China Bound

Many years ago, maybe ten, I was looking through some pictures of rock in China that Todd Skinner had taken and/or found in his quest for climbable rock. There was a single image of a huge granite boulder sitting in a tilted valley bottom, many more boulders in the back ground led to a granite dome. Todd was a fanatic for new rock and had found many of the planets best areas. He was looking for route potential at the time of the China picture and suggested that bouldering would be worth while there. The rock was supposedly very good. I was ready to go immediately. At the time, no one took it seriously and I never found a person to go to China with for a look. Roughly a year ago, I was again looking for international destinations where little development had so far happened and found a picture taken exactly where Todd or whoever had taken the previous picture. This time a person was bouldering on the bloc and it looked amazing! I tracked down the photographer and found out where, when and what was going on.
Basically, over in China, they have what we would call a situation. A massive amount of rock with few to climb on it. Wangzehn (also known as Rocker) the father of bouldering in China invited me over this spring to have a look, and that is exactly where I am going tomorrow! Five weeks to barely scratch the surface of what is looking like a sea of stone. Qingdao, China is my final destination. I have an apartment lined up five minutes from the boulders and lot of time to enjoy it. Maybe not enough time based on the amount of rock.
Wangzehn has sent me many, many pictures over the winter to temp me over and a few are shown here.

 All Above photos by Wangzehn, Qingdao, China. You can find more of Rocker's photos by going to his blog (http://qdrocker.blog.sohu.com/) or by going to 8a.nu to track him down through the gallery section. He also posted a portfolio at climbing magazine where you can find his work online.

Yeah, those are huge granite boulders sitting on the Yellow Sea, and the the others are at various locations on the mountains above the sea. The mountains of granite rise several thousand feet out of the ocean and go for miles upon miles of broken granite. My wife did an in depth search this weekend of pictures of the area and found some encouraging images. She will meet me over there in a few weeks to enjoy the sea side stone.

My apartment is in the closer buildings somewhere. Near the sea but close to the climbing. The city of 2.5 million, Qingdao is seen down the coast.

The Switzerland of China as they call Qingdao and the surrounding area.

Fine Grain Granite Forever!

Yep, a situation!

Some very lucky little village sitting under a massive amount of good bouldering!

So, I'm off to the east. It is unclear if I can access this web site in China. It sounds like Blogger may be blocked. If I can update I will. Otherwise I will post here in five weeks or so. Enjoy spring.