Climbing The World’s BEST Boulders | ft. Jorg Verhoeven & Katha Saurwein

The best first look at Rocklands on the site, and the reason is the spread of grades. Jorg Verhoeven, Katha Saurwein and Jon Glassberg string together attempts and sends from Creaking Heights at V4 up through Armed Response at V12, Black Shadow at V12, El Corazon and Mooiste Meisie and Ray of Light at V13, and Golden Shadow at V14. Fifteen minutes, an original score, no biography.

This is for climbers who know grades and want to see what the valley's style actually is: power moves on steep cave problems, short technical crimpy lines, and everything between. It reads as a field report, and the sequence of problems gives a clear sense of how the trio manage rests and rhythm on classic Rocklands blocs. Skip it if you want a story or a single project. This is a catalogue.

What works is Creaking Heights. Including a V4 flake climb with a high crux beside V13s says something true about Rocklands: the volume of good problems across grades matters more than any one testpiece. Ray of Light, Klem Loskot's line, is the other sequence worth pausing on. What it gets wrong is that catalogues have no arc, and fifteen minutes of sends with nothing at stake starts to feel like a tick list.

A Month In Rocklands with Kyra Condie is the opposite film, thirty minutes of not deciding on a project. Watch this one first to learn the area. Watch that one to learn what a season there is actually like.