Bellingham

On Wedensday I headed up to Bellingham with Joel and Cortney to check out the sandstone bouldering we'd heard about up there. I hadn't heard the greatest things about the area, but then again, nobody was denying that there was actually climbing there. Internet pictures of steep beachside sandstone on 0Friction.com and a topo from DrTopo.com sealed the deal.

Our first destination was the Chuckanut Drive roof. It lies 40 feet from the road roughly 5 miles south of Bellingham, on the small roof at the edge of a large slabby boulder. Though I had heard about this problem a decent amount, we weren't inspired so we moved on to try our hand at finding the beach bouldering at Larabee Beach. An hour or so later, after much walking, we found a sweet boulder by the water's edge.

Here's Cortney stretching for the jugThe view down the beach

After playing for a while, we decided to check out Sehome Hill, a park right near WWU that we found a guide to on DrTopo. The woods were much cooler, and we found a good number of awesome green sandstone boulders to climb on. Joel climbed a hard line near the top of the hill, while I had a small epic on a climb called Bombshell. After spending a good deal of time sweating off of the top-out, I finally sent and we checked out a few more areas before getting pizza in town and returning home tired and happy. Though we didn't climb on that many problems, I was impressed with the quality of the sandstone in Bellingham and would not be surprised if motivated locals had developed other quality areas.

Here's the video of my triumph over Bombshell...