Prior to getting the call to head to Russia, I had already committed to heading to Arkansas for the KC Climbing Club trip to Sam’s Throne and HCR.  So once back in the states I frantically re-adjusted my mental state and threw everything I could think of into the back of the Sequoia.

The weather was looking pretty iffy for the weekend – but it was worth a shot.  I drove down with Rick Friday night and met Mike at our campsite.  He already had a roaring fire waiting for us along with some tasty home brew.  It had been over a year since Rick had been out climbing with us and it was really great catching up with him and hearing about his first year at being a father. Once the sun had set, the Scotch and Cigars found their way to the campfire and the rest of the night was spent talking about nothing in particular, but I’m sure at some point in time we touched on work, life, Mike’s dating situation, marriage and other topics not appropriate to be typed in ANY public forum.

Slowly I began to close my eyes, but wait, why do I feel like I’m spinning.  CRAP! I only had two cigars and one scotch – surely that isn’t enough to give me the spins.  They soon passed as I frantically inhaled the cold air to clear my head.  We all eventually made our way to our tents to get some rest.

The next morning I got up early and headed down to the bluffs to take some pictures.  The light was perfect!

Sam’s Throne is a pretty special place for a lot of Kansas City Climbers, me included.  It was the first “real” place that I climbed outside.  And prior to HCR becoming a reality it is really the only place I climbed for the first 5-years.  It was good to be back and standing on the bluff looking out over the valley.

After breakfast we headed to one of our favorite spots to climb at Sam’s.  I wanted to get some practice hanging from a rope and taking pictures of people climbing.  Mike “the talent” in this case agreed to let me shoot him while he lead a climb.  I can tell already, I’m going to need a lot of practice.  While I’m happy with a couple images, shooting while above a climber produces some very funky composition.  Sometimes I lost track of which way was up.

We then moved on to the “throne”.  Back in the day when Mike & I first started going to Sam’s there was this climb that we would always try but could never finish.  It’s called “Tandem Slide – aka Last Waltz (5.9)”…we decided to set up a toprope and see if perhaps over the years we have improved enough to actually climb the route.  The first 1/3 of the route is fairly easy on good holds, after that it pitches back past vertical and really only offers you fingertip edges the rest of the way.  Needless to say for both Mike and I this is a very sustained pumpy climb.  In the end we both found our way to top with only having to hang once from the rope about 10-feet from the top.  Not complete success but we know with a little more conditioning in the gym we should be able to climb it by fall.

Rick

Friday night the Club grilled up some burgers with all the fixin’s.  It was really great to see so many new people out on this trip. A BIG thanks to Natalie, Jesse and all those that helped make this happen.

Sunday morning we packed up our stuff and headed over to HCR for a little sport climbing.  We noticed by the time we got there the temps had dropped.  Oh well! We grabbed our rope and a set of draws and hiked up to the north forty.  Even with cold temps you can always find good “juggy” routes to climb…or so we thought.  As we walked along the bluff we noticed most of the routes had water on them.  Oh yeah – Arkansas has been getting alot of ran lately.  We eventually found a route that we hadn’t been on.  I roped up and about halfway up I noticed a few flakes landing on my shoulder – not rock flakes but SNOW flakes. CRAP! By the time we each had our turn on the route we were cold and were ready to eat some Mexican food – so we packed up and headed home.