Three Day Weekend

Well, we were fortunate enough to have a three day weekend this first weekend back to school, and I was able to make as much of it as I could with some climbing.

On Saturday, I woke up with the intent to drive down to Nashville and spend the day climbing in the gym there. Except, when I stepped outside and realized that the sky was clearing off and the temps weren't extremely bad, I placed a call to Mike and we were on our way to Drapers Bluff in So iLL within the hour. It was a pretty cool day too. We started out doing a little bouldering and we both made quick work of an interesting V4. I then worked an interesting little V7 dyno that I got pretty close too (tips went right over the jug), but I just couldn't finish it up. We then moved up the hill to a different boulder called the Egg. It has some pretty sweet problems, one of which is the super classic Gun's N Roses V9. A definite must...if you're climbing at that level. Mike and I however worked on two little V5's for a bit, Scrambled Eggs and Barfly. We figured out most of the moves for each but just couldn't quite put together a send on either one.

After this we decided that we were sort of disheartened with the bouldering and headed back down to the cars and picked up our rope gear, and I suckered Mike into trudging up the hill with all of his trad gear. I also suckered him into leading up a super cool 5.6 pitch of trad called Bloody Nose. Definitely a classic climb and we then set up top rope on a cool .10a on the rappel down. I flashed it! .10a TR flash! Sick! After this we moved over and tried to finish up on a pretty cool .11a there called Leap of Faith. I thrutched through the first two bolts and the cruised right up to the fourth where there is a pretty good rest. Then it gets down to business with small crimpy sidepulls to bad open hand slopey sidepulls. Once you gain the highest slopey side pull you make a right hand move to a terrible backhand undercling (?)then have to get these really awkward feet and make a move up to a shallow jug. From there I just bypassed the last bolt and mantled out onto the large ledge and clipped the anchors. Unfortunately, I didn't figoure out this beta the first time...nor the second...but the third was the charm.

Sunday was a homework day, and then yesterday we went down to the gym in Nashville to climb. There, we met up with Chris and Carmen and proceeded to tear the gym to pieces. Everyone climbed pretty well and it was a good time climbing with that group.

The weather is looking good for this coming weekend, and hopefully things will stay that way and I can finish up some of my long standing projects from the fall! Today though, I'm glued to the TV for this inaguration!