Two weekends ago we took the kids from our climbing team on an 11+ hour drive to try out the bouldering at the Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Jasper, Arkansas. Based on both awesome segments in both Dosage III and V and much verbal hyping, we were expecting no less than a world class bouldering area. As with most things in life, reality often fails to meet one’s expectations.
Now, this is not to say that we didn’t have a great time or wouldn’t go back to the Ranch. The bouldering at HCR is still worlds better than anything within a 5 hour radius of Milwaukee. However, I think that most of us were expecting a similar experience to the bouldering at HP40 in Alabama, and HCR doesn’t quite have the same concentration of high quality problems in the grades we were looking for (V3-V7). We were using the free topo provided by Dr. Topo so perhaps we just didn’t know about everything there was to do.
Overall, HCR is an incredible place to visit. The landscape/scenery is amazing; our visit coincided nicely with the height of fall colors. The cabins are very comfortable and the staff is extremely helpful and accommodating (fresh towels every day). One of the barns even has activities available such as dodge ball, table tennis and basketball, which during the initial rain we experienced proved to be useful. And if you’re looking for a bit more in terms of outdoor adventure, there is always horse dodging and goat fight vieiwing to partake in. All of this, coupled with the climbing, made for a unique experience when compared with other climbing areas we’ve visited.
Mrs. Narc would like to mention that HCR is not ideal in terms of boot of doom accessibility – lots of sloping, rocky paths. It, too, is a bit difficult to dodge horse doo with crutches…. The boulders can be reached, however, with perseverance and a good piggy-back ride or two.
Below are a few pictures from the trip. You can see more on the recently updated Pictures Page, or if you are in the right circles you can see many pictures on The Facebook.
Danny working his way up Momento (V5)…
…and sticking the crux lunge
Tony topping out a cool V3
We came prepared to fall…
Mrs. Narc was not about to let the boot of doom hold her down
seeing that boot of doom makes me a sad timmy. here’s to a speedy recovery, mrs. narc!
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yeah seriously! you look not psyched for sure. hope it gets better soon doode
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In the defense of Mrs. Narc this picture was taken shortly after the hike up to the boulders which involved a lot of 4WD-cructhing and uncomfortable piggy back riding.
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looks more like she looks after a brutal thumb wrestling beating at the hands of sweatpants. perhaps a glimpse at the future…
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–obligatory smack talking comment re: brand of pads–
next: have the sharma lines from dosage 3, *other than* king lion and fitness, been repeated yet? just watched the segment again at 5:41 – 5:53?AM. it helped with the wake-up. it did not help with the hangboard. again, i was reduced to watching climbing footage w/ coffee in my jammies in the basement without getting a “sikk workout” i had promised myself over beverages and junkfood the night before.
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— obligatory defense re: only 2 of the pads were ours —
To my limited knowledge none of the super hard lines from dosage 3 have been repeated, “Full Package” and “In The Zone” being the main ones?? It has been a while since I’ve watched that segment so my name recall is a bit fuzzy…
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sockpant- i do that all the time and it never really pans out the next day. luckily you’re skinny as balls, where as I am destined to be fat.
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omg you do not know my ability to gain weight and grow middle-soft like warm butter.
go to my old blog and search “trout” “fishing with dad” “elevenmile” and similar. behold my genetic predecessor. my dad can still rip me in half, yet he gets tired on castlewood canyon approaches.
with my horrid and increasingly rickety and sore knees, tweaky ankle, and now, my bad left shoulder and tweaked wrist, it’s getting even more difficult to motivate to climb plastic just to have a shot at projects of days past.
the only hopeful thing is that last summer was my most prolific ever and i hope to rally to get stuff done during winter commando sessions.
still, it seems to me much harder to get moving and keep moving than before and this is just the beginning of 30!
fools with full time jobs, a family, and 35 years + age are certainly the ill-est bitches out there. believe that!
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werd to mothers
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“Skinny as balls” eh? That one was nearly soda out the nose.
Sick shots Narc!
Did anyone get to go bowling into that wall of inferior foam?
That would be AWESOME!
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Happy to provide a bit of entertainment… also Narc, those are some great shots… momento looks rad as well as that kind of steep roofy looking thing and the other slopy lip traverse looking rig. looks like some fun ones.
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@Situner – No bowling but there were some half-witted attempts at sumo-pad wrestling.
@sweaty – Momento is one of those classic slopey rigs where it takes you (me in this case) 20 minutes to figure out how to do the 1st move because pulling harder isn’t the solution. Unfortunately I couldn’t power up for that last move pictured above!
The crimpy roof problem (Leatherface) was awesome (and felt easy for the given grade so I of course liked it).
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you’ve always been a sucker for soft grades 😉
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@ Tim — Thanks…here’s to hoping the boot of doom will soon be gone and will not make another return visit!
@sweatpants — one day we will meet and you will see…victory shall be mine
@Narc — the off-road crutching and piggy-backing was not fun, ha?! You’re a much better piggy-back ride giver than spotter, so amen for that 🙂
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@sweaty – the story of my life
@YKWIA – I’m much better at piggy back rides than belaying as well…allegedly…probably…
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@Narc — no comment
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Ok so lets all be honest… Narc is a mediocre piggy-back giver and the only thing he really excells at is beta whoring and injury contribution.
As for YKWIA… you seem to only excell at injuries and getting in over your head with thumb wrestling matches.
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I concur with the beta whoring 110%
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Sawmill, go to Sawmill…
-nic
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“fools with full time jobs, a family, and 35 years + age are certainly the ill-est bitches out there. believe that!”
Sweet!
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Wait, what’s an ill bitch?
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To be honest, a lot of the boulders on dosage 3 werent at horseshoe, some are near, just walking distance off ranch property, or a half hour’s drive away. The topo guidebook sucks. i would definitely recommend giving hcr another chance with a real guide book and exploring more of the ranch. I remember meeting you guys out by the loaf boulder and the topo was off quite a bit. check out more of the idahos, there are tons of problems in the 3 to 7 range in and around horseshoe. you just have to know where to go. next time make sure you have a better look at the area youre criticizing please
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ALEX: prepare a guidebook with all the v7s in and around the HCR region, including hard 6s and soft 8s.
then, post that shit right here and i will come. i will probably try to skimp on tour guide fees and demand to be “comped” for the accomidations, but upon your deathbead, at age 101, you will receive total consciousness; so you got that goin’ for you, which is nice
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Alex – a few things:
1) We also had the published guidebook however it didn’t seem to offer much different compared to the dr. topo guide
2) Due to various factors including weather and the size of our group we didn’t have a lot of time to do much exploring so that admittedly skews our judgment a bit.
3) I wasn’t trying to be overly critical, just offering up the opinions based on how our trip went.
We are very psyched to go back to HCR in the near future. Hopefully we’ll see you out there.
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Alex, Narc dissed the Dodge too, which is also completely unacceptable.
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sock hands: i understood the first part of what you said. But what the hell are you talking about?
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An all too common response to sock hands…
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to clarify, there are not a ton of problems in the idahos. there are not a ton of problems at hcr. it gets hyped as a “destination” but it aint, sowwy.
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Its true the Narc can be a little hard on such classic climbing areas. He likes to build himself up by tearing others down. He’s very destructive in personality. In fact most people believe that Mrs. Narc was getting to strong and to ensure his superiority he… well we all know what he did don’t we.
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alex tell your parents to make you watch classic movies.
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caddyshack, what?
hcr is cool, and i’d be in love with the place if i lived there. in fact, the ozarks might be one of the best places in the country for tapping unclimbed rock (source: my mind).
but if i’m gonna drive a few hundred miles i’ll be taking my pads, beer, and excuses to the pens or rocktown.
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