Another weekend in Lander

Here's a shot of BJ Tilden cranking on his home turf in Lander, WY. I'm really looking forward to sitting down and cutting all the rad footage for Pure II. Wednesday night I'm off to Finland to catch up with Nalle and see what his scene in Helsinki is all about. The video has a couple sponsors on board now so it's starting to pick up some traction. Stay tuned for some updates from Helsinki!

Photos from Colorado Sandstone

Fun cranking last weekend with the P-man.

Senior portrait

Today I shot Flan's senior portrait.

Video from the new sandstone area

I have some new video from the awesome sandstone area Rob Pizem and I have started developing. Here in this video you can see some of the early route development and get a feel for the style of the climbing there. Rob is in great shape right now and I think his climbing style is very inspiring.

Rob Pizem on Fresh Sandstone

Some fresh new sandstone

I spent the last couple of days developing a very nice new area with my friend Rob Pizem. Piz is mostly noted for his traditional climbing achievements (watch for my new video on Deadpointmag sometime soon) but he is also a great boulderer. His new area is a very fine-grained and pleasant dakota sandstone boulder garden, with several short cliff bands as well as some free-standing blocks in the forest.

While the area lacks a 5-star gem there are dozens of blocks yet to be discovered in the thick pine forest. The climbs we did do (at the end of the weekend we had brushed and climbed about a dozen first ascents) were top notch, and the rock seems better quality than other Dakota areas in Colorado.

Piz plans to sink some bolts into a few of the taller faces and the resulting sport climbs should be top notch. There is also potential for a few trad lines on the crack features. I'll post up some photos as soon as Piz sends them to me. He's off climbing a ten-pitch sport route in RMNP today.

Cheers!

Okay, we've hit the big-time.

Great to see the sport becoming so popular. Sort of.

Keep an ear out for these awesome lines:

I'm going Ape-Crazy
AKA a big-ass rock
Motha Chucka
I'm climbing an arch!
Still confused yeah?
own each route
sense of difficulty
I own no
Basically you freefall
stay safe silly gooses.
Clam some stuff
bunch-load
supaman that stuff
sexy sloth technique
gnarly shin-breaking injuries

Chucks Big Triangle of Joy

The Triangle of Joy. Golden - Laramie - Rapid City - Lander - Laramie - Golden.



Laramie, WY. Home of Trains.


I just returned from a great week of travelling open spaces and climbing and filming. I am working on two projects at the moment: the Cloudveil Spring / Summer catalog and my next climbing video, which I'm calling Pure II. One of the segments in Pure II is about the West and the climbers who call it home.

On my way across Wyoming I saw an interesting sign....

Luke Kretschmar is one of the other climbers on the Cloudveil team so I went and visited his home crag called the VC. The locals in Rapid City are blessed to have this amazing resource right in their back yard. Steep limestone makes for a great alternative to the sketchy granite run-outs of the rest of the Black Hills. Last year I had a great time there and this year was no different. Perfect conditions and some new routes to check out. I managed the second ascent of the Tan Man, a hard 5.13 with some massive reaches that had me thinking 'go go gadget arms' when I was climbing.


The VC, South Dakota.



Luke Kretschmar Pulling the amazing red limestone at the VC.


I met up with my friend Ben Scott as well, who came up from Fort Collins with his friend Tam AKA Tom. It was great to see Ben again and it reminded me of our first trip to the Black Hills in 2003 when we filmed a video called Friction Addiction. The climbing in the Hills is so sweet right now its hard to even describe. Fall is great.


Ben Scott.


Tam.

Ben managed to get the employee of the day award by sending The Foot Fist Way, a 5.13 with some poserful... er... powerful moves up a steep face.

Luke had bolted a project to the right of the main wall and said it was cool if I got on it. I figured out the crux after a few tries and then rested for a while and linked through the crux boulder problem that same day. Hard to grade this one since it really just boils down to a few powerful moves. Probably not 5.14 but some other repeats will say for sure in the future.

After a couple days in the VC, we went to Spearfish Canyon for a morning of sport climbing on the near-vertical walls there. The temperature had started dropping but despite the occasional snow / hail flurry and cold breezes the climbing conditions were almost ideal. I managed to onsight a 5.13 and then I called it a day and started the long drive over to Lander.


Outside Buffalo, Wyoming.

Of course the drive wouldn't be that long if I didn't stop every five seconds to film something. I'm fascinated with the Wyoming landscape and I just cant get over the beauty of the wide open spaces. I'm lucky enough to be using a camera that can actually stand a chance of capturing such huge surroundings.






The Red One, shooting time lapses.

Can you find the cows in this time lapse?

I arrived in Lander and settled in at BJ Tilden's house. BJ is a carpenter who climbs 5.14 and his personality, location, and way of life fit in well with the western theme of the video. I filmed BJ as he completed his 10-year project 'Genetic Drifter' on the Rodeo Wave in Wild Iris. Great to see BJ in top form sending the hardest route in Wyoming.

Afterwards, we went over to the Erratic and BJ chucked a lap on Heart Full of Ghosts for the camera. Download a sample of the sickness. Raw footage from Wild Iris. BJ is the man.

I'm looking forward to continuing work on the segment, but first I need to go to Finland and get some footage of Nalle's new trad project. More on that later!

Cheers,

Chuck