Hell hath no furry

Unbelievable. Climbers who squander their lives on earth go to a bad place when they die. They go to Santa Maria. The place is a piece of work. Total work of art. If you thought where you climbed this weekend was epic be glad you weren’t getting it on with the Tor in June. 103 degrees in the shade. IN THE SHADE. Amazing. Justin and Micah went with me. In that kind of heat a person’s skin pays a price. Justin tore what is maybe the biggest slice of skin I’ve ever seen from his pinky and left ring finger. All layers, nothin’ left but blood. Everything felt epic. I eeked out improvements on single No Skill and Hell of The Upside Down Sinner burns, falling on each once but in slightly better shape than last week, during my third and fourth laps of the day, respectively. By lap five I was cooked, could not will myself up Anchor Punch to save Halle Berry’s life. Justin is a rare pleasure to have at the Tor, introduced himself to climbing about 6 months ago and is making marked progress on Power of Eating upon every visit. Micah did my same routine, with a full value burn on No Skill that pushed back the inside of this monster boulderer’s route envelope. All said and done the day sucked.

Micah and I swam and climbed at UCSB the next day. This also sucked. Thinking the routes inside the UCSB Rec Cen would be cooler than the solar flares pounding Santa Barbara County crags was a mistake.
Note to the University: turn on the AC. Idiots.
Note to anyone contemplating a trip to the UCSB wall: don’t. It was a total epic. I’m not going to get myself started but I will say the staff is something else. In a word – unbearable.

Saturday’s routine:

• Power of Eating (5.11d) – redpoint
• Hell of the Upside Down Sinners (5.12a) – redpoint
• No Skill (5.12c) – Took once as soon as I left the jugs on Chips
• Hell of the Upside Down Sinners (5.12b) – 1 fall 2 moves after the last clip
• Anchor Punch (5.12a) – Like 37 falls. Here’s where I totally imploded then left.