Boulder Canyon, where the heck where we?

Ok, I know this is a really long shot, but I was hoping the Boulder Canyon climbers will know the area well enough to help me figure out where we climbed today.

We were looking for Happy Hour Crag, drove 6.9 miles up from the bridge, parking area on the creek side of the highway was full so went up to the next pull out across the road from the creek side. Walked back. Less than 100 yards. No apparent trail up so went east another 50 yards to the end of the parking area and saw a little climbers trail. Just down stream from that someone had put a semi-permanent rope for a pseudo Tyrolean traverse over the creek.

Steep little switchbacks for about 125 yards, then the trail Y'ed . Right Y led to a 5.3 ish crack. Several people rapped down this crack while we were climbing. I think it was some type of exit route for more involved climbing.

The left Y went over a nice flat 3' across rock in the shade, where we ate lunch, then continued up to a bench that had about 4 sport routes bolted, around 5 bolts each. There was another little bench about 15' up that could be used as a belay ledge, just below the first bolts. 5.8 ish, maybe 9, kinda overhung. Shiny new bolts and anchors.

We flailed around like the newbies we are, but didn't die.

As we reached the road while leaving we met another group that was looking for Happy Hour Crag, but they weren't having any better luck. The guide book they had was more modern than our Falcon circa 1999 model. No clear pictures delineating Happy Hour Crag and I could never correlate any of the drawings with the rock.

Your reward for knowing this area is a shiny new draw about halfway up the middle route, plus, a bailer biner on a micro-nut on the 5.10+ above it.

Sorry no pictures, seems all the cell phones and cameras got left in the truck.

PS, the guy that was looking for a good place to practice taking a fall this was pretty good. Nice clean leader falls with only a little granite rash.

Cascade crag?

Did you cross the creek or were you on the other side of the road?

Jim Fox wrote:Cascade crag?

This stuff was on the North side, the Cascade/Across from the Bihedral could be where the T-Traverse was leading. My guide book says we were in that general area on the north side of the road.

The Bihedral

Bihedral

If Mark or Chris's response doesn't seem to jive with the topo info you've got. You were climbing on some of the newer-ish developed stuff below bihedral proper. The folks that rapped down the crack were coming off the ledge system that all the bihedral routes begin from.
Hope that helps. And, yes, the Tyrol heads to the trail system that would take you either back upstream (west) to Cascade or East to Sherwood Forest and Witches tower.

Brent Apgar wrote:If Mark or Chris's response doesn't seem to jive with the topo info you've got. You were climbing on some of the newer-ish developed stuff below bihedral proper. The folks that rapped down the crack were coming off the ledge system that all the bihedral routes begin from. Hope that helps. And, yes, the Tyrol heads to the trail system that would take you either back upstream (west) to Cascade or East to Sherwood Forest and Witches tower.

Ding! that sounds right. New shiny bolts and anchors. Any names for the newish stuff?

The Mobile App will show you the location of your destination on a map (and all it's neighbors), and show your current location as a blinking blue dot. Walk in circles until your blue dot gets closer to your crag :) And it works with no cell signal.

Nick Wilder wrote:The Mobile App will show you the location of your destination on a map (and all it's neighbors), and show your current location as a blinking blue dot. Walk in circles until your blue dot gets closer to your crag :) And it works with no cell signal.

Umm. No. No cell service in BoCan.

Location tracking does not use cell service: it uses GPS, so it works without cell service.

I use my GPS without any cell reception rather frequently.

(Actually, modern phones use aGPS, which will use a data connection to get a rough estimate of location to give to the GPS chip, which speeds up the process. But aGPS becomes regular GPS if the phone has no service.)

Sounds like Bihedral

Nick Wilder wrote:The Mobile App will show you the location of your destination on a map (and all it's neighbors), and show your current location as a blinking blue dot. Walk in circles until your blue dot gets closer to your crag :) And it works with no cell signal.

Thanks Nick, I had the app loaded on my phone but have never tried the mapping feature. I think when I first got it all it did was let you download a pdf description. I will poke around the app today to see if I can make the map thing work.

As far as no cell service areas. If you download the area you are headed to while in a service area, like home the night before, then the phone will use GPS to navigate. I have a walking app that works pretty good while hiking in the back country. The downside to GPS is it will do really weird things if you get into a canyon with steep walls on both sides.