Back side!!

We have been going up to the South side of Cedar now for several years to boulder. Trips prior to that were exploratory in nature and generally involved wandering around and being lost in the vastness. A few years back, Clint and I started driving to the top of the Mountain (across private property - with permission) and building a trail system down to the biggest boulders, which passed by several other piles of smaller boulders. Drew started going in from the bottom last Fall (which also includes crossing private property - again with permission, of course). He has put in many cairns and a trail through the talus, and spent many overnights camping and developing.

South Side of Cedar from the parking at the bottom

Four of us ventured up there on Sunday and I realized just how much has been done already, there are now well over a hundred problems. While the cluster of large free standing boulders has been picked over, there are still so many other sectors waiting for discovery and development.

The Red Streaky Boulder

We started at the Red Streaky Boulder as it is a good warm up with nearly perfect red sandstone. We climbed most of the main problems and Clint tried the Bird of Prey proj at the far left side of the picture above, which seems really hard. He manged to get through the crimpy powerful bottom part several times but kept failing on the short jump to the sloper. We originally placed this project at V7, but that seems a bit naive. No one else was even close.

The HP40 Boulder

The Mothership Boulder

The Mothership Boulder is probably the gem of this area. A free standing giant flattened egg, it curls under at the bottom and rounds out at the top. There are numerous18 to 25 foot straight up problems on it ranging from V0 on up. I shot some footage of Clint flashing the V5, which I think is called In Peace We Come. It has a cool lower crux, then an easier but high top out. Our group managed sends of the sandbagged V6 to the right, and also the incorrectly graded V10 and V8 right of that (they were more like V8/9 and V4).

A quick stop at a lower boulder with a crimpy V9ish thing and we were toast. The sun (nearly 90 in late September) had fried us, the rock had sapped us and the walk back down the hillside would require all the energy we had left.

All in all a great day, inspiring us to make plans to return and develop stuff closer to the car.

Clint Cook on In Peace We Come V4/5 from Mike Snyder on Vimeo.