Darwin Award V2

On a solo day of bouldering in Kraft I spent some good time doing laps on many of my favorite crack style boulder problems.  Some might be considered instant classics, some maybe completely absurd, but it's agreed that they're all entirely fun.  It's been great to build strength crack climbing here without the commitment of being on a route or the need to hike a long wandering trail to find sustained cracks of varying splitter-ness.  Bouldering is no substitute for roping up of course, but when the day is right it is certainly fun to monkey around on shorter cracks of all shapes and sizes, all with the ground just below your feet (or head). 

I recently focused my attention on an "obscure" problem hidden away in plane sight at the Monkey Bar Boulder, which is one of the most popular boulders in Kraft.  On the weekends the boulder always draws a crowd of crushers and the pile of crash pads under Monkey Bar Direct V9 sometimes seems like a permanent addition.  Little do most know just ten feet away from the chalked-over classics is the soon to be non-classic Darwin Award V2.  This ridiculously fun horizontal traverse encourages some really creative movement that I haven't encountered on many other climbs and is a true walk on the wild side. Beyond a striking vision, this climb requires a lot of core strength, a little bit of courage, and some genuine interest in hanging upside-down from foot jams.  The problem is mentioned in Tom Moulin's Southern Nevada Bouldering guidebook, but is given no difficulty rating and not described in any detail, which makes it slightly more adventurous than a typical boulder problem.  So if you're still interested and this info just wasn't enough to entirely convince you to get on it immediately, you might be psyched to hear that the problem gets it's name from the large rock the sits boldly under the crux.  Feelin' lucky?