Hilltop Boulder History and Projects

Today I hoped on going and finishing up the project on the hilltop bloc at Ute Pass.  This boulder is the first bloc that one sees from the Waldo Canyon parking lot and had long been dismissed as too blank to have any lines.  Back in the day the bloc was called the Gay Boulder because of a drilled pocket traverse on the backside.  One day Ben and Boyko were up at the pass and they decided to clean the line up.  They found a series of crimps that moved rightward from a massive jug to a good incut at the lip finishing with a committing mantle.  Ben renamed the block the Talledega Nights ("Hi, I'm Ricky Bobby and if you don't chew Big Red, then fuck you!")  Ben came close to sending last spring but since it happened to be raining at the time was not able to top the climb out.  Since then I have topped the climb out from the incut, which felt to be a V5 or 6 mantle in itself, but neither Ben nor myself have been able to reach the incut from the start.  Today we had a big old session on it and both Ben and myself were able to stick the small intermediate below the good incut but fell bumping.  On my third go of the day I split my tip open which put me out of commission on the problem.  Shortly after Ben lost his psych on grabbing the holds too.  However, a few months ago Max and me and brushed a few holds about 10 feet to the right but could not put anything together on it.  Since we had a number of pads we did a super stack and were able to brush the holds up higher and feel around a bit.  The climb will be fairly simple, only three moves.  Start with two crimps, right hand to sidepull, right hand to good incut near lip, left to jug, mantle.  While the line did not go due to skin conditions of the crew, the likely grade is V7!!!!!  Here are a few shots of Max and Ben giving the crux move some work; Max is attempting to go left handed to the incut while Ben was trying right.