class•ic bloc

this weekend, nic and I drove up to mammoth to escape the hot hot heat in socal.

I spent the weekend bouldering in Way Lake. Way Lake is at about 10,000 feet elev-thus yielding some of the more favorable temps California has to offer for bouldering during the summer months. The hike in is a little longer than your average 'approach'. Pretty, very quiet, and very green, and a strong stream of snowmelt flows throughout. (fragment) The rock is a gneissic/schist supposedly comparable to rmnp. the problems are generally powerful, steepish, and consist of a variety of holds. holds that are 1000X friendlier than socal granite-a nice change of pace. The highest concentration of problems at way lake is in the V5-V9 difficulty range, but several very classic harder and easier problems abound (i.e. twin cracks V0, excite bike V1, wave catcher V11, chumscrubber V12). also worth noting that is very cool and unique about the area: there are a substantial number of tall bold classic moderates, and many sds's- if you find yourself at way lake unsure of where the starting holds may be, look for the lowest possible / most obvious holds.. making the boulder problems truly bouldery and full value!

Jeff Sillcox (his blog) was kind enough to give us an exhaustive tour, repeating problems, and sharing alot of beta.
here is a somewhat distorted perspective of him climbing a V5 highball crack called 'Morpheus'


Which is on the same boulder as 'Two Dragons' (V9); here is Andrew Stevens



walking/sliding/descending through snow in style


nic earned employee of the day by a) flashing meadow roof sit (v9) b) getting a quick third ascent of chumscrubber and most importantly c) rescuing my very sentimentally valuable sunglasses that fell -while hiking the talus field- into a cave, in between rocks and a couple feet into black ice cold water. thanks nic.


here is a video i edited of the send... unfortunately this wont be a regular thing (not my camera- thanks to Andrew for the camera work)

Bouldering Chumscrubber (v12) Way Lake. CA on Vimeo.

p.s.
i feel bad that i forgot to add credits to the end of the film. the music is by Cyantific the song is Empty Streets.