"Purgatory" is supposed to be a place between heaven and hell. In the case of the bum-fuk Purgatory Boulders it can often be both ;-/


Every year in the heat of summer the Burning Man festival is held nearby the Purgatory Boulders. In winter you can have your own version, "Freezing Man" when the bouldering is cold and good and you create your own rock climbing art party! The rest of the year it is a desolate and barren wasteland.


I'm not sure how many folks on this site are fond of bouldering but I/we make bouldering books here at SuperTopo so I figured I ought to post at least a few bouldering trip reports. This is an oldie but goodie imo. I hope you like it and get inspired to check out some of these under-appreciated spots and have a great time like we did. I will post at least a few more bouldering trip reports for the areas that I cover in my/our ST books coming soon.




I just dug up these old photos of this epic trip that seems like yesterday but was almost a decade ago. Scary how time flies. 8 years ago in January, 2007 I met up with some friends from TahOe (Charlie, Bonnie, Annie et al) and the always stoked OregonE Crew (Jesse, Eric + Tom, etc..) for a winter bouldering session in the arid Northern Nevada Desert. There was some hard lowball crankin, a fair share of highballs partaken and a lot of adventure and fun, no mistaken. I'll let these photos speak a thousand words so I don't have to:
























These areas, Purgatory and Pig Rock, are north of Reno and nearby some of the spots covered in our currently out of print Lake Tahoe Bouldering guide - check out the new local/Hatchett bouldering guides for Tahoe: http://www.laketahoebouldering.com/guide/

and check out a free online guide for Purgatory by one of the first ascent pioneers of the area, Tom Herbert here on SuperTopo.com:
http://www.supertopo.com/topos/obscurities/purgatory.pdf

There are also a few hard (5.12-5.13) sport routes at Pig Rock / Little Shop of Horrors and some top roping and bouldering. The Little Shop of Horrors Traverse V5/6 aka Porkys Traverse adjacent to Pig Rock is a long technical vertical face climbing traverse challenge I may have gotten the F.A. on with Tom thinking maybe too. There seems to possibly be some cool hard looking short top rope climbs on Pig Rock proper that may or may not have been done yet.!? Can you say Huecos!? Mountain Project and RockClimbing.com both have info for Pig Rock and the Reno area.