Austin

I just had a two week trip to the southwest U.S with Erica to see her family. Her sister is in Austin, Texas and her folks are in Tucson, Arizona. Even though it wasn't really a climbing trip, I brought my pad down intent on doing as much bouldering as possible.

I did my research on what would be accessible from each city and had a few problems in mind for each area.

In Austin the first spot we went to was "McKinney Falls", a state park with some cool water falls and a long overhanding limestone bouldering wall.

The online guide describes the problem "Evil Eye" V5 as one of the area's classics so that's what a set my sights on first. It climbs a steep section of the wall on deep pockets with the crux being a dyno to the lip off a split finger two finger pocket. Basically a double mono with one finger in each pocket.

My first time trying the crux move I hit the lip but immediately dropped off because my fingers were hurting in the pockets. Not wanting to get injured I decided to leave the problem alone and work on something else...

However a few minutes later my fingers felt totally fine and I convinced myself they were not actually hurt I was just not used to climbing on pockets.....

I decided to give it one more go.

This time I topped the problem out but paid the price. Both my middle and ring finger on my right hand were hurting and I was now worried I had actually hurt the tendons.

Here's a weird video someone else made that gives an idea of how scary the move off the pockets is...


I played around on a couple more problems and then called it quits to go home and ice my fingers. As the day went on they started to feel worse and worse.

Every morning I woke up with pain in my fingers and sadly had to give up on doing any more bouldering around austin. I had my sights set on a climb I really wanted to do in Tucson so I was hoping a full week off would let my finger heal enough to climb there.