New and Experienced Climbers over 50 #43

So sorry about that! hopefully you did not hit it hard enough to get the oils? on you.  it looks like a pretty flower? never heard of it? is it like poison ivy? 

The humpback whale that surfaced twice 50' away while racking up was kinda cool for sure. The whale watch boat following it a couple minutes behind was kinda a bummer. 

We have been in this house about 8 years and just last year noticed this day lily in the woods blooming for the first time, the deer were slacking off and it shot out one bloom, kinda like a call for help. We dug it up and separated the roots into about 5 pieces that were dispersed into deer safe areas around the house and here it is showing off its new home this morning! It's going to really go off next year.

I went to a wedding two summers ago on Willoughby, the rock looked pretty good from a distance.

Poodles are bushes too? Hoping for the best for you Phylp. I’ve never heard of it and hopefully never will.

Nick I’ve sandbagged myself with a few of my new routes that I went back to years later. Can only blame the accumulation of years.

Nick and Norm, I've had the same experience, increasingly often these days--unfortunately!!!

A number of years ago we went to a pretty obscure ( but good) cliff in MA, that I hadn't been to in many years. We struggled on several routes, cursing the sandbaggers who had graded them. When I got home and looked through my old climbing logs--yep, those sandbaggers were us!!!!!

Good luck Phyl. I, too, am, obviously fortunately, unfamiliar with said plant---and hope to remain so!!!

Thank you for. your good thoughts!

One good thing about gym climbing, you never come back to the same climb years (or months) later to find it more difficult.   

phylp phylp wrote:

Thank you for. your good thoughts!

Oh boy, that sucks! Does TecNu work with that plant? 

I'll be sending my positive vibes your way and thanks for the heads up, I'd never heard of this evil before.

Old lady H wrote:

Yay, boulderers! Yay Allan!!

Not yay!

It's a fucking 102 here today....

And.

This thing is so sad. It doesn't look quite as dramatic....because it is miles farther away.

I think the huge, broad, light stripe might have been the fireline meant to stop it. So much for that.

June sucked for myself and my climbing partner. July....well. 

Have a trip booked ages ago to Almo (COR) in September. Sure hope that goes well.

In the meantime?

I'm in kinda terrible shape, for not being in terrible shape. So. Gotta....keep trying. Start over. And over. And over.

Just ate the tomato harvest. 

And, this is quite nice, I've got little snakes (might be just one, moving around) zinging around the yard. Always nice to see them! I take that as doing the yard right! 

They are far too warmed up to get any pictures. Actually, all I'm seeing are rapidly disappearing half snake back sides, most of the time. 

My main goals ard very small. Just keep trying to fo a bit here, or a bit there. And hope I can get my body back to not shorting me on sleep. That will make everything else way easier, for sure!

Hey, where's Carl?? Is it full winter doldrums time, there? Fuck everything poem time?

Helen

I’ve had a cold and it’s been wet, cold, dreary and your guy keeps fucking everything up so we all get worried and despondent. I told Cindy she’s a fucking psycho because she has no empathy for me and my cold. I set here saying ‘oh dear’ and ‘oh no’ over and over and sniffing and coughing and no empathy at all! Nothing! Zilch! But I am on the mend now and feeling super strong. I also lost about a kilo so that’s good. Accessing some superannuation money soon and splurging because tomorrow we may die. Buying a reciever/amp, turntable, speakers and 1k worth of LPs.  

BTW 102 is the sort of temp I like. 

phylp phylp wrote:

Oh gosh, please pray for me.  We went for a hike to a local peak, Sunset Peak, which we haven't been to since the Bridge Fire.  The hike is an 8 Mile Rt up a wide fire road, until the very end.  At the last 15 minutes as we were pushing thru a veritable forest of these beautiful flowering shrubs, when it suddenly dawned on me that it could be POODLE DOG BUSH.  So we stopped and turned around but it had already brushed on our arms and legs and probably faces. Internet hiking groups looked at after the fact confirm that it is rampant in our local mountains since the fires.

We may be in the emergency clinic in the AM getting an Rx for prednisone...

Oh dear. Have never seen this plant before. Please check in and let us know.  Sorry this happened. 

Carl Schneider wrote:

BTW 102 is the sort of temp I like. 

Might be tough without a filled esky at your feet   

C'mon Phylp!!!

How are you!?!!

Oh and Alan, maybe you had All Caps on. I know, it's a bad joke. 🤣

Lori Milas wrote:

Oh dear. Have never seen this plant before. Please check in and let us know.  Sorry this happened.

Blisters appear 12-48 hrs.  So far we are OK.

Many local Yucca at peak bloom.
we’ve done this hike many times but this is the first time since the fire. That peak is only 5 miles from my house and when the Bridge fire was raging in 2024 I was monitoring on Watch Duty and they seemed to hold the line at that fire road. We were on Red Alert and just dreading the evacuation order.
But as we walked the road yesterday we could see all the areas north of the road that had burned but also some north of the road where the fire had crossed. I had never seen that gorgeous plant up there and it was EVERYWHERE. So it was clear that it was a post fire species. That last 15 minutes the road ends and there is just a narrow trail to the summit. Somehow, after 5 minutes of wading thru the bush forest, a part of my brain went into alert saying “wait, is this poodle-dog”? I have never seen it so huge and dense before.

Are you seeing any snakes there?  

We have a beautiful flower here that seems to be deeply poisonous to some people, Kris Solem among them.  It's actually my favorite flower, only we just can't touch it.

I've been having a great summer here... totally unexpected things happening.  I'm just feeling grateful for the movement.  It started with my surprising interest in octopuses, and wondering if I want to do a rescue.  It's a big deal, learning how to keep a reef tank, and an octopus needs perfect water ph-wise and cleanliness.  Friends offer me various rescues (from ocean pier shops)... in order to actually bring an octopus home the tank has to be up and running for a solid 3 months beforehand.  Do I want to have a tank running in my living room with no fish, just bacteria etc 'maturing' all that time?  But they make wonderful companions/pets... it would be a kindness, and I've been so interested.  Still on the fence with this.

During the last hundreds of hikes/walks I got interested in tech companies, and tech itself, and that lead me to investigate Nvidia, Anthropic, Google (especially as it became and AI company), Open AI etc... and I have had just dozens of questions that I could fire one after the other (through Gemini), get to know the players, and try to learn about amazing machines like ASML   A nice side-bonus, my oldest daughter is a total science nerd, got her physics degree from Berkeley, and we don't have much to talk about except artichokes. Now she fields my questions, and ups the ante... Claude Code?  I have been telling her about Cuda C++.  Gosh, I've missed a lifetime here.  

Inevitably that lead me to find an interest in rockets (Nvidia is so connected to space work), and to get to know Blue Origen and SpaceX.  Ok, so I have officially become one of the thousands of fans who is deeply involved in all the goings on of the space race and totally stoked.  As a sideline, studying the management styles of Jeff Bezos and Elon...... is so interesting.  Bezos is slow, meticulous, plodding and very cautious and won't launch anything until it is perfect on paper.  Elon likes to blow shit up and learn from it.  "Test like you fly."  Makes me also think about the climbers here who came before, who tested like they flew.      

It's hard to get Tony involved, he has such an allergy to Elon that it was hard for him to watch at first, despite my jumping up and down and cheering when the Super Heavy launched, when the Starship made its debut.  I have never asked so many questions over a long period of time, about propellant, FAA, all the complexities of fueling a ship without blowing something up, landing a ship.  But it's been really fun connecting with other space fans, many of them engineers.  One man from Texas wrote:  "I'm no Elon fan.  I drive Chevy truck and wouldn't be caught dead in an electric car.  But what is happening at StarBase is world changing, and I am watching every minute of it."   

So the next launch is Thursday after 5:45.  Tony offered to make pork and beans.  Is he making a statement?    

What does this have to do with climbing?  Not much, except my commitment to keep moving (daily hikes and strength training) may be paying off.  I feel more ready to try hard on serious routes, probably not until September, but I am really looking forward to it.  I think finger strength is turning out to be more important to me than I thought... and I wonder if walking around with kettle balls on the tips of my fingers would be one way of training without hanging.  I do miss the climbing gym for this.  

Carl, it's time for some sad poetry.  Lay off Cindy.  She puts up with you every year at this time. 

phylp phylp wrote:

Blisters appear 12-48 hrs.  So far we are OK.

Many local Yucca at peak bloom.
we’ve done this hike many times but this is the first time since the fire. That peak is only 5 miles from my house and when the Bridge fire was raging in 2024 I was monitoring on Watch Duty and they seemed to hold the line at that fire road. We were on Red Alert and just dreading the evacuation order.
But as we walked the road yesterday we could see all the areas north of the road that had burned but also some north of the road where the fire had crossed. I had never seen that gorgeous plant up there and it was EVERYWHERE. So it was clear that it was a post fire species. That last 15 minutes the road ends and there is just a narrow trail to the summit. Somehow, after 5 minutes of wading thru the bush forest, a part of my brain went into alert saying “wait, is this poodle-dog”? I have never seen it so huge and dense before.

will check in tomorrow with 48 hour report!

🤞

Wife turned 50 last week.

Told her to come join this thread..

Instead she wanted to paddle, hike, climb and cold plunge every day we were on the east side.

One goal of hers was to paddle these 6 lakes at sunrise: Mary George Mamie Horseshoe and both Twin Lakes (actually 3ish). All above Mammoth.

Added Silver Lake at sunrise and sunset.

Mission Accomplished.

Happy wife

Happy life

Hope everyone is well!

Good to see Alan chiming in!

Phylp- hope you manage to avoid the worst..

A new Joshua Tree route name possibly??

“Scary Dog Poodles”

Next thread… will post more.

Feeling strong, hope to get one one arm 20mm lockoff…

Lori Milas wrote:

Ok, so I have officially become one of the thousands of fans who is deeply involved in all the goings on of the space race and totally stoked.  As a sideline, studying the management styles of Jeff Bezos and Elon...... 

Love the stoke!

For some balance, consider reading (if you haven't already)  some of the submission on the FCC call for comments for these various satellite proposals.

There are some less than wonderful side effects of having close to one million satellites in orbit - which is what is being proposed.

Me, personally, I think my neighbor's driveway light is too bright and on too long, I think I'll pass on giant moving (not geostationary) orbital reflectors zooming overhead.

Fantastic creativity, yes. But I think there are other ways. Syle points have counted in climbing too.

Tony knows his shit.  I wouldn't watch a movie about that piece of shit if you put a gun to my head.  

Mark Hudon was the keynote speaker at the “International Climbers Festival” in Lander, WY this last weekend. I’ve been going to this for years now, this was among the best addresses I’ve seen there. He presented with his climbing partner from the film Free as Can Be. He’s a happy soul, and it’s great to see someone still pushing themselves for no good reason.

The Lander festival is super fun. It’s great to participate in something that spans every generation of climbers, And Wild Iris is a subtly beautiful western gem.

I've been coming to this traverse off and on for decades and went recently with some relative youngsters from the gym.  It used to be a warm up and now I'm going to need to return fresh to get it done.