Canadian Philip Quade’s Summer 2016 Road Trip: Part Three
I wrapped up my third week weekend on the road with Courtney Woods and Sasha DiGiulian, I prepped for another full week of action in Rifle. I was happy to have Claire and Todd Bukowski coming up from Tucson to climb and shoot for four days in Rifle before the Boulder World Cup in Vail. It was great to get to work with those top climbers. I’ve been following their story for a long time and impressed with how far they have progressed. Claire, and her partner Sam, came in to Rifle with a tick-list of classics they were primed to get on. The Wasteland became our home-base wall for the week, as they were fond of Ruckus 5.12b and Slacker 5.12d. My favourite line from that week was a long 5.12a called Genesis. From a photographer’s standpoint, that line is a dream. It shoots both across and down the canyon, offering an incredible mix of leafy greens, reds and grays from the rock. Not to mention the movement up the steep jug-haul with good rests.
We were joined mid-week by Claire’s friend – and New Mexico power house – Ben Hanna. Ben is one of the strongest climbers I’ve met and I had the chance to shoot with. He’s a World Cup and Psicobloc competitor and the backbone behind new development in the south. One afternoon, we got to witness Ben “warm up” on the Wicked Cave’s Zulu 5.14a. What started off as a four-bolt campus attempt turned into a wild send in his boat shoes. As the week progressed, the psyche for the Vail World Cup built. Thanks to CEC and Gripped, I was able to get behind the scenes for the full comp to shoot as press/media. Not only did this land me front and centre with some of the world’s best competitive climbers, but it set me side-by-side shooting with some amazing photographers, like Andy Wickstrom and Eddie Fowke.
World Cup was a hectic and exciting time and I can’t thank those that helped get me in there enough for the opportunity. I hope some of you got to tune in on the Gripped’s Snapchat feed over the weekend, where we had appearances by Canadian climbers, like Sean McColl, Stacey Weldon, Allison Vest and Elise Sethna and Jason Holowach. Alex Puccio, Shauna Coxsey, Carlo Traversi and Sierra Blair-Coyle were all eager to jump on screen. When I first began taking an interest in shooting comps, I was warned that it wouldn’t make for good networking opportunities with the climbing community because it’s such an engaged and focused time. And while it is true that athletes are in the zone, I was shocked at how social and up-lifted the majority of them were on the stage, in isolation and between climbs. A huge thanks to all those athletes for making it a rad event for me.
Week five on the road started with a trip from Vail with Claire and Sam to Boulder. We met with the team at Skratch Labs and toured the area. Claire and I joined the ambassador team, so it was great for us to get some one-on-one time with the team. The weather wasn’t on our side in Boulder (theme of my whole trip it seems). After a morning of training at Earth Treks in Golden, we planned to head for the Flagstaff Boulders, just west of Boulder, but just as we rolled into town, a big storm hit. The day brought more rain, so we visited Movement where I ran into Alex Puccio. We talked about her neck injury before she went for her results. It turned out she had to get vertebrate fused together, but she was back training a few weeks later.
On my last night in Boulder, as I was sitting at The Laughing Goat, working on some photos and listening to open mic, I got a message from Courtney Woods, asking if I’d have time to shoot her and Robyn Raboutou the following morning at Seal Rock. The line was Thunder Muscles 5.14a. At 5 a.m., we headed to the Flat Iron crag and I photographed the stunning line. After that, I headed south to Colorado Springs to meet up with Claire and Sam and to finish our tour. I made a stopover in Minneapolis, Kansas, to check out Rock City – a collection of ancient sandstone orbs sitting in a small field a few miles north of the interstate. Such a cool location. The rocks are giant, with many features and cracks. The climbing isn’t world class, but I’d highly recommend it as a stop-over location. Just make sure it’s cooler than 106 degrees F.
The highlight of the week was meeting Rachael Hiltscher (@rachael_leahcar on Instagram) for some quality time in Arkansas’s Horseshoe Valley. This would end up being my first days on rock in weeks. It was a bit of a rough start, but I managed to send my weekend project, Chainsaw V4 before all was said and done. Bouldering in Horseshoe in June is great. Yes, it was slightly swampy in the mid-day heat, but early morning and late evening climbs are perfect, as long as you have a big enough stick to fend off the spiders. It was a fun couple days climbing and shooting with Rachael. There were some greats sends, new projects set and one funky new slab line that we cleaned on our final day, when the both of us were too spent to climb, but didn’t want to pack it in.
I headed to Kentucky for week six. It was hot in the south and unfortunately areas like Chattanooga and HP40 were out of the question. It was a long haul from Horse Shoe to Red River Gorge (RRG), but worth the miles. I rolled in well after midnight to Miguel’s and slept for the night. In the morning I was met by Rebecca Crone, a regular to RRG and a stellar photographer. She was my tour guide and lined up some good climbers for us to shoot. We started at Drive-By crag with a few classics and had Matt Maples on his project – which he would send about a week later – Angry Birds 5.13c, while Charlie Thompson and Oliver Richman worked the ultra-classic Kaleidoscope 5.13c. Unfortunately, we were rained out by early afternoon, but this gave us the perfect chance to hit Miguel’s before the crowds.
The rain came down hard all afternoon, which would be the theme for the next few days. Our second day started on Chainsaw Massacre 5.12a and later we moved to the Madness Cave. We met our new Swiss friends Leon and Franz, who worked The Madness 5.13c and Flour Power 5.13b. It was a short but sweet in the RRG. The rains continued, so Rebecca and I headed for Cincinnati with a stopover at L’Escalade in Lexington on our way, another great gym. The next morning we headed for RockQuest for a fun session on plastic before I hit the road for Utica, Michigan, my last stop on my six-week American road trip. It was good to cross the border back into Canada. Now I will work on on some of my own boulder projects and then head the east coast.
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