This past weekend Ngoc Ted and I flew to Red Rock to partake in the excellent winter climbing (as well as the year-round entertainment). The climbing turned out to be mostly good...excellent for yours truly in fact.

The first day started up with a quick post warm-up send of a not so classic v5 on the Warm-Up boulder, then off to the Pearl where I nearly flashed the classic V4. There are many who would call this problem hard for the grade. I would agree, although the margin of just how much "harder" this problem was shrank significantly with the discovery of some wide-stance foot beta, thanks Ted. After the starting 2 moves, the problem is v2+ish. Shorter climbers have a heatbreaking disadvantage on this one...

After that, we hit the Monkey Hang Boulder and I made a near-flash of the Classic Monkey V6, which was completely unexpected. 4 tries later I sent with authority, after learning how to properly rest between burns! Ngoc also worked all the moves of the Monkey Traverse V7 and is lined up for the send next trip.

On day 2 I made a couple feel-good V4 flashes and hopped on some more classics, but otherwise turned the volume down a notch. Ted made his first real inroads into outdoor climbing with a few V0 sends and a close call on the V2 at the Monkey Hang Boulder. Ngoc also projected a little more, but spent just as much time napping off the cold weather!