Adventures in Kansas and Nova Scotia

The weekend after my lazy weekend I went to Arkansas climbing for the final time. It was the weekend of Horseshoe Hell, a 24 hour climbing competition at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch. Competitors get points for each route they complete based on it’s hardness and bonus points if they complete a route each hour of the 24 hours. UK Health and Safety would have a field day! This year many people completed over 100 routes. The team record (teams consist of two people) was 402 in this case split evenly between the two people. A Kansas City based team even managed over 90 trad routes each. Madness!

Anyway we got down to HCR about halfway through the competition and after a little bit of supporting the competitors headed to bed. Carol had invited me to go climbing at Red Rock Point with her, some guy she’d met on her previous trip and one of his friends. Red Rock Point is on private land and so it’s normally quite difficult to climb there but the person Carol had met vaguely knew the land owners and so was able to get permission to climb. His friend had barely climbed at all so I did an easy lead – treating it as a solo – and then moved a top rope around. At the end of the day I did brave a lead only to get rained on half way through it – and boy did it rain! Eventually I managed to finish the route and get my gear back before 4 drenched climbers left the crag. Was glad to have been able to climb at Red Rock Points as it’s definitely a very nice crag but, in my opinion, it also wasn’t as great as it looks from the road – maybe the allure of it had been increased in the past by not being able to climb there. Photos are here.

After being pulled over on the way back for running a stop sign (I wasn’t driving) and stopping off for food we arrived back at HCR where we joined the party that follows the competition before I finally headed to bed after several beers. It rained over night which meant that next morning everything looked a bit damp and the people I rode down with didn’t fancy climbing or staying around to see if it dried up. Not the best way to end my last trip to Arkansas but unfortunately we can’t control the weather! Having got back to Lawrence quite early I took a walk round Lawrence to get some more pictures of the town before I leave. I haven’t uploaded the photos yet but I’ll update this post when I have.

The next weekend I finally went to South Dakota. I’d been planning on going hiking in South Dakota pretty much since I’d arrived in Kansas but for one reason or another (mostly climbing related) it had never happened. The original plan had been to go for a week but a lack of time off and having lots of other stuff to do meant that it became a planned 5, actually 4, day trip. Things were rather complicated by the federal government shutdown which meant all the national parks and such were shut. Further complicating things was the large amount of snow that had recently fallen in that area. I’d been aware that it had snowed but not how much. There was a lot! A trip report is here.

By this stage I was starting to run out of time to organise everything for leaving Kansas so the next weekend I had designated my “sort things out” weekend but I still managed to do rather a lot of other things. Mary Ashley had arranged a leaving party for me on the Friday evening and although it was a small group I believe a good time was had by all. The theme of the party was America so I brought doughnuts and Bud Light (as a representative of the worse kind of American beer). The later back fired on me a bit as I was then made to drink rather too much of it!

Following a rather slow start to Thursday I headed to Cliff Drive for some outside climbing. The original plan had been to head to Trappers but this turned out to be inconvenient for most people so we headed to Cliff Drive instead. Had a good afternoon’s climbing which included climbing the decent trad crack climb there – it went much easier than last time I did it.

Sunday was mostly spent organising leaving but towards the end of the day I headed to The Strength Lab – the bouldering gym in Lawrence for a small amount of bouldering. This was all going rather well until I got on a hard (for me) problem at the end of the evening. Turns out I didn’t position the mat properly – partly because I didn’t think I’d get too high – so when I fell off I first hit the edge of the mat before falling off it. This lead to a reasonably badly sprained ankle. Exactly what I need a week before I headed to Red Rocks for a two week climbing trip. Dave, who runs the gym and who I’ve known since before the gym opened, was very nice about it all and stayed rather late while the pain subsided enough to walk and then very kindly drove me home in my car with his bike in the boot/trunk.

The rest of the week was mainly spent organising leaving and working when I could – both of which were complicated somewhat by my ankle. Jamie, Mark’s PhD student was defending his thesis on Wednesday so I dragged myself into the office on Tuesday to watch him practice his presentation before going in for the real thing on Wednesday. He successfully defended his thesis so we all headed out for food and drinks that evening. My ankle cut my evening short a bit as it meant I’d driven down so couldn’t drink too much and it also started to hurt. Still I managed to have a good time before I did leave.

Thursday was a Kansas City Climbing Club meeting. I’d agreed to give a presentation on Climbing in the UK which seemed to go down well. After showing them the falls clips from E11 and trying to explain the British grading system to them I think I successfully convinced them that all Brits are mad! Friday I headed off on my climbing trip to Vegas and I’ll cover that in my next post.

Sorry for the delay in this post – it was caused by a combination of not wanting to post much about jobs before I had one sorted and being rather busy organising everything before I leave Kansas. So I’ll be faking dates again.

Well I went to Nova Scotia. It was mostly positive. It was quite clear that he wanted me to join his lab as I was out up in some rather nice places and that was on top of the rather expensive last minute flights. My first night was spent in the Hilton Garden Inn near the airport and the next two nights in a hotel near his lab. Well I say hotel. They’d got me an apartment at the hotel that included a large kitchen, bathroom with jacuzzi bath and a desperate living room – it was totally over the top for one person!

The people in the lab seemed really nice and my new boss, Sean, seemed like a nice guy as well. The only real downside I could see was the windowless office. I got taken out for a pub lunch – including beer – and then had dinner with Sean in the evening at a really rather nice, and expensive restaurant – including wine. The other major thing of note from my visit to his lab was my visit to his orchard where he’s growing a thousand apple trees to help in his long term goal of being able to select the crosses most likely to be good crosses before growing them and waiting for fives years for them to bear fruit. I think the coolest thing about the orchard was how all the trees were being grown on dwarf root stock to stop them growing too big – I didn’t even know that was possible.

It turns out that although Kentville, the town the lab is based just outside, is nothing to write home about, Wolfville, just a 15 minute drive away is a really rather nice university town that seemed like a cool place to live. Between the two is New Minas which is basically one big shopping centre. Certainly not somewhere I’d want to live but at least it will make shopping easier – I would imagine there’d be very little you’d have to go into Halifax for.

On the day after my interview I went for a short hike before heading back to the airport. Both on the way there and back I stopped at a popular overlook and took some picture. I stopped on the way back to see if the tide was noticeably different as the Bay of Fundy has the biggest tidal range in the world. While noticeably different it wasn’t anything too amazing but maybe I just had my timing wrong. As for the hike itself, I knew the path went towards the sea on the other side of the peninsula but it started to look like I’d never get of the forest and see the sea on that side. Just as I was about to give up I found a side ath that led me down to some quite nice views. Photos from the Nova Scotia trip, including of my hotel “room” are here.

On the job front I also heard that I hadn’t got an interview for the Southampton job. I also had an informal interview for a job in London which went well enough that he made it sound like the formal interview would be, well a formality. Having spoken to him I had a difficult decision to make but in the end I’ve decided to take the Canada job for a couple of main reasons. Firstly, it’s an opportunity to work in Canada which appealed more than London and, secondly, although it may make making the next step in my career slightly harder it’s more likely to lead to any future job being in an area I’m more interested in. As such Canada was too good an opportunity to turn down – I’m much more likely to be able to get a London-based job in the future than one in Canada.

Making a decision on the job took a few weeks – a lot of which was spent waiting for replies to e-mails – so now back to where we were. The weekend after visiting Nova Scotia I headed down to Arkansas with Seth and Rob and met up with a lot of other people there. The first day was spent at HCR. Seth, Rob and I started the day doing some trad cracks. The highlight for me was first top-roping and then leading WMA. I top-roped it clean but unfortunately had a foot pop on lead. I also later sat on the rope to sort out a rope tangled round my foot but may have been able to avoid sitting on the rope if I had wanted to but there seemed no point as I already wasn’t doing it clean. I’d top-roped WMA with Carol on my very first Arkansas trip and told myself then that I would lead it before I left the US so it was nice to get it on lead, even if a little annoying that it wasn’t clean.

The rest of the day was spent doing a few sports routes before Rob and I headed to Sam’s Throne Sunday morning. It was Rob’s first visit to Sam’s Throne and I think he was rather impressed – as he should have been given that it’s wonderful. I seconded Rob up a couple of classics and led a couple of less-classic, but still very good routes, myself. They were not however worth the R and X dangerous grades they got in the guidebook. Yes, there wasn’t a nice vertical crack to lace with gear but if you looked around there was more than enough decent gear on both so that you were never facing a big fall. Photos from Saturday are here.

As I’d been away for four weekends on the trot I designated the next weekend a rest weekend and I honestly can’t remember what I did so it can’t have been very exciting!

Well the last two weekends I’ve been back going away climbing again. The weekend before last, after quite a bit of procrastinating trying to decide whether I could take two days off, I decided to join Rob and Seth on a trip to Minnesota. They’d done a trip to South Dakota while I was at my conference and while there had met some people from Minnesota who invited them climbing and I tagged along on their trip. Thursday evening saw us doing the long drive to the St Paul area where we slept in the nice people from Minnesota garden.

Next day, after a bit of a slow start and after having been provided with breakfast we headed off to Taylor’s Falls. The river which forms the falls is the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin and we ended up climbing on the Wisconsin side. In this part of the world top-roping is the prevailing ethic, although some routes are leadable. We had an enjoyable time top-roping four routes which included, in my case, a fall on a 5.5 after I got off route and traversed across too early and found climbing that was definitely not 5.5. After climbing we headed back Steve and Grant’s (Steve’s son) house where Steve’s wife provided us with dinner – all rather civilised!

Saturday morning saw us driving up to the north shore of Lake Superior and the crag where Mary Ashley and I ended up not climbing after my car started dying on me. Again we top-roped but I only got one route done. Being lake cliffs – to all extents and purposes sea cliffs given the size of the lake – it was a case of abseiling or being lowered in and then climbing out. I’d had a bit of a head ache all day but thought I’d be OK. Turns out that exertion made me headache much worse and on the one climb I did I was reduced to doing a couple of moves then sitting on the rope waiting for the head ache to get better again. Eventually I made it to the top where after a bit of a rest I spent the rest of the day taking photos. Russell, his wife and his mum, who’s visiting from Australia, joined us that evening at the campsite where we were rather lucky to get the last site.

Sunday saw us heading back to Palisade head. I still wasn’t feeling great but managed a couple of climbs, a 5.7 clean and a 5.10b with some faffing. Seth and Rob did some horrible off width but by that time I’d decided that I probably couldn’t manage another climb anyway so once again took photos. It was a bit disappointing to not be feeling that great but the location was really nice – reminding me that I miss sea cliffs – and I still had a really enjoyable day. The day was made all the more enjoyable by a visit at the end of the day to a water hole with a cool water fall. We had planned to cook dinner while we were there but a passing thunderstorm put pay to that idea. Thankfully it passed really quickly and by the time we were back at camp it was already gone.

Monday morning saw us heading back towards Kansas City via a stop for breakfast and then a quick look round the harbour at Two Harbours which gave me more photo opportunities. Somehow, between the swimming hole and Two Harbours, I’d managed to see two places I’d not seen with Mary Ashley which was a rather unexpected bonus. On the way back we stopped in Ames, Iowa for dinner at a Brazilian bar where Rob worked while at university. The food was good but Rob didn’t really do a good job of selling Ames while we were there. Although in his defence it’s not an easy place to sell to climbers! Photos from the trip are here – a few are by Rob.

This weekend just gone saw me, eventually, heading to HCR with Mary Ashley and a couple of others. There had been quite a lot of discussion about whether we should go given the heat but in the end we decided to go. For various reasons we ended up getting in about 1.30am on Friday which led to a late start on Saturday. This in turn led to rather more climbing in the heat of the day then we’d have liked. Still I managed three routes before we gave up for the day and headed to Steel Creek for some swimming.

Sunday morning saw us up rather earlier and I managed to get six routes down before we called it a day. I was the only one psyched to stay to Monday – it’s a three day weekend (Labor Day) here so after a bit of relaxing we headed back to Kansas City. Over the whole weekend I didn’t get on anything too hard but was pleased with how easy I found some of the easier routes I did – hopefully this isn’t just because of the soft grading at HCR. Was also please to get an overhanging, powerful 10a as it was so not my style. OK it was a dogged lead but that’s still a significant improvement over my last attempt when I couldn’t get it on top rope. While relaxing on the Sunday I got my camera out and took some photos which can be found here although none of them are of actual climbing.

Also of note over the last few weeks is that I seem to have had some success job hunting. It appears that, unless my references turn out terrible, that I have a job in Nova Scotia, Canada if I want it. The job sounds cool, the boss seemed cool on the phone but the one possible downside is it’s in the middle of nowhere. Although it’s a university job it’s off campus in a town of about 6,000 people and about an hour away from both the main university and Halifax, the nearest big city. I’m a little nervous about that idea but I’m going to visit next weekend which should give me a better idea of whether I’d like it there. I’m also still waiting to hear back from a job I’ve applied for in Southampton.

I think I’m finally up to date and I can’t think of anything else to write. I’ll try and update this more quickly next time – especially as I will hopefully have some job news.

Well once again it’s been too long since I’ve updated my blog and once again I’m faking dates. Whoops. At the end of my last post I’d just been for a day trip to Warsaw and as it turned out that was the start of a trend of day trips climbing rather than weekends away. Also a little oddly this post isn’t going to be as much about climbing as normal as I’ve also been up to other stuff.

That said the main thing of note for the weekend after the one where I finished my last post was that, you’ve guessed it, I went climbing. No where particularly exciting as I only did an afternoon trip to Cliff Drive but it did turn into my best and most enjoyable session at Cliff Drive yet. Rob and I turned up mid afternoon and had done quite a bit of climbing by the time Seth and later Russell turned up. After doing the easy warm up I first top roped and then led a 10a. Well it gets 10a in the now rather dated guidebook but the description also no longer makes sense as doing it as described is most definitely a considerable number of grades harder than 10a. Anyway last time I got on it I managed to grab the chain but not clip it leading to a significant fall so I was rather pleased to get it first on top-rope and then on lead – I should add that this was by doing it the wat everyone now seems to do it rather than the guidebook way. This time it didn’t even feel that difficult. Don’t know if I’ve got better or whether I was just having a better day. Rob and I hung around for a while after Seth and Russell had turned up before heading off for beer and wings. Photos from the day are here.

The next weekend involved no outside climbing whatsoever. Instead Saturday morning found me heading to Elk City Lake to complete the last hike on a “Best Hikes in Kansas” list which can be found here. I arrived early afternoon and after some time taking pictures and playing with my new macro lens I headed off on the hike. The start was rather cool as it passed by the top and then underneath some, for Kansas, pretty impressive bluffs. No pictures I’m afraid as there were so many trees and the like around that getting a good photo would have been rather difficult. The rest of the hike was nowhere near so exciting and a bit of a slog as it got rather humid. So much so that on the way back I detoured onto the road rather than do the bluff bit of the walk again. After a bit of time driving around the rest of the lake and exploring the camp site options I set up camp and had an enjoyable evening drinking and reading. It was very relaxing which was exactly what I needed. The promised rain thankfully held off until after I went to bed but it certainly rained overnight and was still raining in the morning so I headed back to Lawrence. On the way back I got lunch in Iola, which happened to be where one of my friends was spending her weekdays working. Can’t say it was as bad as Kyrie had made it out to be although I can’t imagine it was a very fun place to spend the week either. Photos from the hike are here.

The following Saturday, after a rather lazy start to the day, I went to the Overland Park Arboretum to play with my camera and new lens some more. I was really rather impressed by the place and had an enjoyable copy of hours taking pictures and hiking. Wish I’d found the place earlier. I really rather like my new macro lens and although I was, and am, still learning how to best use it I think I got some reasonable photos that can be found here. Once I finished at the Arboretum I went into Kansas City to watch Despicable Me 2. For a kid’s film it was really rather enjoyable and made a nice end to the day.

The next day found Seth, Stephen and I heading to Trappers Camp for a day’s climbing. Unfortunately we only thought to check the water level when we were nearly there and it turned out that the bottom of the routes were indeed under water. A quick bit of discussion later and we were off to “The Quarry” a nearby climbing destination that we knew existed but that we’d never been too. The high lake level also effected the normal approach as the end of the road and beginning of the trail were also underwater but after some bush whacking we managed to work our way around the flooded section and arrived at the top of the crag. After looking at the scramble down for a while we decided it was doable and we were soon at the bottom of the crag and marvelling at the massive cave that was there. This had obviously been made by quarrying but was still impressively large and even had some aid routes across the roof. After some time exploring the cave we got on with doing a couple of routes, which after a bit of cleaning, turned out to be pretty decent. After those two decent routes Seth and I climbed out with packs on and this was one of the few times I’ve had to curse someone else for being too tall as I couldn’t reach the hold that Seth was telling me to use. Being tired and hot and wanting to go home I ended up pulling on a draw just to get back to the top of the crag. Unlike the first two routes I won’t be suggesting that anyone gets on this one. All in all we made the best of the day and it turned out very enjoyable and “The Quarry” was definitely worth visiting just to see the cave. Photos are here.

The main thing of note for the next weekend was that I went to the Overland Park Arboretum again – see I told you I liked it. Took plenty more photos, which are here. Other than that I don’t think I have a whole lot else to report from that weekend.

Also in this time scale I finished with physical therapy. I thought I’d reached the point of diminishing returns and that most of what I was doing when I went I could do much cheaper at home. After a discussion with my physical therapist we decided to stop my visits and see how it went and I’m pleased to say that so far it’s going well. Things also started happening with jobs in this period but I’ll leave all that sort of stuff to my next post.

The title of this post should be a clue that it’s going to be about climbing. Well at least a lot of it is as I don’t have a whole lot else to report. So without further ado…

The weekend after Independence day I was heading to Arkansas with Kim, Kyrie and Richard. Carol was a late addition after her original plan for the weekend got pushed back a few weeks. Friday evening saw three of us squashed in the back seat of Kim’s car on the way down to Jamestown. Carol and I hadn’t been to Jamestown before although the other three had been a few weeks previously. Jamestown is about a two hour further drive than most crags in Arkansas so we stopped about an hour and a half from the crag to camp.

After a slightly damp not sleeping outside – due to dew rather than rain – and a reasonably slow start we arrived at the crag about midday. Jamestown is a nice crag even if it is a bit out of the way. Carol decided that a 10b for the first route of the day was the way to go. I belayed her, Kim top-roped it and then I tried leading it. The first clip was at the edge of a reasonable size roof and it took me way too long to work up the confidence to clip it, slowly leaning out more with each try. Eventually I worked up enough confidence and got it only to take a few falls pulling around the roof. I finally finished the route and found out that Carol had done two routes while I’d been trying the 10b. Whoops. Oh well was pleased to work up the confidence to get the clip – I never like doing stuff where I may hit the ground – even if it did take too long.

Three more leads followed – including a rest on one due to being tired after the 10b – before we called it a day. We went and make camp, Richard made food for us all and everyone went to bed pretty early. Which all made for a much earlier start the next day. Earlier enough than Carol managed 6 routes and I 5 and a half – I couldn’t finish the last sustained overhanging route (thankfully permadrawed) before we left at 1 for the long drive home. All in all it was a very enjoyable weekend and I enjoyed climbing with Carol for the first time in a long time. Jamestown is a nice crag but given the extra travelling involved I’m not sure I’ll be back as there’s other places higher up my hit list at that sort of time travelling. The few pictures I managed to take when I wasn’t busy climbing are here.

The next Saturday saw me up at 3:30am and meeting Seth, Rob and Rosie – Russell’s sister who was visiting from Australia – at a park and ride at 5am. The reason for this madness was a climbing trip to Warsaw and an attempt to climb before the heat of the day. I led the route Mary Ashley broke her leg on… again, before top roping the 10c next to it. Feeling closer to be able to lead it and if the crux moves weren’t so close to a big ledge I’d definitely give it ago. Sillyness then ensued on the 5.9 start to a 5.10a as it has every time I’ve tried it – it’s definitely a traditional start – this despite being on a top rope. A quick jump up a 5.8 on top rope and we were done climbing for the day.

The day having get quite warm we all headed into the lake for some bathing and swimming. I swam the length of the crag and it was cool seeing the climbs from further away. Less cool was me forgetting to put on sun tan lotion as the day warmed up. I ended up with a rather red back that turned out to be quite saw for a good few days. I was very glad I wasn’t one of those people that burns easily as that definitely wouldn’t be much fun. After a stop for barbecue for dinner we head back to KC, home and an early night! Being a bit of a lazier day there’s a fair few more pictures of this trip here.

What else have I been up to? Well I’ve still been going to physical therapy and am confident it’s slowly helping. Have also just finished my photography class. Much of it I already knew but there was enough that I didn’t know that I think I’d have been in at the deep end too much f I’d done the intermediate rather than beginner course. It was also course as it forced me to use many of the features of the camera, which although I knew were there, I’d not used before. I’m still looking for my next job and recently e-mailed several people about positions they have available. Hopefully I’ll have more to report soon. Think that’s about so until next time…