Gravity Must Be Turned Down

Another super 4th of July Ten Sleep weekend!! This year Meg and I scrambled through the insanity of the shop on the 4th, loaded up the kiddos into both vehicles and towed the new (to us) pop-up camper to Ten Sleep to catch the end of the not so climbers Festival. We decided to camp at Allis house to give us a trial run at camping before parking it in the woods for a weekend. All went well and we were basically in town for the festivities the night of the 4th and for the Jalan Crosslan show on the 5th.

We took the whole family up to the crag both days and they all did great. Meg got on Schools Out .10d, and would now like to lead it, which is good cause her training assignment for next weekend is to fall on lead. This is a great route to practice falling on, being very steep towards the end.

I was excited to try Calm Like a Bomb .12d and after warming up on a new route of Hueys to the right, I went for it. The Bomb is route I bolted maybe 8 years ago and couldn't do quickly, so I walked away from it distracted by other objectives. Dan Miller was psyched about the line so I offered it up to him, and he fired off in a few sessions. I hadn't even tried it since. I had a sneaking suspicion that now was the time and sure enough it went on my first red point burn. I had forgotten how cool this line was, with giant, deep jugs for the first 7 clips and then 2 boulder problems seperated by some decent pockets and a great cryptic reachy finish. I was pleased to put the wraps on that old dog to say the least.

The girls caught a snake with a friend of mine and Ripley covered himself with dirt.

Dirt Boy from Mike Snyder on Vimeo.

The girls insisted late in the day that we go and find Charlie. Now mister Charlie Kardalef has rightfully garnered some fame at the old Sleep bolting many high quality lines over the years, but my girls love him because he is so good with kids. They are just drawn to him. Meg thinks its his bushy eyebrows. Nevertheless we hunted CK down, and after hugs we headed down the trail and back into town.

After dinner, Maya and I walked downtown to see Jalan Croslan play at the Big Horn Mountain Stage. Truly a treat Jalan is, and the place was packed with mostly climber trash. Which means about 40 of us had him all to ourselves, we danced and whooped it up. What a great show!

My Home is on the Big Horn Mountains by Jalan Croslan from Mike Snyder on Vimeo.

Afterwards I walked back to Alli's house to visit with Alli and Kev and their house guests Jeff and Gilly and to find out how their day went. Come to find out that James Litz, the powerhouse Southern boulderer was in town and having his way at the Superratic. Apparently he mowed down everything there in two days and set his sights on the old He Big 'em project. Kev tells me it took him five goes and believes it to be 5.14a which would make it the first bonafide 14 at the Sleep. Nice work James! Now if they can just drag him up to the Temple to send the really hard stuff. Yes, its bolted and waiting.

The next day we made breakfast and got away a little earlier so we could go play in the river before hiking up to the crag. The river was still raging and cold, hopefully it will settle down a bit in the coming weeks, because you can't really play in it when its that agitated. We skipped rocks and dipped our heads and it was off to the Superratic.

We ran into our new friends Matt and his son Stefan on the trail as we were applying bug spray to keep the flying oil rigs away. We sprayed them down too, and gave them directions as they were headed where we were going as well. Young Stefan is 12 and super strong sending Happiness in Slavery 12b in two tries and would flash the Behemoth .12b, a little later in the day. The Superratic has really come into its own over the last year or so with Kevin cleaning up and rebolting all Matt W's old destroyed lines and adding several new ones too. There is now a high concentration of 13's (5) and 12's (5), and with all the letters being represented there is also a wide variety, pretty cool.

My sights were set on The Hellion .13c and Kyberspace .13b. The former is a long term proj that should have gone down long ago but alas... and the other is newer and could be well suited to my strengths. After warming up on Leggo My Guano .10b with Meg, we both took a lap on the uber pocket fest The Great White Behemoth .12b. Meg commented that she felt she fought equally hard with both, hmmm... Jeff and his partner Nick had the Hellion strung up, so after watching Jeff send it smoothly I felt inspired and a bit saucy. I launched up and climbing too fast, blew it on a key new piece of Beta, which incidently works better and will save several very tenuous moves. I immediately pulled back on and did the move and nearly climbed to the rest several bolts up without incident. My forearms were tired and went into flash pump mode which forced a rest. The rest of it is easier, and all in all it felt pretty good. I will continue trying it for sure, it is easily one of the best routes I've ever bolted and someday I will send it. Kyberspace was next and as I waited for my turn, belaying and kid wrangling, a storm moved in. It started with a wind blown green pollen cloud carried by a frieght train-like noise whipping it down the canyon, very odd indeed. Then the rain clouds moved in, we packed up and ran down the trail to the car with kids in tow and narrowly beating the rain.

After a quick bite to eat, we waved goodbye to new and old friends, collected the trailer and jetted back to Cody. This may be the format for the next month, we are all psyched.