Category — Outdoors

Virginia and I finally got a chance to spend some much needed time outside this past Easter weekend. It was my long Friday so on Thursday night, Virginia, myself, Justin and Alison Horton (our next-door neighbors), and their dogs Wiley and Mia embarked on a wonderful trip to the beautiful Texas hill country.

The main purpose of this trip was to go bouldering. Bouldering is a more rudimentary, fundamental form of climbing in which the climbers don’t use harnesses or rope. The routes are mainly on boulders that rarely exceed 20 feet, but that doesn’t mean that it’s just all fun and games. The reason that bouldering is so attractive to most followers of the sport is because it doesn’t require a lot of setup, and it can be done while relaxing and enjoying simply being outside. The gear involved is minimal: climbing shoes, chalk, and a crashpad. The crashpad is exactly what it sounds like. Because you don’t use ropes, the crashpad assists in breaking the fall so you don’t break an ankle or something else.

OK, back to the story. We loaded all of our gear, 2 crashpads, 3 backpacks, a cooler with all our food, and a Rubbermaid store-anything type container, and the dogs into/onto Alison’s Blazer and hit the road after I got off work Thursday. Our first stop was Hill Country Natual Area in Bandera, TX. Unfortunately for us, the sun decided to go down at the scheduled time – we pulled into the campground at around 12:00 am. It was cold. Surprisingly, we were able to set up our campsite using only the light of the moon…and our headlamps and flashlights. But seriously, the moon was bright. I love how drastic the difference between city sky and country sky is. It makes me feel good. So, at about 12:45 we piled into our tent (Virginia and myself, for clarity), and I fell asleep for the longest segment of the night in my 55 degree summer bag. About 2½ to 3 hours later, I woke up freezing. When packing I thought to myself, “Hm, I don’t need the rain fly. It’s not going to rain.” And I was right. But the mesh that covered nearly 2/3 of our tent (that would have been covered by the fly) sure let a hell of a lot of cold air in. At this point I had a decision before me. Do I (a.) tough it out and prove that I’m man enough to brave the elements, or (b.) wake up Virginia and tell her that I need to get in the 15 degree sleeping bag with her. Of course, I opted for choice b. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t fun. It was miserable. But it was warm. If it had been a 2 person sleeping bag, that would have been one thing. The 15 degree bag was tight – meaning that we each had to be satisfied with the position we were in before we determined it comfortable. Every 20 or so minutes I would have to re-adjust and wake her up to say something as dumb as, “Hey, can I move my arm?”, because I literally lacked the ability to control my upper torso. It was like I was in the vice grip of an artificial-down filling stuffed anaconda. After moving my arm, I would decide that I’d put it outside the sleeping bag, above my head (envision a person standing straight up and raising his arm to the sky — only prostrate) to allow enough room for my chest cavity to expand to bring in enough air to breathe – only to realize 20 minutes later that my arm was asleep, and approaching frost bite. And this ensued until my alarm went off at 6:00 am.

After coffee, we packed it up and headed to Enchanted Rock, about 1½ hours away. It’s a rather large state park centered among two outcroppings of rounded bald-top rock. The main dome and the small (?) dome were the mammoths that towered over the boulders that we were after. We hiked for a while before finding some boulders that were on the guidebook. The rock there was very tough on the hands. It had a lot of crystals embedded in the main rock (think concrete covered in sharp pea gravel). We climbed in one spot for a while, then hiked around the main dome before stopping for lunch. We made it back around to the front of the complex near where we began and settled there to boulder for the rest of the day. It was excellent. Warm with a breeze and sunny.

We spent the night at Inks Lake State Park, which was about 40 miles away. A sleeping bag situation happened that night also, but we slept better because we decided to put the crash pads in our tent for cushioning. We cooked a legit breakfast of pancakes, hash browns, and bacon. It’s always gonna be a good meal when all of your food is the same color.

Austin was our next destination. We bouldered at a scenic park with a creek/lake, and then went to REI and a (much needed) drive in hamburger joint before heading back home. All in all it was an excellent weekend.