Yesterday I drove up to Rapid City, South Dakota to meet up with Luke Kretschmar, former pro snowboarder-turned-sick-rock-climber. I will be here for a few days shooting the fourth segment for the Coudveil Spring / Summer catalog. I got my car up to 115 (inches per minute, if you are part of the law-enforcement community) in Wyoming, a new record that I'm not sure I want to beat. Maybe on the way home I'll hit the big 120 IPM but I'm not sure.
Anyways, today we went out to an area called the VC that Luke and a few other Rapid City locals such as Mike Cronin (the guy who did Super Pin in Friction Addiction) have been developing. I was amazed at the quality of the rock here, much better than Spearfish... all the blocky goodness of Rifle without any of the glue or big egos to go along with it. The canyon does not have a road going through it, so climbing there is peaceful and serene.
Luke had bolted a project and he let me get on it and I wound up doing it today. I think its somewhere in the mid 5.13 area. Most of the difficulty is from the short crux section which is basically a four-move V8 boulder problem on small crimps. Luke took some footage from his camera phone.. check out the low-res first ascent:
Today was a perfect day. I made good footage, and I climbed good rock.
Here's a video link of Luke when he used to snowboard. He has seven screws in his body which is four more than me so he gets respect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymx7_2ICav4
Also on the screws front, Holly Terry has broken her Talus and has had some hardware installed, and recently Paul Robinson fell from the top of The Never Ending Story in Magic Wood and broke his ankle. He is currently in Switzerland with one screw in his ankle, awaiting a flight home to recover.
Long story short... WTF? Why so many screws in so many ankles? WTF???
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