Leavenworth Bouldering (Nov. 20-21, 2004)

Saturday morning, Ryan, Andrew, and I loaded our crashpads into Ryans VW bus and set out for Leavenworth to check out some of the bouldering.  Ryan and Andrew had been before, but it was my first time, so I was excited to try some new problems at a new (for me) area.  After driving to Monroe and discovering we had forgotten Makiya (Ryan's dog) at our house, we drove back to Seattle, picked up Makiya, and set out once again for Leavenworth.  We arrived at the Swiftwater parking area around 11:30 am, and decided to start on the other side of the road, since it seemed to be getting a bit more sun.  We did a couple of easier problems, then did a really good V4 called Lead Underwear, which Andrew and Ryan are shown climbing below:



Next we did a V3 to the left of Royal Flush (V2 roof crack), which was fun.  We thought about getting on Royal Flush, bu then decided that it looked too painful.  Next we moved on to a long traverse problem, which was V3 in our guide.  It was pretty hard, Ryan and Andrew both sent it, but I didn't get it, falling off the last move twice in a row.  It was stinkin' hard for V3, and I looked it up on an online Leavenworth bouldering guide at the climbingwashington.com website, and they reported it as V6.  Somewhere between those two extremes would probably be more appropriate, maybe V4 or V5.  Here are photos of Ryan and myself on it (the colour is funny since the photos were compensated for being underexposed):



Next we moved on to a V7 sloper problem called "Premium Coffee".  It is a really cool looking problem, but also very difficult.  It is short and simple, you just have to be able to stick to bad slopers and pull really hard off them.  Ryan did well on it, doing all the individual moves, but wasn't able to link them.  Andrew did pretty well also, doing most of the moves, and pretty much couldn't do anything on it (but that didn't stop me from having fun trying).  Here are some pictures of us on it:





After this we were pretty tired, but we went over to the parking lot side of the road and did a few problems on the big boulder on your left as you enter the parking lot.  We then headed into town to eat at Gustav's, then drove up to some free camping in Icicle Creek Canyon.  The next morning dawned bright and cold, and we headed to the Forestland area in Icicle Creek Canyon.  We did a bunch of fun problems there, one of the highlights being a V7 called "Backdoor A** Attack", which we all managed to send eventually.  Other good ones were a V2 mantle problem which took me at least 10 tries to send (shown below):



Also good were a V4 that Andrew and Ryan did, shown below:



And also another unnamed V6 that Ryan and Andrew both did, which Ryan is shown climbing below:



It was a good weekend of climbing, and I'm sure we will be back to work on things that kicked our butts this time.  While Leavenworth bouldering doesn't compare with Squamish, it is still fun, and about an hour closer, so could be a good option when the weather is bad in Squamish.