Skip to Content

Bouldering!

We started climbing a few months ago with our friend L! We go to a gym that mostly specializes in indoor bouldering (although they have some belaying walls). The way it works is that there are molded plastic holds affixed to the wall, and the holds are all marked with different colors - each color represents a route, and each route is marked with a difficulty level. Anyway, there's been a kid's camp there for a couple of weeks, which is adorable - but they don't give a damn about safety! To be fair, I didn't either when I was 7. Kids are made out of rubber, right?

Positive reaction to the idea of a livestream! We'll announce it on Twitter - here's our handles again:

And we'll try to do it more than once, in case you miss the first time.

There are thunderheads rolling in, so I'll sign off here! See you next time!

Add a comment | 56 Comments

Comments

Haha. Kids ARE made from rubber. Awesome as always. :)
I'm looking forward to the livestream whenever you guys can get to it. :D Thank you for being open to that idea.

(reply to this comment)

Looks more like Yuko had the right idea.
Get to higher ground when the FLOOD comes rolling in!

(reply to this comment)

I've been climbing for many years now (including outside) Love to hear when others decide to join our little tribe of monkeys! Keep it up it's super fun and really teaches you things about yourself.

(reply to this comment)

I can't be the only one reminded of the antelope stampede scene from The Lion King...

(reply to this comment)

dude that guy's hair is cute

ALSO this made me laugh so fetching hard

(reply to this comment)

GET TO DA CHOPPAH!

(reply to this comment)

Ananth: Scar! My brother, save me!
Yuko: Long live the king.
Ananth: Noooooooooo!

(reply to this comment)

I think I might have actually seen you guys there! I went bouldering with a friend (and by "with" I mean "he showed up a good two hours after he said he would and I was all sadface") and there were a couple people there that were bugging me with recognition, but I couldn't place it.

Damn.

(It is also of course possible that it was a couple of completely random strangers and I am a doofus. This happens more often than I'd care to admit.)

(reply to this comment)

I come bearing a gift.
http://supershmuck.deviantart.com/art/For-Johnny-Wander-253566630

(reply to this comment)

Hahahaha

Thank you!

(reply to this comment)

The bottom-right grip on the first panel looks like a grumpy potato. Or it's just me.

(reply to this comment)

That wouldn't happen to be BKB would it?

(reply to this comment)

Is that still an animal on Conrad's head, or does he actually have a mohawk now?!? o_O

(reply to this comment)

Sorry, that's our friend L.

(reply to this comment)

That NYC hail was fun if quite short lived.

(reply to this comment)

I love this comic! Just the mob of them boiling forth looks so funny. Kids at gyms are a weird experiences: I've gotten great route advice from kids who can hella out climb me. I've had a little kid on a trip with boy scouts follow me around like a puppy. Once I even had to climb around a kid who was bold enough and rude enough to put his hand on a hold that my foot was already on!

(reply to this comment)

Can I ask where you go bouldering? Also a New Yorker here who dabbles in climbing, and I've been looking for alternatives to the place where I've gone in the past, which is expensive for poor college students T_T

(reply to this comment)

Ahhhahaha, oh the wall of noise that is climbing camp! The kids camp ends at 3:30, and from then till about 5:30 -when all the adults come to climb- the gym hits a quiet sweet spot where all the routes are free. I highly recommend coming at this time if you have a flexible schedule.

(reply to this comment)

At first I didn't know it was a rock climbing wall. So what registered was Yuko flying away on a bunch of mushrooms before a stampede of children rushed by. It's like if Dali made comics.

(reply to this comment)

I saw lollipops, not mushrooms. Was wondering what kind of whacked out dream was being recorded where Yuko was escaping by jumping between falling candy...

(reply to this comment)

You're not alone in thinking this!

(reply to this comment)

I also thought mushrooms. And that this was a hallucination. And then I read Ananth's post.

(reply to this comment)

I saw the words and mistook the hand-holds for background musical notes, so for some reason I thought it was a freeze-frame in the middle of Yuko doing some kickin' rad dance moves. Panel two didn't do anything to assuage it, either, what with the rad mohawk. I expected panel three to be the return of the Time Traveling 80s Rapper or something.

(reply to this comment)

If you guys come out to LI there is a good rockclimbing place in Plainview, maybe if you come out next I-Con?

(reply to this comment)

Hah. At first I though yuko was having a dream about climbing a torrential downpour of mushroom and lamb chops.

(reply to this comment)

I thought it was a downpour of fortune cookies. :)

(reply to this comment)

Ha i love bouldering!! im guess you guys went to Brooklyn Boulders? Maybe? I'm from LI, me and a few friends go out to Island Rock (plainview) a lot, we've heard about Brooklyn Boulders. It's such a great sport. We get the swarm of 7 yr old girls in our gym too - and its funny. The music they play is usually off someone's ipod - indie, ska, rock, ect. Mysteriously the music changes to pop radio when little girls are around...

(reply to this comment)

You left out all those super Georgia O'Keeffe holds! I'm disappointed, Yuko ;)

(reply to this comment)

A friend and I found a place to go bouldering a few months ago and we have been going when we get a chance. But he just went off to school and I'm heading to Boston soon. Hopefully I can find a place there, anyone have some suggestions?

Whats the weirdest/funniest handhold you've seen? I'v seen a face and a telephone and both made me laugh pretty hard, the face was hard to use though.

(reply to this comment)

I started climbing about 4 months ago. Started with bouldering, and just got certified for lead climbing today. It's fun!

(reply to this comment)

I've seen those things before. Myself, I never really had the proclivity to climb things in such a manner when I was a lad, and becoming as large and out of shape as I am, bouldering now would be quite impossible. That and my knee got totally messed up in the past, so now it gives me all kinds of grief.

On a less depressing note, if you're going to be streaming, why don't you make like Katie of Awkward Zombie fame and record a stream of the comic making progress? Like, stream yourself making each page, and post a link in the description.

Just a thought.

(reply to this comment)

Hey man, just wanted to say that a bad knee and a bad wrist are part of the reason I started climbing. You can effectively build the muscles around your knee to take the load off. With my wrist I've been re-building flexibility - again, with some success. And being large and out of shape is no problem either - there are a few big out-of-shape guys at the gym regularly, and I think most of them naturally have larger muscles and more power in their arms than I do because they can power through some climbs that I had to work my way up to.

Exercise is a little monotonous for me, but climbing is a mental game as well as a physical one, so I find it engaging - you have to decode the best way to take a path. If it helps, think of it like a video game. If I grind on enough V0s, I eventually get good enough to do a V1.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into it!

(reply to this comment)

Yuko, I love how you draw background/generic crowds and the stampede of children here does not let me down. :)

I hope all of you guys have a good weekend!

(reply to this comment)

For all of five seconds I thought that climbing wall was a rain of mushrooms, and Yuko was flying through them backwards.

(reply to this comment)

poor ananth and conrad XD they must have been ran over for about five mins. I'd imagine one of the kids pulling ananth's hat off, and pulling on the mohawk, conrad has XD

(reply to this comment)

Climbing is a lot of fun, its great to hear you guys are getting in to it. HAVE FUN!

(reply to this comment)

haha this kinda reminds me of that scene from the lion king from when i was a kid. NOOO MUFASA

(reply to this comment)

omg now ananth and yuko climb :D
but srsly i thought you were sketching a dream sequence cuz the holds kinda looked like floating lollipops and popsicles :P

(reply to this comment)

Nice, a few of my favorite artists discovering my favorite sport :D (both climbing long routes and bouldering) Great :D

(reply to this comment)

Bouldering!
If you ever come to Austin I can show you around all the bouldering down here.
What level are you guys climbing?

(reply to this comment)

Oh man, once, I was on the top of a really dicey route, looked down to see if I was cleared to drop, and saw an 8-12 year old girl holding her hands up, ready to catch me if I fell. I weigh about 180 lbs; she must have been
"Uh, hun, can you move, please?"

(reply to this comment)

Can't you announce it on Yuko's tumblr, too? I've never had a Twitter account but I would be really interested in seeing the livestream!

(reply to this comment)

Yea, these kids are badass. There a some in the gym that I go to that are lead belaying and doing 11b's. Have fun with the climbing. If you are ever out in Boulder, there are some great outdoor sport climbs to do.

(reply to this comment)

I thought yuko was levitating through a rain of mushrooms! I couldn't stop laughing when I realized my mistake :p

(reply to this comment)

Climbing is an awesome hobby! I love it. You guys have to climb outdoors eventually. It's totally worth it.

(reply to this comment)

Lol, I read all of them in 2 days. Had to stay up until 2:35am yesterday reading. I just finished!!! :P I'm looking forward to your new comics. I love you guys!

(reply to this comment)

Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. AHEM.

I believe a bouldering "route" is called a "problem" ahem ahem ahem

(reply to this comment)

Do you guys think you could announce the streaming on tumblr as well? (I'm already following both of you, btw) Please? :)

(reply to this comment)

where do you guys boulder? I just got into rock climbing and have done only a little bit of bouldering. It's way hard and much more tiring than regular climbing.

(reply to this comment)

I was just out bouldering on Saturday. My forearms are soooore~ haha
Going to Austin soon to do some outdoor climbing :)
Keep up the bouldering comics xD I'm going to send this to my boyfriend.

(reply to this comment)

Post new comment