Climbers are a lot like monkeys…

…for obvious reasons.  And monkeys really need to climb.  So if all the flood closures are cramping your craggin’ style, you should come check out some of our newer routes.  This friday we’ll be resetting the expansion bouldering as well, and the small cave has some fresh problems up.

Jonny  Hork, who you might know from setting at the Spot, will be stitching up some routes here on occasion, starting next week.  If you liked his problems there, let us know what you think of his routes here!

As we’re moving into the month of October, we’re featuring another routesetter of the month, TJ Sanford.  TJ moved to Boulder from Michigan last winter with Jen Aycock (who now works at the front desk!).  You’ve probably gotten used to his style by now. He loves setting very sequential and technical routes, and if you haven’t noticed, he LOVES color matching his hold selection.  He learned how to climb traveling around the east coast, and a large degree of his inspiration is drawn from the New and Red River Gorges – collectively known as, “Those two gorge places out east.”

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Tj grew up in Sturgis, a small farmtown in Michigan.  He spent a lot of time with the Amish growing up, and a lot of time not rock climbing due to a rather extreme lack of any crags in Michigan.  Instead, he spent his time honing his skills at a variety of Board sports… Snowboarding, skateboarding, wake boarding(i believe that’s where you pull someone behind you on a boat and they flip around and scream and holler a lot, not to be confused with water boarding), etc.  Basically, anything involving a board.

To round out his softer side, he was also a trained choir baritone.  Soon, we might have enough singing routesetters to start our very own climbing-themed barbershop quartet.  Or, at the very least, we can be even more raucous and brazen in our attempts to imitate Lionel Richie and Creed on those peaceful BRC setting mornings.  We wouldn’t want to bore anyone here, afterall.

TJ also has his blackbelt and teaching degree in Karate. I only recently learned how to pronounce this word.  It’s japanese and the “e” gets the lions share of stress.  Now i have to emphatically say ‘karate’ at least once every sentence.  Karate.  It makes me feel like Schmidt from “New Girl”.  Unfortunately, Tj has never used his karate on anyone, or on any of his routes. If he did, we’d have some really juicy stories for you.

Well, that about wraps it up.  Karate.  Perhaps, someday soon we’ll have a video of TJ Karate climbing one of his routes.  Or Smarvz, balance issues withstanding.  It’ll be the new sub-sport of climbing.  Karate.

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See you in the gym!

Karate.                                      ________}———>

Karate!

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