On A Mission

I’m heading out to Smith Rock in a few days for a two-week trip. The climbing at Smith is extremely thin and technical — and difficult to prepare for. I believe strongly in taining and I generally feel that using indoor tools is superior to “just climbing” outside (for building strength, power, and endurance). That said, indoor training is far from ideal for developing or polishing technique. For highly technique-dependent climbing, like that at Smith, some amount of outdoor skill practice is essential. Outdoor training can also help prepare your finger skin if its done wisely (in moderation).

To Bolt or Not To Be, 5.14a, Smith Rock

In 2008 I spent two weeks at Smith working and sending To Bolt or Not To Be, perhaps the most technical single-pitch climb in America. My training strategy for that season was pretty unusual, but very effective. I lengthened my Base-Fitness Phase by adding more ARC workouts, and I ordered a bunch of really tiny crimps to add to the Lazy H. I did a standard Strength Phase (but I added a thin, closed-crimp grip to my hangboard routine). After 8 hangboard workouts I immediately transitioned to outdoor climbing 2 days per week (normally I would have a 2-4 week transition period of bouldering and/or campusing). I climbed in the Lazy H a third day each week, doing thin, power-endurance linked bouldering circuits.

The key to this approach was selecting an appropriate “training route”. That season I worked Third Millenium at the Monastery, a barely overhanging, thin, technical, and sustained 5.13d. Ironically I didn’t send Third Millenium in 8 days of work (though I went on to send it later), but then went on to send To Bolt in just 7 days (you do the math on that!). Third Millenium was the perfect route; it got my footwork dialed, my lead head in order, and trained power-endurance on the right types of holds. The point being, if you want to utilize outdoor training to prepare for a goal route, the most effective way to do so is:

Third Millenium, 5.13d, The Monastery

1. Pick the right training routes, those that are as-similar-as-possible to the route you are training for, in terms of steepness, hold type, continuity, commitment, and length.

2. Accept that the purpose of each day’s cragging is to train for your goal, not to send! This may mean cutting sessions short to avoid trashing your finger skin, to avoid too much fatigue, or to squeeze in a bit of indoor training at the end of each crag day.

In the pre-parenthood era of 2008 I had a lot more options, whereas now there are significant advantages to staying close to home. I decided the ideal training route this time around would be “Mission Overdirve”, a linkup of “Mission Impossible” and “Interstellar Overdrive” in Clear Creek Canyon. Mission Impossible was bolted by Jay Samuelson and immediately offered to the community as an open project. Dan Woods eventually came away with the FA, calling the line 5.14d and the hardest route he had ever climbed, even hard than Jaws II (5.15a at Rumney), opening with a V12 boulder, followed by pumpy climbing to a V11 finish.

Entering the hardest bit of the low crux.

Jonathan Siegrist actually tried the line first, but didn’t have time to commit to the full route. He established the Mission Overdrive link-up before heading overseas, calling the line 14a/b. This linkup climbs the opening “V12″ boulder of MI before joining Interstellar (5.13d) for its notorious “V8″ crux. The entire line is about 70 feet long and overhangs 10 feet. The first half is basically dead vertical, with super thin, slopey edges and invisible footholds. The climbing is super insecure and there are about 10 moves in a row where you can pop off at any point. The Interstellar crux is steeper, with very tiny crimps that are fortunately incut-enough to pull out on. The pivotal move is a huge lock-off from a half-pad crimp to reach a slopey finger slot. The route is perfect for me and a great training route for Smith.

I first tried the route last Saturday. I was able to do all the moves on the lower crux but I couldn’t see how I was going to link all those moves, or even let go to clip. By the time I reached the top I was too worked to make any progress on the Interstellar crux. Then on the second go I shocked myself by climbing most of the way through the low crux, ultimately stymied by a precarious clip. At that point I knew the line was do-able and I was committed. I spent some more time on the upper crux, then headed home for a campus session.

Nearing the end of the first crux.

My next outdoor day was supposed to be the following Friday, but I couldn’t wait that long so I arranged for a short outdoor session on Monday evening followed by an indoor Power-Endurance session on Tuesday. Normally I would never climb two days in a row like that, so the key was to keep Monday’s effort short and minimize any wear on my skin. I did two 30-minute burns, with the goal of working out a viable clipping strategy for the low crux, and dialing the low-percentage upper crux, which comes with a substantial pump. I was able to achieve both goals, but at the end of the day there was still a 10-foot transition section that I hadn’t really worked out. The climbing is ~5.11+, easy enough to figure out on the fly, but just hard enough to get you pumped before the final boulder problem., so I wanted to have an efficient sequence worked out.

Friday was a dedicated outdoor day, so I took my time with a thorough warmup. I climbed a rad .12b face climb at the Monkey House called The Reward. This is a brilliant thin edging climb with a committing crux. If only it were twice as long! My first burn on Mission Overdive, I sent most of the way through the low crux, but botched a foot sequence and pumped off. I took the opportunity to work out the 11+ transition section, but then I was unable to do the Interstellar crux. The move is very precise and requires the perferct coordination of all four limbs. You need to move just high enough to reach the hold; any higher and your low hand will pop off. The high hand has to slide perfectly into a narrow slot, requiring a precise deadpoint. Both “footholds” are miniscule, and must be weighted just enough to complete the move but not so much that your feet slide off. After a few tries I was able to find the right timing.

Preparing to turn the roof.

I took a 45-minute break, and then tried again. This time I recalled my sequence for the first crux perfectly. There are many subtle foot shifts, so that was not a trivial feat. I was pumped, but not overwhelmingly so. The low crux ends at a decent left handhold, allowing a clip and a brief shake. Next the route tackles an intimidating roof with a really cool highstep and dyno to reach an awesome rest. I was able to recover completely at this rest, then I cruised up the 5.11+ section. At the high crux I was notably pumped, but there is a so-so shake just below, and I took my time here and got back what I could. My forearms felt powered-down, but I reckoned I could still bear down for a few moves, so I went for it. When you hit each move just right, this crux almost feels easy, and you can understand how this could be called V8. I got the finger slot, then a few more slopey pods to reach damp jugs and the anchor.

Overall the line is fantastic, hands-down my favorite route in Clear Creek Canyon. I’m really stoked to try the full Mission Impossible, but I think that will have to wait until I return from Smith. I’m not too sure about the grade; this is the fastest I’ve sent a 5.14, so based on that logic it seems unlikely that its 14b. On the other hand, I’m in great shape on paper, so who knows? I highly doubt the low crux is V12; I’ve never even tried an established V12, so I really have no clue, but I assume V12 is harder than that! I would say more like hard V10 or easy 11; and a realistic V9 for the Interstellar crux. The real challenge of the route is keeping it together over a large number of difficult sequences.

The end of the Interstellar crux.

I think it goes to show how strengths and weaknesses can affect grades. Ideally these factors should be accounted for when assigning a grade but its not simple to extrapolate and so these factors often have a big effect. There is a tendency to assume that certain climbers have an absolute understanding of the grade scale (Adam Ondra, for example) but it really doesn’t work that way. The style of route and the climber’s tastes are critical to their perception of a route’s difficulty. The bottom line is, any time you find a sequence that is hard for you, take it as an opportunity to improve, regardless of the grade.  If you find something feels easy, enjoy it!  The pendulum will swing back the other way soon enough.

I’m off to Smith on Thursday, with pretty thick skin, decent footwork, and high confidence. I’ll be teaching a footwork clinic (8:30am at Redpoint Climber’s Supply) and giving a slideshow (8:30pm), both on Saturday April 20th. Come out and say hi if you’re in the area.

Joshua Tree

Over Easter Weekend the family and I flew out to San Diego to visit our good friends Rob and Julie and their toddler Samuel.  The first day we headed out to JTree for some mellow sight-seeing and car camping.  This wasn’t a climbing trip but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check out JTree’s amazing boulders. 

My friend Will has a house near there and he hooked me up with a few crashpads and a guidebook.  It always helps to have nice tall stack of pads, and the guidebook was a huge help.  I’ve heard it can be hard to find your way around the maze of boulders and jumbled rock formations, but the Miramontes guide has great maps and photos and I was able to find everything with only a small amount of aimless wandering.

The bouldering was really outstanding.  I didn’t know what to expect since the rock at JTree is notoriously fickle, but all of the problems I did were amazing.  I spent most of my time in “The Outback”, but also tried a few things in Hidden Valley.  The rock is sharp for sure, but its not all thin edgeing and smearing.  There are a lot of huecos and scoops, and even though edging is my cup of tea, I really enjoyed the steeper, thuggier problems too.  I would go back in a heart beat, but probably not in late March.  It was really hot for my taste (75 deg F), which limited my options quite a bit.

Here’s a little video of some of the stellar problems I did:

We also did some hiking and what I would call “wandering”–trying to get lost in the amazing landscape.  Joshua tree is completely surreal.  Its a great place to explore and linger.  We headed out toward the Astrodomes and found some cool rock tunnels. Logan had a blast crawling around the tunnels, and managed to burrow himself into several chambers that we couldn’t reach. 

Logan tunneling around in the Wonderland of Rocks.

Logan loves to scramble around no matter where he is: the house, the park or in the wild.  I’d love for him to be a climber at some point, but I don’t want to push him into, so I’m psyched that he seems to have some inate interest in climbing.

After our all-too-brief stay, we headed back to San Diego for an obligatory Easter Egg Hunt and a beach trip.  Rob is my surfing coach, so we headed out for some waves.  I’m not any good but California seems like a great place to learn, in my limited experience.  The surf was tiny (2-3 feet), but we were able to catch most of the waves we tried for and we had a great time.

Logan scoring some booty.

Campus Board Refurbishment- What’s Your Angle?

When I built my gym in the Lazy H, I never really put much thought into the angles of the walls.  I mocked it up with the joists and basically just eye-balled it.  Almost immediately it became clear that my campus board wasn’t quite as steep as it should be, and this has been an itch in the back of my mind for a long time.  During my fall campus phase I started doing some research on the “standard” angle for a campus board.  This research revealed that there is no standard, although one could make a really strong argument for 15 degrees overhanging, as a compromise if nothing else.  This is what Metolious advocates in their brochure, and some sources indicate this is the angle of the Schoolroom Board in Sheffield (although others say 12.5), a board that many others are modeled after.  Looking at photos of Gullich on the original Campus board, it appears that was around 11 degrees, so one might make an argument for that angle as well.  It appears to me that the board on Moon Climbing is about 17 degrees.  Some other sources advocate for 20 degrees (which happens to be the angle of the Foundry board; Jerry Moffatt’s climbing gym).

 

This is the campus board shown on Moon Climbing

The angle of the board can be important for several reasons.  First, it affects how incut the rungs feel.  Obviously the rungs will feel less positive on a steeper board, and should be slightly harder to grip.  But they should also be less painful to latch.  Second, a steeper board will keep your hips and lower legs further from the board.  In addition to keeping you from kicking the board as you get higher, this gives more room for the low hand to continue pushing down when you make really big moves (moves in which your low hand is below shoulder height).  Finally, the steeper the board, the less vertical distance one must travel to move from rung to rung. 

My board *before*.

My board was installed at the same angle as the south side wall, about 8 degrees overhanging.  At that angle, a move between two rungs spaced 12″ apart requires 11.88″ of vertical travel.  At 15 degrees, the same move requires 11.59″ of vertical travel.  Probably not a big deal, but consider the mythical 1-5-9 Max Ladder (Moon spacing, 22cm between rungs).  The lagging hand must travel 176 centimeters (almost 4 cubits!) across the board when going from 1 to 9.  For such a big move the difference in vertical travel between an 8 degree and 15 degree board is 1 and 11/16 inches (a little over 4 and a quarter centimeters for those keeping track).  That is the sort of thing that goes through my head when I’m sitting in staff meetings, and that is what is slowly making me insane.

But I digress.  I wanted to know how perceptible such a difference would be, and what impact it might have on my campus performance.  Is it all a wash, with the improved incut of a less-steep board compensating for the greater span?  Or would I suddenly burst through and set new personal bests on a slightly steeper board (heaven forbid I actually get worse).  I resolved to correct the error of my original construction, but to do so would required tearing up half the gym, so I had to wait for the off season.

Removing the interior panels to access the lower joist joints.

The board is mounted primarily to two 2×6 joists that connect to the main structure of the barn at the floor and ceiling.  The plan was to install a temporary hinge of sorts to the cieling joint, then disconnect the floor joint and “swing” the entire campus board structure up to the desired 15 degree angle.  Easier said than done.

The top of the board was relatively easy to get to, as I never finished installing the interior panel on the east side of the board.  I started by installing  3/8″ bolts in the joists and adjoining rafters at the top of the board to create the “hinge”.  The next step was to remove a seemingly endless series of interior panels to get access to the lower joist joints.  Apparently the entire interior is one long daisy chain, where Panel A can’t be removed without removing Panel B, Panel B can’t be removed without removing Panel C, and so on.  In the end I had to remove 10 interior panels, two exterior panels and miscellaneous trim pieces.  Each Panel averaged around 16 screws, not counting screw-on jibs which I thoughtfully installed right on the studs (meaning they had to be removed to free the panels).

“Hinge” Bolts installed at the top end of the joists.

Long story short, it was a huge pain, literally and figuratively as I tweaked my back trying to remove one particularly pesky stripped screw.  Eventually I got them all out and was able to swing the board into position with the help of several crow bars and three hammers.  I cut the joists to their new, much shorter length, bolted everything in place, and voila, “installation is the reverse of removal.”

Campus Board Angle After: I’m sure it was totally worth it!

The final step of this experiment was to test the new board and determine if the steeper angle had any effect on my campus ability.  This project was completed in late November, and as I described in this post, I set a new personal best on this board in January.  I’m not quite ready to give all the credit to the steeper board, but even after my first session on the steeper board it felt like things were a bit easier; I could latch my baseline max ladder more consistently than usual, and seemed like I was getting an extra inch or so of height on the biggest moves.  I also noticed it was a lot easier to press down with the lagging hand. I haven’t noticed any ill-effect of the steeper angle (such as the less-positive rungs making increasing the difficulty).  Long story short, I’m happy with the results and would recommend at least a 15 degree angle to anyone building a board from scratch.  I’m not sure its worth the effort to change the angle of an existing board, unless you’re close to doing 1-5-9 or something and need a bit of extra help

Campus board installed at the new and improved angle.

 

Climb Talk Radio AM1190 Friday Night!

I just learned that I will be “appearing” on Climb Talk Radio tomorrow night (Friday, March 8)!  If you are in the Boulder area you can tune in to AM1190 to hear it.  You can also listen on line at:

http://www.radio1190.org/media-2/

The show is scheduled to start 9pm Mountain Time, but we are following a live broadcast of a basketball game, so we could get pushed back a bit if the game goes long.  We will be talking MountainProject, Shelf Road, First Ascents and Training.  There may be a few curveballs as well. 

I hope you can listen in!

Flight of the Phoenix Video

I put together a short video of Flight of the Phoenix.  Enjoy!

Flight of the Phoenix

In late 2009, my friend Ben Schmitt bolted a typical-looking Shelf Road face climb at Cactus Cliff.  The line climbs a beautiful white wall of limestone, featuring a brutally hard 5-or-so-move crux right in the middle of the wall.  When Ben put the hardware in, I was just finishing off the last of Shelf’s (existing) hardest routes.  I wasn’t really much into establishing routes at that time, and besides that, I didn’t really see any potential.  About a year earlier there was a thread on Mountain Project titled “No Hard Climbing at Shelf Road”, and (ironically) I actually defended that position, noting that (at that time) there were only 9 routes at Shelf harder than 5.13a.  The truth was, the visionaries who kept Shelf relevant through the 80′s and early 90′s had all moved on to greener pastures, and with the discovery of Rifle, few arrived to take their place, so development stalled for 15 years or so, until Ben arrived.

Carnage, my first Shelf Road First Ascent.

Ben is probably the most magnanimous and genuine climber I’ve ever met.  He showed me that the question of new-route-potential was simply a matter of perception.  I had to learn to look at these cliffs a little differently.  The following spring I worked and sent what was to become “Carnage”, at the time Shelf’s hardest free route, and the next route right of Ben’s line.  We spent a lot of time hanging out during this process, and he taught me to see Shelf in a new light. 

Ben’s route is a bit of an outlier for hard Shelf lines, in that its not tweaky, thin, or sharp, and doesn’t require especially skilled footwork.  This thing is burly and in your face.  Its something you would expect to find at Rifle’s Winchester Cave, not at Cactus Cliff.  

Ben put in a valiant effort to send the line, but eventually became burnt out by the low-percentage crux, and graciously encouraged me to try it.  I first tried it in 2010 with Ben, but I had other things on my plate, so I didn’t give it a serious effort.  I tried it again at the end of 2011 with my friend Sheldon, but I decided it was too late in the season for such a powerful climb, so I decided to come back early the following season.   In 2012, fresh off 3 weeks of good campusing, I spent three days on it, and made really good progress.  On the third day I tweaked my left ring A2 pulley while warming up on a nearby climb (never crimp a 2-finger pocket!).  The injury didn’t seem like much at the time, and I climbed through it that day, and for another few weeks before I realized I had a major problem on my hands (pun intended!).  I spent the rest of the Spring season, and the entire summer season, rehabbing this injury.

The line begins up the obvious crack, but then moves slightly right before heading straight up the bulge along the subtle, slightly right-angling seam.

With winter (and therefore, crisp temps at Shelf) rolling around once again, I decided in November to plan my following season around a few leftover projects at Shelf.  Eventually I got back to Cactus in late January.  Honestly, I was quite hesitant to try it, because I was never really sure which route was the primary cause of my finger injury, and I didn’t want to aggravate it.  But its hard for me to resist facing a climb that has shut me down.  All the climbs I’ve failed to master keep me up at night.  I knew I wouldn’t ever be satisfied until I proved to myself that I could climb this route.

The crux bulge is about 15 feet above a sit-down ledge, so there is no pump element to deal with.  The business boils down to executing a huge dyno after completing a succession of committing moves (at least, that’s how my sequence went).  Just by itself, the final dyno is a very low percentage move, but with just enough fatigue to get my hips sagging and sap what little contact strength I have, the move was downright frustrating.  After a few days of work I got to a point where I could hit the dyno 75% of the time off the dog, but climbing into it was another story.  The target hold is actually pretty good; a 2″ deep flat ledge.  But the holds setting up for the dyno are terrible and the feet are basically non-existant.  A quarter inch horizontal foothold anywhere on the wall would make the move trivial, but your feet are right in the bulge where everything is sloping down and into the wall, making it very difficult to generate any momentum from the legs.  Ultimately its a balancing act; trying to push just hard enough with the feet (and in the right direction–into the wall) that they don’t pop off before they’ve generated sufficient velocity.  I probably fell on this move alone a good 40 times off the dog and on redpoint.

Friday was forecast to be 42degF and mostly sunny in Canon City.  Pretty much ideal in my book, as long as we could get there through the snow in Denver.  Perhaps the best part of this process was re-visiting many of the great 5.11 and .12 lines at Cactus.  I got to polish off a number of awesome face climbs I had missed out on the first few times around, especially 14 Carats at The Vault, which climbs an amazing wall with continuous cruxy moves.  With the chilly morning temps, we headed to the far east end of Cactus to warmup and I did a rad little 11a on flawless stone, then Cro-Magnum, a brilliant prow of sinker pockets with a stopper dyno near the top.

Mid-flight on the crux dyno.

Honestly I felt kinda flat, but I’ve noticed through the years that there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the way I “feel” during the warmup and how I perform on my project.  Many times I’ve felt awful or bumbled sequences only to end up sending a long-term project.  For example, the day I sent Scarface I fell on (Lower) Heinous Cling, a 5.12a that I had competely dialed and had sent probably 15 times before (Palo knows what I’m talking about; he was belaying IIRC).  My point being, you should always try, because you never know what might happen.  If you don’t try, you will definitely not succeed.

But I wasn’t very optimistic.  I climbed easily up to the crux, but fell on the second dyno, a short slap to a slippery, sloping sidepull.  Not real inspiring.  I hadn’t fallen that low on the route in my last 8 or so attempts.  For various reasons, this season had stretched out longer than I wanted, and it was starting to seem like my improving familiarity with the route was barely keeping pace with my fading fitness.  After a brief moment of self-pity, I pulled back on and sent through the crux.  Aha!  That was the most linkage I had ever had through the crux boulder problem.  Now I had something I could really believe in.  I brushed the key holds and lowered.  The burn only took about 10 minutes, so I just popped the heels off my shoes and maintained my concentration.  After a relatively short 10 minutes, I headed back up.

Sometimes when you send, everything just flows, and the route suddenly feels easy.  I knew that wouldn’t be the case on this route, ever.  This would be a struggle, no matter how many times I tried it.  The difference would have to be effort and perseverence despite the struggle.  Nothing felt different this time around.  The only difference was that when I arrived below the pivotal move I really believed for the first time that it was possible to stick on redpoint.  Rather than a split-second thought of “prepare to fall”, my mind said “this is possible”.  I wasn’t any less pumped, but when I hit the ledge I refused to let go.  The move is almost a double dyno; the trailing hand is on a miserable sloper, so you have to match very quickly to control the swing.  As I threw my low hand up to match, my right foot popped off, but I was able to get my right hand up before I came off. 

Sticking the crux dyno.

There is one more really iffy move just above the ledge, so I didn’t do any celebrating.  I had never had a chance to really climb into this, so I expected it would feel much harder with a pump.  Surprisingly, I wasn’t pumped at all, so after a brief shake I rocked up onto the ledge a breathed a huge sigh of relief.  20-more feet of relatively trivial face climbing brought me to the chains and the first free ascent of Flight of the Phoenix.  Flight for the big dyno (and my countless wingers there), and Phoenix for my recovery from injury.  Sending this route is like coming full-circle.  The finger is now stronger than it was before the injury, and there is one less route out there to interrupt my sleep!

Now to everyone’s favorite topic: the grade.  This is hands-down the hardest route at Shelf for me, but I really suck at this type of climbing, so I don’t have much confidence in my ability to grade such a route.  Compared to other short 5.14ish climbs I’ve done (like Busload of Faith, Come Home Curly, or Smoke Shapes, all at Sinks), this is much harder.  But those climbs all suit my physical strengths, length notwithstanding (and I think they’re all on the easy side of ‘a).  I’ve heard others suggest the crux of Flight might be V11, but again, I’m really not qualified to grade a boulder problem of this style.  With that in mind, I prefer to be conservative.  I’m certainly open to the opinions of past and future suitors.  It would be awesome to have a harder-than-14a route at Shelf to attract some of Boulder’s superstars down to our humble little limestone cliffs, but I’m certain that will happen eventually regardless.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Ben for bolting and invisioning the route, and for showing me what Shelf still has left to offer.  I also want to give a shout out to the various partners that have held the other end of the rope at one time or another on this campaign: Ben, Sheldon, Wes, Logan, Nate and of course Kate, who put up with 30-degree temps and intermittent snow flurries over the last few weeks.  Thanks to all of you!

Return of the Viking (Iceland Part III)

Remember how I went to Iceland?  Well, finally, here is the highly anticipated conclusion.  If you missed them, check out Part I and Part II.

         Sunrise in Kirklubaejarklaustur

Day three started in Kirkjubaejarklaustur with an extensice complimentary breakfast at the hotel followed by a couple of quick stops on the way out of town to look at some promising rock formations.  The volcanic tuff-lined Fladrargljufur gorge had some beautiful towers and buttresses, but unfortunately the rock was some of the worst I saw on our trip. 

The sheered off basalt column “floor” of Kirkjugolf

The wind was raging all day, and it really showed how fickle the weather is in Iceland.  The wind made the differnce between T-shirt climbing in the sun, to completely unbearable even in a hooded puffy, and it went form to the other almost instantly.  The penetrating chill kept us in the car almost the entire day, but we were able to find a few sheltered spots to enjoy the amazing scenery.

Fladrargljufur

We also got a chance to inspect a herd of Icelandic sheep up close along the drive.  These sheep are considered the most pure breed in the world, and their wool is one of Iceland’s key exports.  Everywhere you go wool sweaters, gloves and hats are for sale, but a regular wool sweater will set you back $180!  The sheep are really fun to watch, with a hilarious waddle-like gate and enormous fluffy coats of wool.

The massive Dyrholaey (“Hole in the Door”) sea arch

The next major destination was the coastal town of Vik and the nearby Dyrholaey sea arch.  I’ve seen quite a few sea arches around the globe and this was easily the most massive I’ve ever seen.  You could sail a decent sized ship under the thing, and that is in fact one of the primary industries in Vik (shuttling tourists under the arch).  That isn’t really our kind of thing so we admired the arch from the lookout.

The day before while browsing in a gift shop I saw a postcard that showed a promising escarpment of basalt columns on a black sand beach with the arch behind.  I made a point to find this beach and explore the climbing potential.  I either failed to find the correct beach, or the postcard was heavily photo-shopped, because I never found the idyllic view pictured in the post card, but I did find a beautiful sheltered cove of impeccable basalt. 

                            Bouldering near Dyrholaey, with the arch behind

Most of the seaside cliffs I’ve seen are decomposed garbage due to the harsh weather conditions, but this rock was completely flawless, and even featured some aesthetic marble green swirls in the stone.  There was a nice sized cave with some intriguing horizontal potential, but most of that stone was dripping wet, so I focused on the nice cliff to the left.  The cliff is at least 40′ high, and interesting enough to warrant atleast a toprope if not a rack.  The bouldering was excellent with perfect sandy landings.