Lynn Hill Highballs Eastern Priest

The weather in Boulder this fall has been exceptionally warm. I have been enjoying the warm weather to engage in activities such as a small video shoot on a boulder problem in Eldorado Canyon. Normally I don’t allow myself to get sucked into other people’s idea of what they want me to climb for their purposes, but on this occasion, I liked the people who were behind the camera and trusted them enough to participate in their project. In keeping with the theme of their project, which is, highball bouldering, they suggested that I climb a notorious highball V4 boulder problem called Eastern Priest.

Photo: Lynn Hill Collection

Check out their website: rockymountainhighball.com. The idea was to do this boulder problem that I had never even seen before during the two-hours I had free last Sunday afternoon. I told them that I would go check it out and do it only if I comfortable. it turned out, I felt confident that I wouldn’t fall and ended up doing it eight or nine times. It was indeed a fun problem and one of the first moves serves as a good example of how I position my elbow in line with the angle of the hold.

Even though I appreciate the sunny days and warm temperatures for climbing and cycling around town, I can’t help but feel bad about the apparent signs of global warming. Though the accelerating warming trends and consequent melting of Antarctica and Greenland, along with the increasingly disastrous earthquakes, flooding, and drought happening all over the world may seem far away, I realize that we are all  connected to the same planet and these problems effect us all. I try to do my part in many small ways, as I am hoping the brilliant scientists of our time will do theirs to develop a clean, sustainable solution to the ever-increasing need for energy. Let’s hope we find a better solution before all the oil and coal resources have been burned and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere damage the planet beyond repair.

Lynn works the lower moves on Eastern Priest; elbow angle example; Lynn and Owen prefer pedaling over pollution. Photos: Lynn Hill Collection