Home for a Rest

The winter leg of our trip has come to an end, and we are now back in Ottawa. On our way back from the Red we made the usual stop at my parent's farm to relax for a few days, clean out the car, and enjoy some awesome home cooked meals. Of course we were put to a bit of work, and we were excited to have an excuse to rope up again, this time to cut some dead limbs from the trees in front of the house. Safety first!

The last four months were once again incredible, highlighted by return trips to some of our favorite destinations, and the discovery of some awesome new ones. We pushed our limits in pretty much all aspects of our climbing, and for the first time on these trips we actually did more trad (37 days) than bouldering (32 days). We even did 10 whole days of sport climbing! Towards the end we were definitely feeling the affects of accumulated fatigue, so it's been nice to take some time off to rest and recover.

It's also been awesome to see some of our friends back home, and hopefully the weather will cooperate enough to get at least a couple of local outdoor climbing days in. We'll hang around Ottawa for another week or two, dealing with some 'real life' stuff, before hitting the road again. We don't really have a concrete plan yet for the summer, but we'll figure it out. Check back in June to see where we are at. At the moment we're pretty content to spend some time enjoying the comforts of home.

Return to the Red - Part 2

We stayed at the Red for just over a week. Despite the forecast constantly calling for rain and thunderstorms (and them occasionally actually happening) we were able to climb pretty much every day. We were also joined by Matt and Kyla, more friends from Ottawa. One day we even managed to convice everyone to do some trad climbing!

Matt, Kristal and I all led Cheaper Than a Movie, 5.8, while Max, Kyla and Marita all followed it. Thanks to Marita and Max for the following pictures. Here I am leading the lower section.

And Kyla following the top half, which does a cool traverse under a large arching roof.

It was great to see everyone switch it up from the usual sport climbing they do, like Max here, working the moves of Kaleidescope, 5.13c.

Otherwise Kristal and I were still on the hunt for awesome cracks to climb. The occasional rain still kept us off many of them (cracks typically take a lot longer to dry out than face climbs) but we still managed to find some. Here is Kristal on the incredible overhanging finger crack Where Lizards Dare, 5.9+, one of the hardest '5.9's we've ever climbed. Thanks to Matt for the photo.

Our favourite route here, and one of the best pitches we've climbed in the last few months, was Arachnid, 5.8.  Here is Kristal racking up. Check out that awesome low angle hand crack!

Here she is getting ready to traverse under the imposing roof, which looks a lot more intimidating than it is.

And here's a shot of the top half of the route, which follows a short offwidth crack to easier climbing up top.  Awesome!

Return to the Red - Part 1

When we first left home last April, our first destination was the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. Back then living life on the road was shiny and new, I was terrified of trad climbing and we had no real clue what lay ahead of us.

A lot has changed since then, and even though our biggest improvement is probably in the time it takes us to pack the car, we were excited to come back and climb some classic trad routes that would have scared us away on our last visit.  It was also great to run into some friends from Ottawa who were also visiting.  Here are Max, Marita and Kristal hanging out by the fire.

The Red has about equal numbers of trad and sport routes, so we did a bit of both, as weather permitted.  We decided to warm up with a day of sport climbing.  Marita suffered through the cold and hung out at the top of one of the routes to take pictures of the rest of us.  Thanks Marita!

Here I am leading 5th Bolt Faith, 5.10c.

Max was climbing pretty hard.  Here he is during his awesome send of Jesus Wept, 5.12d.

Once it was dry enough we were in search of epic trad lines.  Here is Kristal leading what is probably the most popular trad route here, Rock Wars, 5.10a.  Thanks to the random climber we met who took these pictures.

Although most routes here are only one pitch, we were on the lookout for multi pitch routes to get on. It's always a little more satisfying when you actually climb to the top of something.  Here we are at the top of Fortress Wall, after climbing the easy 2 pitch classic, Bedtime for Bonzo, 5.6.

The Manhattan Project

After our stay in Chattanooga, we decided to take a few days off and visit one of Kristal's old friends in the town of Oak Ridge, just outside of Knoxville. It was nice to relax and spend some quality time on the inside, enjoying such novelties as daily showers, unlimited internet and air conditioning.

Oak Ridge is renowned as being one of the production sites for the Manhattan Project, helping to develop the atomic bomb.  Here's The Guest House, closed down now, where such notable scientists as Openheimer and Fermi stayed during that time.

Sharon and Dave were excellent hosts, showing us all there was to see in the area. We spent a day hiking through the beautiful Frozen Head State Park.

We spent quite a while salamander hunting near the waterfalls.

Sharon is an ecologist, so the hike was quite informative, and we made several stops to check out many of the interesting plants and bugs.  It felt very much like being on a grade school field trip.

We also experienced some awesome southern cooking and had a fantastic visit.  Thanks guys!

Code Black

The last week has been interesting to say the least.  We happened to be camping outside of Chattanooga when the tornado storm system blew through.  Needless to say we didn't go climbing that day.

We waited out the first tornado warning sleeping blissfully unaware in our tent.  Thankfully all we saw of that one was a torrential downpour.  Once we got up and headed into town we realized what was going on.  Our quest to find a post office turned into a mini tour of the city, encountering many downed trees, closed roads and power outages.  By our fifth post office we finally found one with power.

We spent the rest of the day waiting out the subsequent tornado warnings in a grocery store, a Walmart, a Chinese restaurant and a McDonald's.  It all blew through by around 11pm, and were finally able to go comfortably go back and sleep in the tent.  Which managed to survive quite well despite the many downed branches and a nearby toppled tree.

We spent the next few days bouldering at our favourite golf course/boulder field, Stone Fort.  They apparently had a large Easter Egg hunt among the boulders over the Easter weekend.  It was fun to find the left over eggs, which all contained delicous candy, in the nooks and crannies of the boulders.

Despite the conditions not being as ideal as during our last visit, we still had a great time enjoying the huge variety of climbing.  Here I am working the moves of the amazing hard slab, Space, V8.

Kristal on the interesting and fun, Black Carpet, V4.

One of the more intimidating (and awesome) lines here is the tall, somewhat terrifying and aptly named, Tall Crack, V2.  Here is Kristal preparing for and climbing on it.

Back East

It was a bit sad leaving Colorado, despite the crappy weather.  We had planned to spend a good month or so climbing there, enjoying the wide variety of climbing the state had to offer.  I guess springtime just isn't the time to do it.  We hit the road, hoping for some better luck with the weather back east.

First stop was Elephant Rocks State Park, a small area of granite boulders in southern Missouri.  With visions of hanging out with a buch of people who were afraid to go outside, we headed to the nearest camping area - Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park.  Imagine my dissappointment when I discovered that a Shut-In was just a fancy name for a type of river rapids.

Kristal enjoying the Shut-Ins

Unfortunately for us the weather continued to be uncooperative.  Since we hadn't planned to stay long, and knowing there would be a chance of rain, we had decided to sleep in the car.  Thank goodness for us!  What had originally been forecasted as scattered thunderstorms turned into a full blown storm of epic proportions, complete with tornado warnings right where we were camping.  We couldn't get to sleep all that easily with the constant lightning, torrential rain and thoughts of tornadoes carrying us away.  When Kristal decided to visit the little girl's room in the middle of the night she discovered 3 inches of water outside the car.

About half an hour later the water had risen to 6 inches.  Good thing we weren't sleeping in the tent!  It turned out there was a small creek about 50 feet behind our site that decided to flood its banks.  We quickly moved to higher ground.

As the storm continued to rage the next day, doing any kind of climbing anywhere in Missouri or Southern Illinois was obviously out of the question.  We decided to head to Chattanooga, which appeared to be far enough south of the epic storm system to be largely unnaffected.

First stop was Tennessee Wall, an excellent trad crag that we had somehow never made it to on our many previous visits through the area.  We enjoyed two excellent days of climbing, despite not having a guidebook and running into no other people at the wall.  We just decided to jump on whatever looked good, and looked easy enough for us to climb.  As it turned out we managed to jump on quite a few of the classic moderates. Here I am on Puppy Ride, 5.9.

The views from the top, overlooking the Tennessee River, were pretty awesome.

It's been a while since we've been in the land of dense deciduous forest.  The sheer volume of bugs will take a few days to get used to again.  At least there are also a lot of pretty flowers about.

The End of Colorado

For the last week, the weather in Colorado has been, well, subideal. With nothing but more rain and wind in the forecast, we reluctantly decided it might be time to start heading east. However, I refused to go without first climbing one of the Flatirons, these awesome looking sandstone slabs that tower over Boulder, Co. (For the record this stubborn behaviour is completely uncharacteristic, I swear). Despite his better judgment and the rather questionable weather forecast, I coerced Jason into going out. From the parking lot, the sky looked clear and the climbing inviting.

The first couple of pitches offered easy, but pretty runnout slab climbing.

But at the top of the second pitch, we started to get a bit nervous. The wind picked up, there was thunder in the distance, the sky didn't look too good and I began to think that maybe Jason had been right after all.

We passed the slower party ahead of us and made a run for the summit. Here's Nick and Tara at the top of the fourth pitch.

Thankfully, the storm passed us by and the view from the summit was well worth the anxiety.