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Bouldering Newfoundland - "The end of the road"

I first explored the west coast of Newfoundland with my wife and kids in August of 2005. It was supposed to be a family vacation but i just could not avoid looking for climbing potential. On our last day of vacation we drove along the south coast from Port Aux Basque to Rose Blanche. It's the end of the road, from Rose Blanche you can go no further without a boat. The entire trip was incredible but it was this little outport surrounded by clean granite that convinced me that i had to return.

Fast forward to August this year. I returned with Chris Richardson and Ben Smith on a short climbing trip. The day we landed in Port Aux Basque was rainy and miserable so we used the time have a quick look around before we moved up to Corner Brook. I had some pictures that i showed the guys but they really did not show the full potential of this unknown climbing destination. After a few sidetracks i finally take them to the historic stone light house that seems to be the only draw to this tinny community. We park the jeep and strike out down the coast. It's not long before we are running around like crazed junkies on the high of our life. There's steep, clean granite walls everywhere and we almost abandon our plans of heading north. This place would be the benchmark for the trip. If the other areas don't compare we would just spend the rest of the trip here.

We head up the coast and climb at the Pasadena boulders, the Asylum, Gull Pond and then returned with only two days left on the trip. Feeling rushed we got right to the business at hand. Here's a few of the gems we found.

Bouldering Newfoundland - Rose Blanche from Todd Foster on Vimeo.

Music Track #1: elB - August(Reggae Rework)

Music Track #2: Brad Sucks - Dropping out of School

Bouldering Nova Scotia - Back at it.

It's been a long summer for those who regularly check the blog for videos but a short one for me. As many of you know i had been working on a short film all spring and summer. After finishing i just ran out of steam. Well the good times are over, vacation is done and now it's time to get back to the business of climbing. Actually i'll just be spraying about climbing but it should be entertaining.

The Asylum is located just outside Corner Brook, Newfoundland. The climbing there is very different from the climbing around Nova Scotia in many ways but what i had the most trouble with was that most problems had no absolute start or end. The top of the cave was quite overgrown and much of the rock looked suspicious or chossy. The best way to approach the area was like a gym. Pick a good start hold, a good finish and figure out how to get there.
Here is a clip of Chris Richardson from our road trip to Newfoundland this summer. (don't worry there will be no eating of critters in this one)


Climbing Newfoundland, Asylum from Todd Foster on Vimeo.
Music By: Oursvince
Song: ScarKord-Around

Sandy Cove update:

Contribution from Chris Richardson

I noticed Rich’s post on the Climb Eastern Canada forum about bouldering in Sandy Cove. It just so happened that I was going camping out that way so Heather and I went to check it out.

You can see the boulders from a distance and they look very good. Then as you get close they don’t disappoint. I was surprised by the quantity of large, heavily featured, boulders in a very concentrated area. It made for some very good climbing, ranging from V0 to as hard as you climb.
Like any new area there is some choss; thin flakes break and sometimes you will find large pillows of basalt, loose and easy to remove, so be careful.

The climbing in Sandy Cove is very different then anything we have in the Halifax, Peggy’s Cove area. I definitely recommend it to everyone to go check out. Make sure you plan for a full weekend trip and take advantage of the time you have because you won’t have enough time to climb everything. Anyone interested in going let me know and I will join you or at least lay down the 411.

Chris
Crichardson1984@hotmail.com

"Night Sessions" - Night bouldering in Nova Scotia

After 4 months of shooting and two weeks of editing Night Sessions is finished. I've uploaded the film to youtube and entered it into the Mountain Equipment Co-op "Sweet Spots" video contest. If you like what you see, please take the time to cast a vote for me (Click here). It's easy according to the MEC website...

A total of 25 finalists (five (5) from each activity category) will be determined based on the total number of votes each video receives. Voting is open to anyone but each person is only allowed to vote once for a specific video. Users may vote for as many different videos as they choose. Videos submitted by MEC staff are not eligible to receive votes or win prizes.

When you click the "Vote for this video" link on a video detail page, you must enter a valid email address, in order to record your vote. You will be asked to verify your vote by following a unique link contained in an email. Email addresses are required only to verify the authenticity of the vote and to prevent repeat voting on individual videos. Only verified votes will be counted and MEC reserves the right to exclude videos from the group of finalists should we suspect vote tampering. Voting ends on September 9, 2008.

A great deal of work goes into producing a film, even a short one. I would like to thank all the climbers who preformed by doing laps on the problems and for picking up the camera to help out when my energy was running low. The music in Night Sessions is licensed under the Creative Commons license structure. Check out the artist's sites and if you like their stuff please support them.

Invisible Walls by Revolution Void
The Final Rewind by Tryad

Newfoundland bouldering road trip - Dirtbag

Corner Brook
Newfoundland
July 28, 2008
The Asylum














This was our second day climbing at the limestone cave called the Asylum. We went there late the day before. We climbed around a bit until it got dark, then local climber Kenny Tuach took us on a adventure through the cave system a little further down the river valley. We explored around there until about midnight, it was a blast and i highly recommend it as a rest day activity.

The Asylum is a large limestone cave carved out by a small river. Routes there are steep with huge incut features under the vertical roof sections and can get small, slopey and crimpy close to the lip where the wall becomes more vertical. Describing problems is a challenge because of massive amounts of the features you can start on. Routes there could be as much as 50 feel long or more as you climb from one seam system to the next.

There is really no way of telling if the problems we did were first ascents but we feel pretty confident that the problem Ben Smith put up was. During the many tries at this problem several holds broke away so it makes sense that nobody had put a lot of pressure on them before. If there is a down side to this climbing jungle gym it’s that it doesn’t seem to see a lot of climbers other than the couple of locals there and there are a lot of suspicious holds. Kenny and crew need more pads and people to climb with. So while you set at your computer and book your next ferry ride to Newfoundland here is a little clip of Ben Smith on a FA of “Dirtbag”.

Warning there is some material that you might find offensive if you are a animal lover, proceed with caution.

Bouldering Newfoundland - Dirtbag (FA) V8 from Todd Foster on Vimeo.

Music by Brad Sucks

Pirate spotted on West Coast of Newfoundland

It’s Wednesday, mid way through my road trip with Chris Richardson and Ben Smith. We were bouldering at Gull Pond, just outside Stephenville, most of the day but spent the last hour huddled under one of the many large roofs waiting out the storm.
Setting under the roof it didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to climbing films and in the tradition of the good natured ribbing that has been setting the tone for this trip, Ben reminded me of a dirty little secret Chris had been hiding.

Chris had brought his laptop and a selection of DVDs for evening entertainment or in case it rained. The first night we were here I opened up the DVD wallet to see what movies we had to watch. Much to my surprise, Chris has brought a copy of Eastern Tide. As I held it in my hand we talked about making films, it’s challenges, etcetera, etcetera. It took a while but eventually it clicked in that the title on the disk had been written with a sharpy. I was holding in my hand a pirated copy of my film.
Setting under those boulders in Newfoundland Ben reminded me that it’s a rare opportunity for a film maker to come so blatantly face to face with a pirated copy of his film and the perpetrator.
Chris has a good explanation, but I’m not going to let it go that easy. Not when we have four more days left on the trip together.

No video this week but here are a few pictures fromthe trip so far.

Left to Right: Chris on Pasadena Boulders, Ben doing laps for Pull Down Productions, Todd and Chris's dinner on left and Ben Smizzel on the right... Dog food???

Night Sessions - Access Denied

Update on Night Sessions.

I've just about wrapped up shooting for Night Sessions. I'm off to Newfoundland for a week of climbing and filming and when i return i will be locked away in the edit suite. If all goes according to schedule i should have "Night Sessions" loaded up and entered into the MEC Sweet Spots video contest by August 15. It doesn't leave a lot of time for people to review my entry and decide if they want to cast a vote my way but I'm confident Night Sessions will be worth the wait. Check out the site, read the rules for voting and hold on tight Night Sessions is on it's way.

In the meantime here is a small clip from a night session last week.
This one is of Zig climbing "Access Denied" at the Heffalump boulder.


Access Denied from Todd Foster on Vimeo.

Music by: Revolution Void
Track: Biomythos

Night Sessions - Music Needed

One of the most challenging parts of piecing together film clips and videos for the Blog is finding the right music. In recent years, with the advent of Creative Commons licensing, there has been a lot more to choose from. Using music sharing sites like CCMixter and Jamendo has made the task of finding easily licensed music much easier, but with the huge amount of music to choose from it's hard to find time to sift through it all and find the right piece to match the style of the clips.

I've been shooting "Night Sessions" for a couple of months now. Yesterday i finished an assembly of all the material and it is looking pretty good. Over the next two weeks i will be shooting the final material and fine tuning the edits. I've found a great piece of music by an artist "Revolution Void", the track I'm hoping to use is "Invisible Wall" from the album Increase the Dosage.

So, if all is going well, what is the hold up?
I need one more track for the film. Anyone got suggestions?
The Music must be owned by the artist and they must be able to give the rights for it's use.

I'm excited to hear your suggestions.

Todd

Night Sessions Continue

I've had lots of comments from subscribers wondering where the videos have been lately. It's been really hard to keep the video coming while i've been shooting for "Night Sessions" so i though i might throw up a tittle teaser of some of the "quality" footage I've been getting.


Night Sessions - Grizzly from Todd Foster on Vimeo.