evolv Climbing

The past 2 weeks have been so all over the place! Ryan “Ponch” Estrada is on tour right now with his band Phinehas and in lieu of that we had to get a replacement for him at evolv.

Here’s Ryan slaying the bass for Phinehas!

Welcome Brian Cunningham! Great kid who jumped in with both feet and has been keeping the online ordering and re-soles running like a well oiled machine in Ryan’s absence. Also mad props to him for fearlessly (and quite competently) taking the sharp end from Mason Daly for his first time ever trad climbing adventure last weekend up at Tahquitz! And who is this Mason Daly you ask? Technically his title is “Cultural Atache” but the easy answer is he’s the guy that has the job that you want.

Really tried to find the most attractive photo I could of Mason =)

So what’s this dream job all about?! Well Mason’s out on the road in Eva getting paid to rock climb with people, be nice to them, make them laugh, party with them and somewhere in there talk about evolv rock climbing shoes. Yeah he is PSYCHED! And so are we! So far he’s been getting his feet wet with tours in the LA and OC area and right now is down with me in San Diego. We have a few demo’s coming up in San Diego and then he’s heading up north to the San Francisco area for a few weeks. Not a bad schedule.

Last night we met up with my very good friend, and rock climber phenom, Chris Lindner and the lovely miss Sami Bruce for a night bouldering sesh at Mt. Woodson.

It was such a good time. The above pic is Sami learning how to hand jam on the classic Hamburger Crack (hands to to hamburger meat from this one). She had never been bouldering outside before and she did absolutely great! During my roaming around to find the best possible angles for night time photography I ended up spying a huge pit of rocks. Since caves and arete’s always pique my curiosity I chimneyed down and “found” what Link (my pet name for Chris. cute huh?) would soon get the FA of and name “Hotdog down a Hallway”.

The climb has about 25ft of climbing but because of the pit and the angle of the ground you never get above 3ft from the pads until the last 8ft or so when you exit. And what an exciting exit it is! The problem got it’s name cuz if you blow the top you are going to pin ball off the boulder behind you and to the left and look like a “hotdog being thrown down a hallway”.

Really stellar job by Link on this one =)

Well we are going to get ready for the festivities this weekend for the 4th of July. Beach, BBQ-ing, cervezas…… you gotta love Southern California!