Wow, I hadn’t realised it had been so long since I last updated this. Sorry if any of you have had withdrawal symptoms. What have I been up to since my last post? Pretty much the same as before, hence the difficulty in coming up with a title.
I did play football, or soccerball, the weekend after my last post but there’s nothing too exciting to report there. Honestly can’t remember what else I did that weekend so I suspect it may have mainly involved being lazy, nor can I remember much about the week after – undoubtedly I did some work but I doubt much else of note happened.
The weekend after that I did indeed go to Arkansas with the Kansas City Climbing Club and I had a thoroughly good time. I went down with three people for whom this was their first outdoor trip and spent the weekend introducing them to the joys of outdoor climbing. I think they may now be hooked! Managed to get them all to do their first sport lead by the end of the weekend as well which was great. I didn’t do so badly climbing wise either. OK, I didn’t get on anything massively hard but I did do more routes than I’ve ever done on an Arkansas trip before and only two of them were repeats. The number of routes were helped by some night climbing both Friday evening, when we arrived just before dark, and Saturday evening. I was particularly pleased with my 5.9+ lead in the dark. All in all a really good weekend. Photos are here.
Last Saturday I headed to Trappers where I’d been led to believe slabs lay. And I had not been mislead. This was the first time I’d been able to do a lot of slab climbing in a long time and it was really nice for that. Of course the weather helped a lot as it was a pretty much perfect temperature, not too cold and not so hot I sweated. I now need to go back there to try to get a route cleanly that I got to the top of but not in one push. It’s not in the (rather old) guidebook but the web reckons it’s anywhere between 5.10b and 5.10d – I’d be inclined to believe more towards the later. Photos are here.
After climbing we stopped at the, as it turns out, really not bad local BBQ place before heading back to Kansas City. I then headed over to another climbing friends house for a “games” evening, which while I was there largely consisted off playing Cards Against Humanity which it turns out one of those there is quite obsessed by. All in all a really good day. The next day I was meant to be heading back to Trappers with a different crowd, including many of those that had been at the games night. However the weather put paid to this so after getting Indian food as brunch we headed indoors instead.
Over the last few weeks I’ve continued to practice my swimming and have attended another lesson. Am really pleased with how I’m going on. I still surprise myself at how good I can be at stuff like that when I properly try. Don’t get me wrong I’m not good, just better than I ever thought I’d be. Gets me rather annoyed at my past attitude towards sports. Oh well, what’s done is done.
This coming week includes Thanksgiving and so I’ve taken the whole week off. The plan is to head to Trappers tomorrow (well today now) before heading over the New River Gorge in West Virginia for a few days of hiking. From there I’ll be heading back to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky to catch up with a few others and spend a few days climbing. The weather forecast is looking good for the whole week so I’m hopeful that it will be a really good week and that it might enable me to think of a decent title for my next blog post!