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Texas Limestone Bouldering 1 Texas Limestone Bouldering Copyright © 2007 by Rock Hound Publishing All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing. Inquiries should be addressed to: Rock Hound Publishing Kyle, Texas 78640 [email protected] www.erockonline.com FIRST EDITION First Printing (2007) Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jackson, Jeff Texas Limestone Bouldering ISBN 0-9772834-0-2 Pbk Printed in the United States of America Published by Sean O’Grady and Rock Hound in Austin, Texas COVER PHOTO: MALORY COX ON ABASH, ROGERS PARK FACING PAGE: KELLY BURNS ON SENOR FUENTE, ROGERS PARK Credit: Merrick Ales (merrickales.com) 2 3 Preface Its been 6 years since the last guide from Homo Aggro Press littered the shelves of your local bibliotech and now, like a homunculus climbing out of the petri dish, here's another: Texas Limestone Bouldering. I know what you're thinking: Where in the hell has that slacker, the author, been all these years? I was wondering the same thing. I heard all the rumors. Fabulously rich off the proceeds from the best-selling guides Texas Limestone and Mexico Rock, he was said to be living among the Dani people in Irian Jaya wearing a penis sheath and holed-up in a debris hut farming yams. An- other report had him dug-in down in Bolivia-- acting, appropriately enough, as king of a pygmy tribe and staying whacked out on a crazy hallucinogen his wives blew up his butthole with a hollowed out reed. That sounded about right. Depraved, red-eyed, jittery and forlorn, just the way I remembered him. I'll admit I was happy to see the last of him five years ago when he turned in the misspelled, handwritten scrawl that became Mexico Rock, a guide to the climbing in Nuevo Leon, Zacatecas, Coahuilla and Guadalajara. He's shady. Not somebody you'd want to have dogging your tracks or knowing where you live. In fact, my mansion was ransacked soon after our last meeting and "somebody" stole all my stereos and Body Butter. I wonder who? As fate would have it, the limestone bluffs around Central and South Texas turned out to house some of the best god damned bouldering on planet Earth and a crew of steel-tempered mutants (Texans) have been hauling their crash pads around and clambering up them for years, producing a zillion and a half of those mini-climbs known to “those who know” as Boulder Problems. These problems were cropping up fast and furious and before long there were so many problems that people began to forget where they all were. What were their names and grades? Which ones were worth throwing yourself at? Clearly, the time had arrived for a new guidebook and, unfortunately, there was only one person with enough "free-time" and tolerance for mindless in- dexing capable of writing it. Yes, I had to track him down again. Pull him out of whatever hole he'd crawled into, sober him up, kill the body lice, shave his back, disinfect his mouth and feet, give him a camera and a Big Chief writing pad and send him out to catalog all this wealth—Texas Limestone Boulder- ing. God, it was disgusting! I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say he wasn't wearing a penis sheath or king of the pygmies. No, he was living right here in Central Texas, in a kind of tent with no running water or plumbing, smeared in ashes, catching fish out of the creek with his bare hands and eating them 4 scales and all, singing bits of doggerel like “The trees sneeze. The sneeze tease.” Crap like that. Luckily, he wasn't insane, or at least he was sane enough, and after a lot of rewriting, revision and Dr. Bronner's soap, I have taken his notes and turned them into something that you, the Texas Limestone Boulderer, can use to find your way to some of the grandest and most gratifying grimping in our glori- ous realm. And if one day, at the top of that amazing V5 you finally send after minutes or months of striving, you find it in your heart to shout out a few words of appreciation for this helpful and informative tome, for God's sake man, don't thank the author, thank me, Mr. X CEO Homo Aggro Press Austin, Texas, USA Apologies The author would like to apologize right now to anybody I might piss off by publishing this guide. I’m sorry. I’d like to apologize for any butt-clenching that goes on because of offensive language. I’d like to apologize for leaving your name out of this guide. In fact, I’ve included a space at the end of this sentence for you to write your name: ________________________________ _____(Bad Ass Mo Fo). I’d like to apologize for including your name in this guide. For getting you lost. For leaving out your secret area. For including your secret area. For long-winded digressions. For misrepresenting facts. For being too silly. I’m sorry. 5 FROM THE YANKEE An Uninformed & Paranoid Interlude (or is it a Preface?) By Andrew Bisharat When Jeff Jackson asked me to write a bit for his new guidebook, I hid be- ing honored—since that is a sign of weakness, which I avoid at all costs, especially when dealing with unscrupulous Texans—and showed penetrating suspicion. Never turn the key if your car runs out of oil, and never trust a first ascentionist when they tell you their new area is “awesome.” Trust me on this; these are rules I rely on to keep me safe in lawless lands. I’ve never bouldered in Texas and, truth be told, I’d prefer to keep it that way. Texas is too big for its own good and I detest it for that. Owning too much ter- ritory drives people into xenophobic frenzies, which, as history proves, always end in bloodshed. Texans want to Win at all costs and will do whatever it takes to avoid Losing, which may as well be the eighth deadly sin down there. Just thinking about the boundless and overbearing state-pride that shoots out of ev- ery can of Lone Star makes me think I could slap puppies without remorse. Why does every Texan feel a responsibility (or perhaps liberty?) to be on con- stant patrol in order to Keep the Peace? To wit: the ubiquitous freedom-trucks, polished and oversized, with all sorts of unnecessary antennas shooting out of the cab like a godless Russian satellite. It’s as if when you’re born in Texas, you’re handed a badge and a weapon and a road map leading to Colorado. Driving anywhere in Texas feels like creeping around a pack of sleeping rabid wolverines—a scrawny word-thief like myself doesn’t stand a chance, so I avoid Texas like Florida, another state that, for all I care, can go to the place where state’s go to die. Wait, what is the point of this again? Ah, yes, a bit for a bouldering guidebook. Hang on … a guidebook for bouldering? That’s like using a cheat-sheet in the sack: completely uninspired and lame (though perhaps there are some women in this world who might suggest I reconsider that stance). I’m noticing a lot (2) of question marks in this paragraph so far, which leads me to believe that I’m Confused about why “Uncle Jefe” (the self-prescribed, and my favorite, nickname for this lifelong dirtbag cum scholar) even asked me to write some- thing about Texas bouldering. So, in case you haven’t been able to figure this out (and if you haven’t, you’re missing a frontal lobe; bouldering will be too difficult for you, so put down this book and pick up instead, “Slackline For Dummies,” which might still be too advanced for dumb-dumb you), I don’t know anything about Texas or Texas bouldering. Actually, the bouldering looks awesome. So try as hard as you can to ignore your ingrained Texas instincts to come to Colorado, and enjoy what you’ve got—a ton of slopey, pocketed limestone bathing in 100- 6 degree humid heat which, to get there, requires maneuvering around xenopho- bic freedom fighters in armored Ford battle-buggies looking to beat you like a drum. Yikes! Warning You can die bouldering or be seriously injured or mauled. You might, for ex- ample, fall and stumble backwards and crack your brainpan against an adja- cent rock or the ground. You might pull off a loose block and it could land on your head and squash your skull. You could pull off a rock and crush your spotter. You might fall and twist, shatter, break or dislocate your ankle, knee, shoulder, finger, spine or neck. You could, because of the technical difficulty of a given problem, tweak, stretch, rip or break any number of tendons, liga- ments, bones or internal organs. BOULDERING IS DANGEROUS!!!!! Do not depend on this book for your personal safety. Your safety is your responsibility. Good judgment and assessment of your ability are the only prerequisites for taking up climbing. Knowing when to back off and down- climb or when to completely decline attempting a dangerous problem will go a long way toward keeping your ass unbroken. Let's get one thing straight from the start: YOUR ASS IS YOUR RESPON- SIBILITY.
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