A Milestone Achieved: Pressure Drop v10

The last week I have passed a milestone in my rock climbing (bouldering)!  I have sent my first v10 out at Great Barrington!!  The work effort and training over the past few months have been well worth the struggle I put in on this problem: Pressure Drop (FA by Dan Yagmin Jr.).  The project started out on a frigid Friday morning.  All of my friends had to bail due to work related situations or because the inclement rain/snow/sleet that was forecast for the day pushed their aspirations indoors or to local areas.  I was too stoked to work on this problem to pass up on some Massachusett's bouldering.

Icicle on the rocks!

I started the hike up the steep terrain and started my warm up at the Crystal Methods boulder and then moved quickly over to the Green Goddess boulder to hit up the moderate problems before my way up to Fotowa and Pressure Drop.  I quickly became un-stoked as the sleet started to set in (as one can see from the video) when I got to the Green Goddess boulder.  I hurried through Spak v4, Green Goddess v7, and The Bump v8 and packed up and moved uphill.  Luckily the sleet stopped and the stoke came back to me.  I made quick work of the normal start to Fotowa (v9), which had given me trouble in the past due to the tiny left hand crimp that would shred my finger tips.  As I moved to project Pressure Drop the sleet came back (bummer!).  I started working on the problem anyway in hopes of making progress.

Mid high left hand, razor crimp/pinch (if you can call it that), high right foot, pull in and shoot high right hand.  This went on about a half dozen times before I stuck the high right hand.  After sticking the right hand I had to stick another razor hold sidepull/undercling and shoot up my left hand to a nice crimp.  Unfortunately I was not able to make any further progress as the sleet turned to rain.  But I had no worries, I would be out there the next weekend.

A little freezing rain makes the topouts more interesting!

The next weekend came to and my stoke was 10 times what it was the prior weekend.  We also happened to run into some Southern Adirondack climbers (awesome dudes btw) who were out there to crush their projects as well. The weather was amazing: sunny and low 40s, couldn't get any better than that!  After a dozen attempts and sticking the high right hand, I could not stick the next left hand until I told myself that it was just like a campus rung (1-3) movement.  Once this was in my head everything clicked and the problem went down!!

Now onto new projects in the area...possibly Speed Boulder area, lot of attention directed in that area recently!!  A video of the climbs is available below!