Climbing and Bodyboarding Photos

Here are a couple of photos from bouldering at Turtle Rock, bodyboarding at ?? Beach, and sport climbing at Stinson.

Turtle Rock:

When I was moving out west I thought the area was littered with reasonably good climbing areas.  I mean, Yosemite is just 3 hours away (less if you drive fast), Tahoe is about the same distance, Bishop like 5 hours, the Pinnacles 2 hours… however, Berkeley and Oakland are in this kind of limbo area, a dead zone, where the only outdoor climbing occurs on these random rocks that sprouted from somewhere.

Mortar Rock and Turtle Rock are prime examples, both containing anywhere from 5 to 100 problems depending on how creative you feel that day.

Kevin on the only underclings allowed eliminate # 56 (hey Kevin: underclings for the start too!)

Rances Rodriguez priming his low-ball bouldering skills to help his mental game on the 40-meter Spanish sport routes he is facing nowadays.

We figured we’d go bodyboarding before climbing at Stinson beach.  Get there and I brought the wrong wetsuit, Kevin forgot his, Rances was equipped with wetsit and surf board but the waves were only 2-3 feet high… still had fun though.

Approaching Stinson Beach climbing area, the drizzling hadn’t started yet:

Kevin on the sketchy warm-up route involving slippery feet:

I like this next picture:

My next post will probably come from my homeland, Portugal!  Motivation and fitness levels are high so I just gotta resurrect my contacts to get on some awesome sport climbs and boulders!!!

What is new?

Climbing outdoors has been very scarce unfortunately.  My hopes are all reserved for Portugal.  I and the family will be flying out there at the end of this month (!! so close) and staying there for a few months and I’ve been imagining that I’ll be doing a lot of outdoor climbing!  I do hope it comes true.

About a month ago I went sport climbing outdoors on the coast, at Stinson Beach, with friends Rances and Kevin.  A nice location especially if there is sun and low tide.  What we got was drizzle, fog, and high tide!  We still managed to have an awesome time.  We did a 5.10b, then a 5.11a (I think) and then quickly figured out the moves on a 5.12a.  We kept eye-ing a line that looked super rad but also looked super hard.  We could only spot some really small crimps, a huge jug and more small crimps… thing is the jug was miles away from the crimp holds and the feet looked very poor.  Kevin believed it was a 5.12c so we set it up on toprope and started working on it.

What seemed laughably impossible quickly revealed a really well-defined and pretty sequence of moves involving, of course, a dyno from two bad crimps to the jug.  Last try of the day, in now reasonably heavy drizzle (our stuff got all wet and muddy), and I managed to fall on the very last move.  Haven’t gone back to send but it has been on my thoughts quite frequently.  Oh, and the book says it is a 5.13a, that explains why we thought it was hard for a 12c!!

In the meanwhile I’ve been following a structured training program which I made for myself and it has been giving good results.  Strength, endurance, power are all well up and I’ve been feeling really good on the plastic (pity it’s on the plastic).  The other day I did about 20 problems including 5 V7s and only fell once, great feeling.

However, it seems like everytime I get into the groove with training or with a climbing routine it gets interrupted.  Portugal will be a welcome interruption but a part of me wishes I could have more time to explore my potential through this training.

p.s. what’s up with that kid Ondra uh?  insane!