Author: Sergey Kovalev, Ukraine

Honey is sweat even if the bee stings!

Crimean bouldering - ideas aloud...

Last May holidays remembered also as bouldering holidays for all rock-climbers who came to the Red Stone area! Party of sportsmen from Moscow, Lvov, Petersburg, Kiev, Gomel, Samara, Dnepropetrovsk etc selflessly was fighting during two weeks on picturesque boulders of Krasnokamenka and Sosnyak (Pine forest). There were a lot of friend communication, interesting supervision, joint plans...

My numerous (and long-term) attempts to find out the leading sportsmen' opinion on chances of development of Crimean bouldering allowed to formulate three main problems.

The first one consists in that fact that a lot of climbers just want to boulder completely putting aside a thought to take a bouldering pad as a precaution as a bulky makeweight to (as always) a heavy rucksack cools almost all judges of free climbing. But without a "crash pad" the number of falling can be reduced up to only one! On the one hand - "safety is above all things", on the other side - they are lazy about taking so "heavy" thing. A vicious circle! But if they could arrange for the hire of equipment for bouldering "the ice will break up"!

The second problem: the most part of climbers just want to climb not losing the time for searches of boulders, line clearing, finding-out of lines' grades, arrangement of a start site etc. And all of this is quite foolproof - naturally, skilled route-setters should do that.

Put it shortly, first they have to do considerable volume of earthwork, and then to make a competent guide-book with the area topo, photos of boulders with marked problems and their adequate classification. It seems that everything is extremely clear. But here one more important nuance comes to light!

The matter is that only a few sportsmen (they can be counted on the fingers of one hand) can estimate lines on "wild blocks". For that simple reason, that only professionals that have the opportunity to travel abroad and to train together with legislators of bouldering rules (with the strongest foreign sportsmen and route-setters) can not toe the mark of own ambitions and reflexes generated on long routes. You should remember that estimating and naming a line (modesty suits the Samurai!).

And, at last, the third problem. There is an opinion, that the Crimean limestone is too traumatic for bouldering. Really, edges, spread with openwork thorns, frequently are not good for stylish jumping. But you should just to accept the rules which native rocks dictate (how bouldering-climbers from newfangled western video clips do that). Because we do not want to kill the originality of the Crimean relief by modifying each calcareous beauty - a prickle into a mere apology for a climbing gym's edge!

Summing up to the aforesaid, I have honour to inform: for the present time we are making a huge work systematizing information about the established areas of the Red Stone and sanatorium "Sosnyak". Next thing on the agenda is the areas of Shaan Kaya, Foros, Chelebi (Parus (Sails)), Sarych, Laspi, Batiliman etc. A plenty of work!! Serik Kazbekov, Andrey Vedenmeer, Shaferov Sergey are engaged in route estimation. We strongly hope that Salavat Rakhmetov, Ovchinnikov Evgeny and Evgeny Krivosheitsev help us. And we invite the women - skilled route-estimators of blocks to jazz these actions and also to make the qualified amendments.

Gradually we are solving out the problem with crash pad. In "Red Stone" shop (Krasnokamenka settlement, Centralnaya Street, 22, ph. 8 067 7487615, contact: Kovalev Sergey) you can hire this specific equipment. If everything go on how it was so intended by us it would be possible to organize in Crimea bouldering festivals of European level and "Red Stone" suits for this purpose as a quite good base.

Many thanks to all the guys that have taken part in lines' setting!