Videos

If anyone cares, here's some videos:

Pinotage (Rocklands, South Africa) from Ryan Moon on Vimeo.

Crybaby (Rocklands, South Africa) from Ryan Moon on Vimeo.

Schwupp (Rocklands, South Africa) from Ryan Moon on Vimeo.

What an amazing trip!

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.