A beautiful day at the Unsung Wall

     I found myself lucky enough to enjoy a cup of Joe this morning with an old friend, Will Cobb (probably the nicest guy around).  It was good to catch up with Will and get a progress update on his recent shoulder injury... which came right on the heels of his ACL injury.  Will is a hell of a guy, who I first met years and years ago when I was working at the front desk of the Wall Aquatic Center.  We quickly realized that we had a mutual passion for climbing and well after some memorable (mis)adventures I consider myself lucky to call ole Willie C. a close friend.  But I digress.  After coffee I made my way home and began running down the list of usual suspects to see who would be up for getting out for a bouldering session.  However, the list of usual suspects is dwindling... Greg was out galavanting (theoretically penciled in for next weekend, we'll see if he remembers), Bustin Dustin is off to Cali, Gordo is starting a brewery or some nonsense in N.C (I think) and its a bit of a drive for him, JJ is still recovering from an epic bout of epistaxis, and well I was starting to get frustrated when low and behold Carracuda called.  My day was set!

     Carracuda aka Cara Lawrence is most likely my oldest friend in Flagstaff, we met my first week at NAU back in 96 and have been good friends ever since.  I consider it my good luck that she blew back into town last winter and has tamed her gypsy ways for the time being.  Not only is she a good friend but she is also the first person that I ever laced up the ole rock shoes with and was there when I did my first boulder problem, EVER!  I had just come back from Ireland and had some left over traveling money.  I went to the ole Peace Surplus looking for a pair of hiking boots and walked out with shiny pair of too small Boreal Stingers.  I had never done any rock climbing before but something about those black and yellow lace ups just called my name.  Well Cara was the only person in town I knew that also had a pair of climbing shoes and soon, armed with a tattered copy of "A Cheap Way to Die", a ziplock bag of chalk, and an old hand towel to clean the dirt of our feet we made our way out to Buffalo Park.  

     I look back at those days with great fondness, we'd tromp out there and marvel over the "tiny" hold that "they" were using.  "They" were a mysterious clan of Uber strong climbers who we never actually saw but apparently could crimp on the tiniest of holds and were capable of inhuman feats of strength.  Whenever we would try a problem and get spit off of it we would mutter that the "they" could do it.  Over the weeks that we bouldering at BP we slowly got stronger and braver and crossed paths with more "official" climbers.  I did my first boulder problem and was hooked, my ego took a swift kick in the nuts after Cara fired the Centerpiece sans crashpad...  ignorance is bliss....  Soon after we started climbing together I blew my knee out playing soccer and was out of comission for quite some time, but my appetite had been whetted and the course of my future drastically altered.  Cara however drifted in and out of climbing and as of recent has been using her harness to get pulled by her sled dog...

    Anyhow back to today.  A while back I headed up to a small band of limestone just south of Booze Pig which I've taken to calling the Unsung wall after the Slaid Cleaves album.  Several years back Greg Prescott and I had stumbled upon an intimidating roof crack that tops out around 20ft and has an gutwrenching landing.  About a year after finding that roof with Greg I went out with my friend Anna and got the FA, calling it Breakfast in Hell, but on a recent trip out it got the best of me and my partner!  There are a handful of other lines on the wall and with Cara in tow we headed out for a leisurely day of cleaning problems and hopefully sending some new lines.

     After re finding the wall I gave her the brief tour and immediately noticed a large, dorm fridge size, block with fracture lines all around it, right below what looks to be a good line.  Well, luckily I had come prepared and we set about prying at the damn thing with the WonderBar.  Turns out that a WonderBar is just as good as a hammer when it comes to smashing a finger tip as I quickly found out when the bar slipped and destroyed the tip of my finger.  Now my middle finger and thumb match with nasty bruises. 

 While I recovered from my pain induced nausea Cara pried away on the block. 

  Good thing we did because after only a little work the whole think came peeling off.  Leaving behind a whole mess of lizards!  I had totally forgotten the last time I was up at this wall I had disturbed a pile of lizards behind a different loose flake.  We sprang into action, or at least I did (turns out of all things Cara is afraid of lizards).  I scooped up most of them, about 50, and deposited them into the bag Cara was holding.  We then transplanted them to what we thought might be another suitable crack, away from the main cliff.  Once the lizards were situated we returned to the base of the wall and Cara got to work cleaning the area where the block had been and I built a mediocre landing pad with the fallen rocks.  In the process of cleaning Cara discovered a huge nasty centipede(?) which she transplanted to the same crack as the lizards.  Those things freak me out!

     After cleaning most of the dirt and debris off the line we both threw a couple tries at the line, Gospel Moment, to no avail.  It'll go but it will be nice to have a couple more pads, its pretty damn tall.  We then moved down and Cara stemmed up Call it Sleep, probably her first real boulder problem since the old days.  She then tried Broke Down, which was probably a bit higher than she was comfortable with.  It probably didn't help that her shoe has a huge hole in the toe.  When I said "man you need a new pair of shoes look at that hole" her reply was "What hole?"  I put up a new line Race Car Joe and then we cracked into the sixer of PBR we had brought with us.  We sat and looked over Lower Lake Mary and laughed about "the old days".  As it got a bit later we headed over to Cold and Lonely a problem I had filmed myself climbing (and falling) off of earlier this winter.  We did a little "trimming" and with Cara on the camera and after a couple false goes I fired it which while it wasn't the hardest problem ever sure felt good.  That is until I grabbed a hidden cactus at the top!  My hands have really been taking a beating lately!  We sat for a while longer and then figured we better head back down the hill.  Before we loaded the dogs in the truck we let them take a run down at the lake and well Mariah was so determined to get the stick I threw she fell through the ice and couldn't get out.  Much to Cara's great enjoyment this resulted in me stripped down to my boxers breaking a path through the ice out to my hound and dragging her back to shore.  Let me tell you even if its a nice day out beneath 3 inches of ice that water is cold.  That was the second time of the day I thought I was going to vomit!  Sorry no pictures!  So that was it the day, probably not the most exciting to read about but it sure was fun to experience.