Cassie on The Angler V1
Well you can probably guess from the title that we went back to Joe's again last weekend. It was a really great weekend of bouldering and some lines went down that we were very happy about. It was also the first weekend where we got to try our new propane setup, and our new espresso setup. Both were fantastic experiments and we're certainly going to keep them on for the trip.
The propane setup was debated between Cassie and I for quite some time. We had decided to go with an old school coleman stove because we calculated the price of using those little green propane cylinders vs using liquid white gas and it ended up being dramatically cheaper to use liquid fuel. So, we purchased a liquid fuel stove and lantern only to be immediately reminded why we don't really like them. First, they almost always leak fuel when you try to fill them, and second they need pumped. That's not a deal breaker for a weekend trip. But when you figure you're going to be camping for almost 2 years straight it seems pretty unappealing. So, we did a little bit more research and found that we could get a smaller propane cylinder (about half the size of a normal bbq grill propane tank). This would allow us to continue to use propane, and after crunching the numbers we were astonished. did you know that a gallon of coleman white gas goes for about $12? and that propane runs (here in utah) at about 2.35 a gallon when gasoline is 2.85? that's about a no brainer to convince us to make the switch back to propane. I think over a year we'll save about 300 just in fuel and no messy spills or pumping!
The espresso maker was our other success. Some of you might know that I really don't drink coffee, but thanks to Bruce getting us a latte maker for our wedding present we started drinking lattes on the weekends. After cleaning out the french press a couple of times this year we started thinking that an espresso maker might be tastier and less messy. I'm not sure that it has proven itself on the less messy side, but the tasty has won us out. We also decided to get a conical burr grinder to allow us to hand grind our coffee. This means fresh espresso's everyday. It worked really well as you can tell from the pictures. Basically you just grind the espresso, put it in the espresso pot and put it on the stove while at the same time putting some milk in another container and heat it on the stove as well. When the milk is hot you simply use this plunger type thing which creates some of the creamist foam i've ever had. the espresso is usually done by then and you just pour it out. Yummm!!
We also had a great time climbing this weekend. We did a bunch of easier problems on Friday, and then went on to try Bowling Ball V4 which was excellent, and topped it off with Frosted Flakes V4 which was an excellent harder problem. The next day we went down to riverside and since the water was so low we could finally protect The Angler which is a very easy, but very high line right next to the water. The pictures were shot by our friend Lauren who did a great job. Cassie then went on to send Kelly's Arete which is a super fun V5. I was terribly impressed since it's a pretty high topout and the business of topping out isn't easy. Cassie is truly getting better about doing hard moves even when she is high off the deck. After that we went across the river to Low Tide V6 which I did in a few tries after figuring out some fairly tricky beta. We then headed up the hill to try some other V6s (Moby Dick, and Black and Blue) which both shut us down) We'll be back to try those again sometime soon.
On Sunday we warmed up at riverside and headed up to Big Joe. The previous weekend I had tried it but it didn't feel doable probably because of the warm temperatures, but even though it was out third day of straight climbing it just fell into place and I sent it. I'm very happy because I had put a goal out there for me to do a V7 before the end of the year and I made my goal early. Sorry, no pictures of that one, I didn't really think I'd send it so we didn't even bring the camera or video.
I think i might have mentioned in our last post that we've been climbing with some new friends that are staying at Joe's Valley for a while. Lauren is a recent college grad from Seattle who is on a lengthy college graduation present vacation and George is from Austria. George works at a ski shop during the winter and travels the remainder of the year. Cassie and I are both very envious of such a sweet setup. George climbs quite hard and is constantly pushing us to try harder in a super encouraging way. I daresay his positive attitude has helped us climb these harder problems.
Matthew on Low Tide V6
Ah well a great weekend it was indeed. Here's hoping with temps finally dropping back into the reasonable digits we can keep climbing hard. We also had enough video footage that we decided to put anther climbing vide together. This one is a lot more climbing that the usual one's. Hope you enjoy it!
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