“Continuously improve. Constantly strive to improve across all areas of your life. Small changes accumulate and make all the difference.”
I found Group W Boulders many years ago. I must not have seen the real gems at that time—War Pigs and the Wildflower Boulder—because it wasn’t until 2020 in the middle of the Covid pandemic that I returned. Why I chose this remote area when there weren’t that many people around…anyway, when I walked up on the War Pigs Boulder I knew I had to find it somewhere deep inside my flabby self to start climbing again. It’s one of the prettiest boulders I’ve ever found.Sometime after this rediscovery I was flipping back through my climbing journal notebooks (which I transition from to a word doc in the early aughts) and saw a dot and a note in this area on a map I’d taped to the journal that simply said “Boulders”. I have no recollection of seeing boulders in that drainage, which is odd, though way back I obviously didn’t have a cell phone to take photos of.
The rediscovery happened right after Thanksgiving of 2020–three years and a few days ago as I write this—and I had recently watched Alice’s Restaurant. Hence the name…Group W Boulders. I decided each boulder should have a “w” name and originally was going to give every problem a “w” name but quickly realized that would not only be stifling to my creativity but also difficult.
The first two were Widowmaker (for a dead tree blocking a prime line) and War Pigs. Then I discovered an amazing boulder I’m calling Wildflowers but which currently has no established problems on it. It dominates the main cluster of boulders which include Wabi-Sabi, White Elephant and Willard Boulders. These all do have established problems. I believe the total for the whole area is fourteen with a lot of potential for more.
I may have passed on the area when I first saw it because back then I didn’t clean lines or boulders like I do now, and they may have just seemed too dirty or too much work to snip back the rhodo enough to lay down a crash pad. War Pigs was hidden when I re-found it, but I pushed into the rhodo and was ecstatic at what I’d found. Truth is…there may be some more gems in the thicket up the slope from War Pigs.
There are some problems on it I will get with work. I’ll have to get stronger. I’ll have to get back to a mental state of being able to push myself over a couple of pads. But my secret weapon these days? Top rope solo. I never worked boulder problems with a rope when I was younger. I definitely should have. And I knew how, and frequently did roped routes lead rope solo or top rope solo. I did that long before it was cool. I had an original Gri-gri I’d modified for that purpose. Then I bought a Silent Partner. It’s extra weight and bulk in my crashpads, but the peace of mind it offers is worth the extra leg workout and sore neck.
My progress is slow. In some ways it feels like not only have I experienced a setback in fitness and skill, but I went further down below the fitness and skill I started with as a beginner. It’s been much harder for me to reinject myself into climbing than it did to learn it to begin with. The only advantage I seem to have now is muscle memory. But weak and taut muscles have a hard time returning to younger shapes and configuration. I’m trying. Little by little I’m trying.
