As our departure date neared, we knew we needed an epic sendoff for our beloved local climbing area, Reimer’s Ranch. Conveniently, the park’s annual climbing competition was being held there just one week before our planned escape. After an epic day that resulted in so many bruises that they are now – the next morning – running together to make a few massive bruises, I came out with a second place overall finish and a brand new rope (and a first place finish in the speed competition)!
The day started out looking like it was going to be a massive failure. Both John and I struggled to fall asleep, and woke up to our 6:45am alarm blaring, having slept for less than 4 hours. On top of that, it had poured only a few hours earlier and the humidity levels were outrageous. Our climbing partners, Andrew and Dana, were equally miserable as were made a tired drive out to Reimer’s through formidable looking clouds and haze. But the Reimer’s Bubble – a phenomenon where it often seems to rain everywhere but Reimer’s – prevailed, and we entered a mostly dry park full of sunshine.
The competition gives you an entire day to climb your best five routes, which you have to climb without falling in order to count. If you don’t lead the climb – meaning the rope was already at the top when you start climbing – you get the equivalent score of leading a route two letter grades lower. While five climbs over the course of eight hours seems pretty trivial, it gets challenging when you try for a hard climb and fail, leaving you tired and without a route to count.
Fortunately, I started my day by knocking out four hard climbs by 11am, all on my first try. What I thought would turn into a relaxing afternoon ended up being the most exhausting part of the day. I tried and failed on a number of routes that I thought would be fun to try, achieving bruises within bruises on my poor knees. At 4pm, I finally completed my last route – a burly 5.10d that is tiring even when you are fresh – and contentedly turned in my sheet knowing that I had done the best I possibly could.
At this point, I dragged my weary self over to 8-Flake, where the speed competition was in full swing. Despite being so exhausted that I was repeatedly tripping over roots, or randomly falling while trying to stand still, I entered – and won! (I also managed to add a few more injuries since fast climbing is careless climbing.)
Limestoner speed competition on 8 Flake
Now, I harbor no delusions that I am the best climber out there. In fact, I passed at least five girls climbing at Reimer’s that day who are far better than me; however, they had decided not to participate in the competition. They break the competition up into categories – Elite, Advanced, Intermediate, and Beginner – and I was simply hoping to place in one of the lower categories. So I was incredibly shocked to get second in the Elite category, meaning only one girl in the competition did better than me (although she did MUCH better than me, doing climbs that were four grades harder than mine).
And our group did great as a whole:
- Dana won a rope for getting second in intermediate
- Andrew got $100 for winning Advanced
- I got a rope and free shoe resoling for my second place finish in Elite and my win in the speed competition
And what climbing day would be complete without some drunken crate stacking at the local climber campground – The Rock Dog. (For the record, this was my first time doing it) Accompanies by wine and a keg of beer, we all naturally decided it was high time to climb twenty feet up a tree to set up a rope anchor and see who could make the tallest stack of milk carton crates while standing on top of the growing stack. Dana walked away the clear victor, managing to stack 17 crates before the whole thing (and she) tumbled down (but don’t worry, everyone was safely harnessed to a rope with belayers who were only mildly intoxicated). Not a bad way to end the day.
It was too dark to get pictures of our turns, but here’s an example of someone else doing crate stacking.
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