Ten Sleep at Last

My new home at the mouth of Ten Sleep Canyon.

Yeah right. We all think that as we are driving toward the motherland and see this quaint lodge at the base of beautiful sculpted red sandstone. Its probably all choss, right?

The Canyon comes into view just outside the town of Ten Sleep.
The Leigh Creek buttress always grabs my attention for a moment. No routes?

Yes I have quite the reverence for this crag and this time of year is so perfect. The days are longer and its comfortable in the sun or shade. You can get tons of pitches in if you last that long.

Sunday was a runaway to Ten Sleep day, Clint and I blasted across the basin to the brilliant limestone pocketed heaven of Ten Sleep Canyon. We caught up with our good friend and autotransplanted local Alli, up at the newly established Hound Dog Crag.

There were several of our friends climbing and working a shoot for Allis photog friend Jeremiah. We stayed out of the way for the most part and manged to get in 7 pitches of brand new routes put in last season on the right end of the wall.

Some real stunners, the longest easiest and quite possibly the best is the 100+' Big Bear Memorial 5.10. It forces laybacks and stemming up a leaning corner that changes directions half way up, it is for sure on par with some of the other super 10's in the canyon like Beer Bong 10b, Leggo My Guano 5.10b, Char Char Boinks 5.10 and Architects on Acid 5.10+. To the left were 3 climbs one of which was a project the others were 11+ and 12-, climbing out the steepest part of the wave. Left further and around the corner were a short 11- and a long pumpy 11 that followed a crack. These climbs all turned out to be fantastic, though we did not climb the 8 and 10 farther left in the corner.


Left side of Hound Dog Wall, Alli preps for her attempt on her current project.

Alli crimpin down hard at the crux

We ventured back over to the left side of the wall where I took on a 13 clip long 12- that had me worn out by the end. I managed to keep it together but that was it for the day. Clint TR'd a neighboring 11 off the same anchors that looked really good. We both some what haphazardly decided to do a cool down route and roped up for one labeled '10'. Well this shorter slabby looking thing put the hurt on me, it was epic. Clint wasn't sure what to think about my unenlightening performance and launched into his own version of hell. It was painful to watch probably less so than my lead, but we both persevered nonetheless and bagged it. A great day topped off by finding some killer pizza at the Tensleep Saloon after wards. Cheers to more of the same this summer!