lot of people. Walker and small Jesse (sorry) did the Amphitheatre, which seems like one of coolest problems around. Its a huge overhanging boulder with super powerful moves and quite possibly one of the most amazing pinches I've ever seen on real rock. If I ever end up bouldering V12, it seems like something that would be fun to try. I did however do my project of the trip about a week ago, Pinotage. Holy moly, what an amazing climb! I worked for three days and maybe have not ever wanted to do a rock climb so bad in my life. Eric is really, really close. There's pretty core intensive cut loose move where you have to move your heel up to a ledge that keeps on getting the best of him. Soon though, soon. I did Black Spider which is a cool problem and I'm glad to have done it. However, more than anything, it marks the end of a very emotional battle of Ryan vs. Rock. Yesterday we went to an area called 8 Day Rain. Pretty cool, not a lot of stuff, but cool. A very fun and extremely A-typical Rocklands boulder problem; technical highball slab arete. After that we got on a bunch of V-a-millions that shredded the shit out of tips. After I almost gave up on 8 Day Rain area, Walker showed us Crazy Legs. Fuck yeah. Awesome overhanging, super beta intensive arete. The crazy legs move is a super weird inside leg flag. I've never done one of those before, but it seemed to work. Come here, do it. I began work on Nutsa, which is pretty much THE boulder problem a lot of people think of when Rocklands comes to mind. I'm close as one can be to sending something pretty out of my range:

Last move...
...on the ground.
Over and over and over.



Me and Eric on Crazy Legs

Blah, blah, blah. Climbing talk gets super boring after a while. If anybody reading this comes to South Africa for a month or longer, please for own sake, do more than just rock climb. Thank god Eric and I are going to Cape town for a few days to drink and become "cultured". There's only so much bouldering and talking about Fred Nicole and V100s that I can do before I've felt like I've wasted a trip around the world...not wasted, but you know. I'm in fucking South Africa! I need to do some African shit!



The Shark

Oops, here's that video (and some other pics)

Sorry about the wait.

Roadcrew (The Pass)

So we went back to the Pass, but this time climbing at Roadcrew instead of Roadside. This area has the ultra famous Cedar Spine and Ulan Butar (that's not how its spelled, I know). Cedar Spine is fucking amazing!!! Totally worth the hype. If you come here, you cannot leave without climbing this mega classic highball arete. Ulan Butt-Stain however is a total crap pile (not because I didn't do it). I guess some people called it the "Midnight Lightning of the Rocklands", but that is a load of zebra poop. It has the mega tweaky lightning bolt hold that you have do a weird one-arm pull up lock off thingy on that totally made my pinky hurt all effing day. Lame, lame lame. Walker lead us up to this area called the Fortress after we did Cedar Spine. The Fortress has all this super hard cave problems that look really cool, but are all actually the same as eachother. Even though the climbing here isn't great, it had probably the most amazing view of the Rocklands I've seen so far.

Rest/Rainy Days (Laaaaaaame)

As any climber knows, rain is hella dumb. We've been blessed most of our trip with great weather. Of course with anywhere during winter, there's bound to be some rain. Eric and I chose to make a pretty bitchin' stop animation movie. Feast your eyes on what may be the single most amazing stop animation film every created...forever!

Fields of Joy

It seems like everybody in our house (in the middle of the street! la, la, la) is getting bit by skeeters at night, not just me. This girl staying with us named Petra has come up with a solution that kinda works. Keyword there being "kinda". She says that when she hears them buzzing by her ear while she asleep she immediately grabs her headlamp and shines it on the wall closest to her. This usually reveals the culprit. And then...

WHAM!

WHAM!

WHAM!

Ha ha ha! Dead skeeter blood all over the walls. It kind of turns into all night attempt at genocide, but its worth not waking up with itchy bites.

Pretty much every where we go, most of problems seem to be rated V10.

"Hey Walker, this problem looks cool. How hard is it?"
"V10. Its really cool though."
"Oh. What about this one? It looks sorta chill."
"That's a Fred Nicole project. Nalle what's-his-name got super close last season. People are saying is rated V25."
"...Yay."

After complaining about this issue for some time now, we were told that an area called Fields of Joy is supposed to have a bunch of fun moderates. We went today and checked it out only to be scorched by the intense African sun. It was still super fun. We hopped a bunch of fun stuff and ended up actually completing some rock climbs! Crazy huh? I'll get names of the problems later. We weren't with anyone who knew the area that well, so we just got stuff that looked fun.

The Rhino

The toy dart guns that Eric and I bought aren't as fun as they once were. I assumed that they would be fun until up until the very end of the trip. I suppose getting shot in the face can only be fun for so long.

We recently revisited an area called roadside, also known as The Pass, where there was some sending, but mostly a lot of wind and heavy doses of bitching by yours truly. Walker ended up sending the mega classic Nutsa in his second try of the day. Yeah Walker! I did the stand which is a supposed V10 (Yeah effing right! More like V5.) wherein getting off the ground feels like V13 followed by super easy arete climbing. Fun stuff. Eric and I have been trying this really, really cool V9 traverse called Black Spider. Super, super fun moves in a really nice setting ending with a heartbreaker of a finish move resulting in me screaming a few times. Yikes. I'll be back for you Black Spider, you heartless son of a bitch!

Anywhooooo...

The Rhino! Sooooooo cool. How can you not want to climb a rock jutting out horizontally into space shaped like a rhino's head? We're not sure of the grade, but we settled somewhere around V8. I typically hate climbs I can't do, until of course I do them. However, this is one of few problems I wasn't able to complete that I'm super phsyched on. Woo Hoo! I still feel like hiking out to some of the more remote boulders is kinda scary. I always expect a cobra to come rising up from a bush and bite me in the neck or something.

Suck It Hueco!

South African rental cars are total crap. The barely make it up certain hills and bottom out all over the place. The most intense drive to date has been the one up to an area called The Sassies. Uphill sand driving in a tiny rental car with four dudes and all their shit in it. We made up the hill “first try”, which from what I hear is kind of a big deal. The Sassies end up being my favorite area so far. The main boulder alone has something like 15-20 lines on it. Pretty much all are classic, classic lines. Near the main boulder are two raaaaaaaaaaaad caves. Suck it Hueco! One cave has two great problems and one hard dyno contrivance and the other caves has one of the coolest V10s I’ve ever seen called Ghost in the Darkness. The first cave with the multiple problems holds the gem of the area; a V8 called Petite Hueco. Wow. Wow. So cool. Hella long roof on perfect incuts and amazing movement followed by the first even semi hard top out I’ve encountered here. Anyone coming to Rocklands this season needs to do this!!! Petite Hueco, remember the name. One the main boulder with all the problems lies a line called Pinotage, named after the wine of South Africa. Pinotage checks in at V10 and climbs a beautiful red-orange face on the boulder. Strong fingers and hard lock offs are the name of the game. Mike Abell would murder this problem. Lots of fun!

Africa, you dangerous!

The Pass seems to be the area with the most concentrated climbing. There are problems here that you may have heard of or seen like Nutsa or Caroline. I figured that there pretty much wasn’t anything high in the Rocklands until we came here. Its true, there are massive proud lines just sitting side by side each other. One line specifically called Scwupp (V6) is soooo cool. Its about 25 feet high and has a nice (depending on how tall you are) dyno about half way up. It has more of the quartzite qualities of the Rocklands stone than sandstone qualities it typically shares. Another sweet ass highball is Creaking Heights (V4). Totally mega cool lieback crimp line with a very, very committing rock over move up high. Aside from those “easy” lines I’ve just mentioned, everything is about V10 or so. Upon standing in front of something amazing looking that first believe to be about V7 or V8, you inquire about the grade to the nearest climber. The response is generally something like, “Ummmm, I think V10 ish. Nalle what’s-his-name did it the that one video.”


In addition to being the most concentrated of the areas so far, it had the most people. This can be good and bad. At first I was wondering if we were the only climbers in Africa this season, but The Pass did have its fair share of people. Not like Happies during spring break packed, but in the middle of African wilderness packed. Ya know?


American television does a lot to you as far making you believe things about a place before even being there. I’ve essentially come to believe that anything alive in Africa will try to rip my face off or sink its fangs into my neck and then proceed to inject a lethal dose of venom into my blood stream. We keep on hearing these stories about baboons the size of a grown man in certain bouldering areas. Apparently when you get close to them, they hoot and holler and make hostile gestures probably suggesting their intolerance of human presence. Not cool. Then of course there’s the crazy amounts of deadly snakes and supposed gnarliest of the gnarly scorpions. About every morning so far I’ve woken up with an unpleasant number of bug bites, which I’m hoping are mosquito bites. I imagine the East Bay is more danger than most people would be comfortable experiencing, but this is a whole different story.

Rock Climbing!

Today is the first time so far that I’ve started to feel comfortable and settled. We went into town and bought all of our food for the next month. Everything is in boxes. Like everything that Americans feel should be put in the fridge or kept cold was boxed. Milk and eggs are kept on the shelf. Weird. Cheap, cheap stuff. Aside from that, we went rock climbing!! Woo hoo! I forget the name of the area (I’ll figure it out later), but it has problems named Minkie, Poison Dwarf, and Hole in One. I bought these two cheap lame dart guns at the supermarket in Clanwilliam and Eric and I kept shooting eachother and other people with them.

 

Anyway…climbing:

 

The boulder(s) with Poison Dwarf also had a bunch of fun warm ups. Pretty much everything on this boulder was mega soft except for Poison Dwarf itself. Poison Dwarf is the really cool overhanging 7B lowball (because as it turns out, 90% of climbs in the rocklands are not very tall) that is simple and powerful. After Poison Dwarf, we wandered over to a corridor-like area called Arch Valley (I think). Fun climbs, lowball again, good holds, good feet and thus, gymnastic. The prize of that area is the V4 going over the Arch. I forget the name, but “Arch” is in it I assure you. We tried, and some sent, this problem going from the start of V4 arch problem and heading right instead of left. It involves an odd one-arm dyno to the lip of the boulder. I totally under shot the throw and came crashing sideways to the ground. But Hey!...I’m OK! I didn’t get hurt at all. We tried some dyno for a while that ended up giving me a flapper. First flapper in the first day. So blah, blah, blah. Minkie. Minkie, Minkie, Minkie!

 

So Cool.

 

So different than other Rocklands climbs so far.

International Flying

Flying across the world is a freaking chore. It’s a little better that I’m traveling with my friend Eric (who right now look super Italian. Like from Italy Italian. Super long hair and a button up shirt exposing his “bat signal” chest hair. Its pretty funny). I’m finally in South Africa after traveling for about a day and half. I know people do this sort of thing all the time, but that was sorta intense.

 

SFO to JFK (5 hrs.)

JFK to Amsterdam (7hrs.)

Amsterdam to Cape Town (11hrs.)

Driving from Cape Town to Rocklands (3 hrs.)

 

Basically, flights in the States totally blow and flights anywhere else are totally rad. My flight with Delta from SFO to JFK wanted me to pay $5ish for food. Since when have you had to pay for food? Laaaame. Movies were six bucks and drinks were seven bucks. F that. Then…I fly KLM the rest of the trip. Damn, waaaay better. They’re pretty much shoving food and booze down your throat. There are actually times when you have to tell them no. The food is free, warm, and really, really good. Oh movies?...free! And tons and tons of them!

 

I messed up when giving my friend Walker my flight info. For some reason, I only gave him the time if day that my flight was coming in. I left out the actual date of my arrival and gave him the wrong flight number. Thank god Walker handles business and was smart enough to correct my errors. He was already waiting for us when we walked out to baggage claim. The sad unorganized plan Eric and I had developed was to rent a car and ask somebody where Clanwilliam (the town closest to Rocklands) is and how to get there at 10:00 pm. Then get to Clanwilliam at about 1:00 am and ask anyone awake where the Rocklands are. Dumb.

 

The house that we’re staying is pretty cool. Hella big! Probably six or so rooms, each fairly large. I have my own bed? Is this really a climbing trip? I’m so used to camping out in below freezing temps in the desert. Sleeping is impossible after all the transcontinental flights. Right now I’m the only one up, the sun has just risen, and the workers on the local farm have begun their duties.

 

I’ll have cooler things to post next time. Maybe like actually rock climbing related. Eh, Eh?

How's Mortar Rock?

I'm about to leave for South Africa and on a whim decided to create this blog. It sounds exciting now, but I probably will get totally over it in my first few days. Lucky for you, there will be tons and tons of pictures and fun stuff to read written by your favorite overbearing bay area rock gym desk staff!

Have fun projecting Nat's Traverse!

-Ryan Moooooooooooooooooon