Expatriot

Alex recently provided this footage of Expatriot shot last spring. The problem is about a hundred+ yards downhill from the visor under the landmark alien spaceship boulder perched on a small dome. It is a four star, amazingly steep, blocky roof atypical of Black. If anybody has worked this line we would love to get feedback on the grade. v10, 11, and 12 have all been suggested. If you have been on it let us know what you think.

Dementor

An old Toni Lamprect FA over by Cracker Boy. Many of you probably know the stand start as that cool geometric v8 thing in the corridor. The sit is called Dementor and clocks in somewhere around v12. Poor quality, but hey, that's all you're gonna get.

UPDATE: Fixed the name from Dominion to Dementor. Stupid generic boulder problem names. Might as well be Soul (take your pick: Snatch, Caliber, Slinger, Shine).

UPDATE: Fixed the post title too. Why can't I remember the name of this problem? It switches in my brain from minute to minute.

Silver Fox

and the

Captain's Junk Cave Project

Black Mountain on Climbing Narc

Alex's vid of Beowulf was featured by the Climbing Narc.

Epic photo

Ian the Ubermensch on Twilight of the Idols. Photo by Damon Corso. You can see more of his stuff here.

Black Mountain Thursday

Looking back at the blog, it might look as if we only care about the hard problems, but this isn't true at all. Although they rarely make the blog, there are great moderates; problems for all levels and for all climbers. Some thoughts on why hard problems dominate the discussion here:

#1 The hard problems are the ones we spend the most time on because they are...well...hard. We have a connection to them we lack with many of the moderates.

#2 Hard climbs are rarer, and in that respect stand out. There are over 900 problems under v9, and only an ever-growing handful that are harder (31 and counting).

#3 The moderates at Black Mountain need no introduction. Everyone knows there are heaps of amazing climbs for beginner and intermediate climbers. It is less well known that there are harder problems as well. We are taking old school Black Mountain and turning it into a modern climbing area, and that necessitates double digits.

With that being said, Sexual Healing (v11) was just put up yesterday at the Chappies. Out to the Wild Things area Saturday!

Photo: Ian on the Captain Junk project.

Weekend Update

The drive to finish the guidebook keeps us up at night and on the mountain for the weekends. Saturday was spent on the west slope at the Lion's Mane and Wild Things areas. There are some great circuits around these two large boulders, and the majority of development on the mountain will take place here. Sunday was spent finishing up the climbing at the Chappies.

The FAs keep poring in, and Black Mountain now has more double digit climbs than Tramway and Joshua Tree combined, and for each hard climb there are twenty moderates. It looks like the book will have around 1000 problems, and we're doing our best to climb them all...

Beowulf

Via Alex over at savageclimbing.com, a video of Ian on Beowulf. Oh the agony of defeat, the middle section will break your heart. Unless, of course, you are heartless.

Oh Black Mountain

We <3 you.

Four Stars

Here are some snaps from the weekend of two lesser known world class climbs of Herculean stature from opposite sides of the mountain. They share an aesthetic grandness, a pure sequence, 20+ moves, 35+ ft, and they are both very hard.