The Big Snow

The winter has been long in coming. A few days here and there felt authentic, but really we haven't had winter until last night. The Front Range from New Mexico to about Laramie got hammered and will get more tonight. This is the one I've been waiting for. The one that would close the roads to most of the boulders and shut us in our little gym of dust and bad holds. It's time to find that fire inside and remember days past, boulders found, and what that all will bring in the future. The things that motivate are what are important more now than ever.
With anticipation of the coming snow a few of us spent a day last weekend at Neverland. Hope was to boulder and tour some of the potential. Weather is hard to predict apparently as the day was said to be 55 and sunny, but was actually 35 with thick clouds and a nice 60mph wind. Really, the forecast that lured us was in question from the beginning. I had already canceled the weekends plans when a last minute change gave us hope. Anyway, Dylan, Brian (who now has a great blog), and myself went with hope. No bouldering happened, obviously, but we did find motivation.

Motivation

We decided to take a tour of a few random sectors of Neverland with the common theme of big roofs and overhangs. Several have been posted here before, and a few have not, but Dylan and Brian had not seen a single one before. We drove and hiked, but everything was pretty much road side or close to. The one pictured above is an absolutely massive cave of gneiss. Around 40 feet high in the center and at least that deep, it is also three times that wide. It was out of the wind and dry, so future days should bring some massive power endurance lines to life and maybe some sport routes. From the huge cave we went down hill to Columbine Roof. It is home to So Sexy So Soon V8, Time Bomb V7, and The Widow And The Flies V4, along with some projects. I've shown pictures here before, but remember the V7 and V8 are 29 and 30 moves long respectively! Yes, motivating. Dylan and Brian were really psyched and I'm sure will return asap. Several others that have been posted here before were looked at, but the one that got the fire burning is a road side beast that I had looked at only once before.

One for wow

one for those of you who like a portrait of a boulder, and yes in Wyoming we fence our boulders

and one for scale

So, though it may be stormy outside I'm warm inside and ready to wait. As Brian had brought up days after the tour, a bad day climbing is better than a good day doing something else, unless it's a good day climbing. There is a chance the storm didn't do much at Neverland and the stuff is road side anyway. We just need sun or at least the wind to stop for a day.

p.s. Brian started a new climbing blog and it is very well done! It should provide another perspective of Wyoming bouldering for years to come. It is the Mode of Passion blog that was linked earlier in this post and is also on the side list for links from this blog. Enjoy