Thursday night: We were way short and my status of the kid who bums rides at all times possible got destroyed. The Slatermobile had to be loaded up and head south for it's first big trip since I took ownership.
Friday: Since I got to be in charge of my own transport so we burned out of town a good 6 hours before the big caravan left. Which meant we got to HCR in time to get our evening climb on. All three of us minivaners got 3 very legit, very clean, very confidence building 5.8ish warm up leads on the North 40 before the sun started to fade on us. After we got back to camp we had more than enough time to build a gorgeous fire, eat dinner and indulge our thirst before the next wave of cars started to roll in.
Sat: We rolled out of camp before anyone else, not that we were more well rested or ready to send but we had a full sport rack and a rope so there was no need to wait for the circus that is the KURC to start tying up routes for 3 hours at a time when we could be crushing leads on our own.
Climb #1 for the day was a very runout Orange Crush (when I said full sport rack I might have been lying a bit). OC is one of the classic .9s at HCR and the biggest lead I have tagged yet (90ish feet at the bolts). After that we wandered through the far east side of the valley to grab 2 more .10 leads on Emotional Content and an awkward arete before heading to the Roman wall. The Roman wall was super exposed compared to the rest of the valley and consisted of some very hard slab that ended in some gorgeous overhangs. I immediately jumped on an .11d and got shut down by the third bolt which was super disheartening for me but I just have not had positive feelings for the crux kinda moves the AR slab has been sending my way lately. More likely my draw hanging confidence is not on par with my skill set yet and my confidence of screaming "take" on a rope just isn't there until I'm a good 40 feet up. It was my first dirty send of the weekend and I was pretty humbled coming off of it. After that I grabbed on more .9 lead and headed back to camp.
Sat Night: Ozark Cafe was descended upon by the large group of dirty miscreants from KS. We snarfed and sang at "Jazzper Saturday"... because it's in Jasper. After camp was back in play there was a serious lack of ragin' party buzz compared to the last trip. The Rossi was destroyed around the fire and since the party was lacking a smallish group of us decided to take back to the woods for some night Bouldering. Now normally I'm not one to be up for night sports activities when there is a party to be raged but something in my bones was keeping me scary sober and ready to demolish some boulders, and that we did.
Sunday: Disheartening. I woke up to the sound of rain pitter-pattering against my rainfly and another climber who had decided to go tentless for the weekend in my abode (I'm very glad I decided to bust out my 4 man for the weekend in hindsight). Nobody wanted to try and wait out the weather to get some more climbing in and I didn't feel like making the hooligans in my van wait while I bouldered with locals. So we burned up and over and got home early enough for me to accomplish the same amount with my Sunday that I had originally planned to... absolutely nothing.
So here's to metric schnoz-tons of bolted rock, ragin' it hard, and gettin' the f out of KS.
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