I guess it’s not really called “Spring Break” any more for me now that I work for a living, but nevertheless this past weekend/week served as our Spring Break trip for the year. I was a bit apprehensive about climbing as I hadn’t really been able to test out my rehabbed arm prior to the trip. As I expected I lack self control and probably climbed harder than I should have, but in general I would say that I felt pretty good.
Rehab never felt so good
We started the trip at Horse Pens 40 and while I wasn’t able to take full advantage, the friction was pretty incredible. On my prior trips the temps were in the 60s or 70s so I thought that was what friction was like. However, on Saturday the temps were in the low 50s and the rock felt like velcro…very sick that I couldn’t take better advantage of it.
Overall, I climbed pretty well and surprised myself by doing a moderately difficult problem as well as sending many easy problems I had never bothered to try before. It was also fun to hang out with Eric and Katie and share some good times at HP40.
The Red River Gorge portion of our trip started out poorly after I misjudged the distance of the drive by 1/3rd and it took us much longer to get from Steele to Slade than I anticipated. Thankfully that was about the only negative part about the trip to Kentucky as the 2 days we spent there were both relaxing and fun.
Monday we decided to just hang out and do some hiking to take in the sights around the campground and wait for some other WI natives to show up. Tuesday we managed to cover a lot of ground climbing at Muir Valley. I climbed more routes on Tuesday than I normally did when I was healthy and it felt good to get some things done. Props also to Alex for sending Jesus Wept in proper style while hanging the draws…which I guess negated the tree dabbing him 75 feet up.
One final note about how the trip ended that will leave me with fond memories. Reminiscent of Memorial Day ’03 when I left the Red at 11 pm to drive the 8 hours home (which I did not make without stopping) for reasons I forget, the prospects of rain on Wednesday morning made us decide in about 5 minutes to pack up and leave at 8:30 pm Tuesday night. I figured there was no way we would make it home without stopping but I was wrong. 4:15 am rolls around and we are pulling into our driveway in WI….only to wake up to snow!
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