Monday, August 10, 2009

West Bluff - Massive Vertigo

Massive Vertigo is an old Peter De Salvo problem that's seemingly all by itself in the West Bluff Talus. In reality there is a decent amount of potential for the area and we'll hopefully see some development this coming Fall and Spring.

It checks in at roughly V8 and has only seen 5-6 repeats as far as I know. I'm not exactly sure when Peter did the problem first but the first time I saw it was on Todd's birthday challenge in 2004, I believe. It was the last hard problem left on his list and he pulled out a gutsy, last chance send. To say I was impressed would be an understatement.

Here's how you get there!

Starting from Ski Hi, take a right and drive to the "T" intersection. Go left and follow the road signs to the North Shore. Turn right into the park and drive down to the main lots at DL. Park and walk towards the west end of the beach to meet up with the Tumbled Rocks trail. Get on that and start walking south.

After a few minutes you'll see a sign talking about Quartzite on your right. A minute or so after that and you'll see the first of two benches. Walk past the first one and look for this one:


Walk past that a couple hundred feet and on your right will be a patch of grass just off the trail. This is the marker:


Go up and into the woods here. On your right there will be a talus field and you can sort of follow that all to the problem. I ended up going into the actual talus and found it that way.

Massive Vertigo sits on the left edge of the talus field above a small pit that you'll start in. It's maybe 75 yards up the hill in a small grove of trees. Just keep your eyes out and you'll be able to see it as long as you stay on the left edge of the talus.

It looks like this:

Massive Vertigo starts in the corner at the bottom center of the photo and ends just above the sloper in the upper left portion.


The problem starts on a small crimp rail and goes up through a series of hard, crimpy moves. It ends with a tough move off a sloper to a jug. Bring pads and spotters as it's not an ideal landing. Not bad, just not ideal.

There is plenty more potential in this area and needs to be developed more. Very cool little problem.