One Day at Little Rock City – 36 Hours of Travel, 8 Glorious Hours of Climbing!

This weekend put the finishing touch on what has been for me an insanely busy month. It began with a week long, amazing bouldering trip to Bishop, CA, followed by two and a half weeks in Washington State for work, and in the closing moments of that adventure a new one was conceived! I was invited by two different friends to join them on a climbing trip to Little Rock City for the weekend (ironically the two people in question knew each other but didn’t realize I knew either of them so it was just one big happy climbing family)! As soon as I was sure work was finalized and we were indeed flying home on Wednesday I began to pull together a plan to get me to Chattanooga on Thursday…yep, fly home from Seattle Wednesday and drive to Tennessee on Thursday!

A quick version of the two day plan goes something like this: after traveling all Wednesday, starting in Richland, WA hung-the-hell-over at 5:00 am, I arrived at Tampa airport at 11:30 pm and by the time I picked up my luggage and made it home it was 12:30 am Thursday. I pulled out all my dirty clothes and threw them in the washing machine while unpacking the things I’d need to take with me in the “morning”. Fell into bed at 1:30 am and was up the next morning at 8:00 to finish my laundry, take a shower, and re-pack my clothes, camping gear, and some food by 11:30 when Eric met me at my house, we packed up the car and were on the road around noon. It just so happened that my friend Eric from Vertical Ventures had nothing going on this weekend and was pretty siked for a southern sandstone climbing adventure himself so on really, really short notice (less than 24 hours) he decided to join the fun! We made it to Chatty by 8:00 pm where we picked up some goodies at Greenlife and then met up with Dan, Margaret and company, who had been lucky enough to have spent the day climbing, for some simply amazing burgers at Urban Stack. Following this feast we all headed to Possum Creek Campground were we set up camp to a chorus of barking dogs in the dark and crashed into our various tents and hammocks as soon as humanly possible!

Friday was a simply phenomenal day of climbing! Good friends, lots of laughs, amazing amount of effort put into some unparalleled climbs, problems sent, fingers shredded and of course plenty of projects to come back to! On a personal high note I sent The Wave (V6), a problem that shut me down in a big way the last time I was at LRC. I’ve got to give a heaping round of thanks to Margaret for the beta that got me up it and to Jenny for brushing those slopey holds for me! Sending Swingers (V4) was another highlight of the day as was making progress with Margaret on Dragon Lady; a frustrating problem if you’re on the shorter side but it’ll go for both of us next time! We climbed until at least 7:00 at which point we were all to varying degrees cold, hungry and sore so we headed to downtown Chatty for dinner at the Terminal Brewhouse…we were well rewarded with some damn tasty beers and again, mouthwatering, gourmet burgers!

Unfortunately, despite Dan’s most earnest attempts to will the weather gods to favor us with no rain it began pouring sometime in the wee hours of the morning Saturday in what turned out to be a regional storm (i.e. nowhere in the southeast was dry) so greatly saddened we were forced to abandon day two of climbing and opted to head on home. However, prior to parting ways it was decided that we should have one more meal together and it had to be………waffles! Nothing else would suffice but waffles. So we packed up wet tents, loaded our wet selves into our wet cars, and rolled on into Chatty once more where we were led a merry and epic chase for the ever elusive waffle. Yes, after driving around downtown, stopping at super crowded restaurants with over an hour wait for breakfast (who knew that breakfast was such a popular pastime in Chattanooga), asking locals for advice, walking around in the pouring rain and splashing though puddles we finally found them, the nefarious waffles, at a diner called Longhorn Restaurant around noon! Here much food and many waffles were consumed as we were entertained watching it being prepared by a little old grandma who could flip, fry, scramble, boil, and sauté with the best of them! We then said a very wet good-bye to Dan, Margaret, Jenny, Eric and Tyler in the parking lot and began our journey back to FL. This trip included severe thunderstorm warnings, tornado and hail warnings, torrential driving rain and gusty winds until we were 90 miles from the FL border at which point Mother Nature relented a bit figuring she had successfully curtailed any further thoughts of climbing this weekend! We arrived at my place around 11:00 pm (poor Eric had another 45 minute drive to get back to Tampa). I don’t think I’ve been so exhausted in a long time, although that single day of climbing and catching up with everyone was worth it! I will admit I spent today recovering though, i.e. laying in a hammock in the warm, sunny, beautiful FL weather by the pool…I need to fill up my severely depleted energy reserves for the next adventure already affectionately known as 2^3, a week with Suzanne, Anne, Audrey and Austin at the beach!