1st leg of AK Boulder Mission

AH ALASKA
Hear no evil, think no evil, Tom on spaz patrol

A V9 at Tatlanika
The view from the Tatlanika boulder
I have been in Alaska recently in an effort to get healthy in many ways. I am finally having the oppertunity to train again which has been a blast and is a part of climbing that I truly enjoy. It has been 2 months since I have climbed and this has been my longest hiatus ever since I started this sometimes silly obsession. With all of the steep board climbing I have been doing in my garage I have made dramatic gains but there is just no way of actually knowing in reference to true rock climbing other than to get out and use it, so when dear friends and road tripper veterans Tom Donze and Zaych Rubin expressed interest in vacationing in the wilds of AK and helping me find boulders I thought, 'this is it, lets grab rock again!'.

The first stop was to check out the Tatlanika boulders which were largely developed by friend Tom Ellis. I climbed a really good V7 called Darth Mal while warming up. But what was really a the highlight was establishing a new V5 Slab problem I called the The Sneeze for its dramatic and reflexive climbing. This problem was hidden beneath a few fallen trees and took some major rearranging but what is left is radical and would be at home in the great slabs of Yosemite or Fontainebleau. This is only the first day so stay tuned as I keep the photos running.

AR