Lessons at Rock Creek (v13?) by Charlie Barrett

Today Charlie Barrett sent his project at Rock Creek, the extremely hard sit start to the beautiful prow on the right side of the talus (across the river and up the hill from the Campground Boulder). The line has stood out as the "last great problem" at Rock Creek for several years, and Charlie put a dozen or more visits into it over the past year. He has named the line Lessons.

 Charlie eying the second move on the project last year

Charlie, who has been working his way through the eastside's hardest boulder problems (including ascents of Spectre, The Mandala Sit Start, Thunderbird inTuolumne, etc.) describes this as probably his hardest ascent to date! Lessons, which is a sit to Compression Session (v9) requires a huge amount of compression and body tension and some dynamic slaps to complete. The crux (the first few moves) requires squeezing between a good arete with the right hand, and some terrible glassy undercling/sidepulls with the left. The link for Charlie depended upon securing the left hand into the upper part of the key left sidepull with the second move--gaining the hold in the perfect position with the thumb on poor but crucial pinch. See the last paragraph of a previous post that also mentions this project.
 

 Charlie on Compression Session (Rock Creek), now completed from the sit start

New line on Upside Boulder

Ian Cotter-Brown has reported a new line that traverses from left to right on the Upside Boulder before topping out. This boulder, which is located up past the Saigon Boulder about 200 yards or so, is newly included in the 2nd edition of the guide (page 299). The problem begins to left of the west face down low on a good hold and moves low right to top out on  Early Exit (a v5 mentioned in the guide). The traverse could also potentially be linked into Upside (v8) to give a harder link. The problem done is somewhere around v8-v10, but needs confirmation.