Jackson November 8-9

Well, it looks like I'm going to be spending my first entire weekend in Murray. Not too excited about that little fact, but it has already been a pretty nice experience since I was able to sleep in until 9:00 this morning! It was awesome! Now I'm making pancakes and going to do some homework and get some studying done. Anyways, on to the climbing events of last weekend...

Friday night, I headed up to Jackson with Mike C. and we hung out for a while and waited for Carmen and Chris, two friends from Nashville, to make it in. They came in, we hung out for a bit and then decided to turn in so we could have an early start on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning we were able to get down into the falls by 9:30. Promptly we went over to Royal Arch wall to do some warming up. I set up Deetle Dumps 5.8 and everone else gave it a run through on lead as well. Pretty awesome. At the top I went ahead and set up a TR on the .11c that is between Deetle Dumps and Arch Angel. I gave that like two goes on TR and have nearly figured out all the beta and it could possibly go clean here sometime in the near future. I also led up The Meanest Flower 5.9 which is a really cool climb! Just might be my favorite for the grade at Jackson. Next, we ran over to Lovely Tower and I sent Lovely Arete again, to get some draws set on Hidden Treasure .12a. I ended up giving Hidden two goes and while I didn't get the send I was able to get it both times with only one fall. I'm pretty psyched still, because hopefully it'll go sometime here in the near future. After that Carmen and Chris got in a few more climbs on Spleef and we called it a day. Oh AND Mike made it all the way through this gnarly .12d slab that was just put up a few weekends ago. Kudos to him. I didn't even want to consider trying that stuff.

Sunday, we woke up and headed down to Manky Alcove and warmed up on The Essence of Manky 5.9 and I ended up taking a few falls for Chris and Carmen so that they could get some good practice giving a good catch. After that Mike went up Creep Show .10a, and we also we up a new .10a/b that was put up on the outside arete. I also went down inbetween some climbing and did some bouldering with a few local guys and sent a few V2's. We ended up not really moving from this area all day and I climbed Creep show like 4 times but never got back on Access Denied .11c. After that we all went ahead and left as Chris needed to be back early to prepare for his trip to Ecuador!

It definitely was a pretty great weekend and I really hope that I can climb with that group of people again sometime here in the very near future. Was definitely my favorite time of the fall. Next weekend it's looking like Drew is going to come down from ISU and climb at Jackson with me and Carmen is looking at the possibility too. I think it could be another pretty awesome time. I'm definitely psyched to climb and hang w/ Drew again! We're even looking at the possibilities of a trip down to Horseshoe as soon as school is done for me in early December! Sooo much climbing to do!

Hope everyone is doing well and I'll be seeing most everyone here in the next two weeks!