Six months and beyond

The six month check-up: De Smet says the x-ray looks perfect

The six month check-up came and went. I sent the above x-ray to De Smet and he wrote back saying: "the x-ray looks perfect". "Perfect" sounds good.

The weather hasn't been very cooperative this spring for weekend climbing, although I've gotten out some. We've climbed in the bosque, Paredes Naranjes and another area on La Barrosa that I established called the Matrix (I hope to write up a report on the Matrix when we climb there again latter in the spring). Highlights include my first redpoints of 5.11 in more than two and a half years (an 11b and an 11c in the bosque) as well as climbing a few interesting new routes I'd never done before.

One of the new routes we tried was a nice crack squeezed between two bolted face climbs at Paredes Naranjas. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first time the crack had ever been lead. 

The old fat guy placed gear in a crack right next to bolted faces

Here are three shots of Martin flashing the crack, using the gear I placed:

Martín flashes the crack using the gear I placed

No problem here

Go Martín

El Groso, Gaby and Matoco, down from the Himalayas to climb at Paredes Naranjas

Another highlight was Cecilia redpointing the 5.8 crack to face route en el bosque (her first serious redpoint  in Balcarce). This is the same route where I reinitiated my climbing in the fifth blog post.

Ceci redpointing the crack to face route in el bosque

Ceci looking strong before a tricky move on the face

I went bouldering a couple of more times, but I haven't really been able to get into an outdoor bouldering rythmn yet. I hope to put in some nice reports on some of the local bouldering areas once I get my mojo working, Meanwhile, by supplementing my outdoor climbing with sessions in the home gym, I have been able to maintain about three days of climbing per week. I also try to go on hikes at least two of my non climbing days. Typically these hikes range from 4 to 6 miles, but today, for example I hiked around 8 miles. The highlight in this category was hiking the length of the sierra, La Barrosa from end to end on top and then returning along the base. This is a fairly intense three hour hike which I hadn't done for several years. Now I've done it three times since the revision.