Our trip started off with a flurry of packing, rapidly finding that despite Teale and my ability to normally pack very light, that we were maxing out the space in the rental car before we even started packing personal items. It seems my ambition to pack a set of A-frames, enough hardware to rig 3 highlines and enough t-shirts to to be reminiscent of college laundry day loads took up all of the available room in the car.

We departed nice and early on Tuesday arriving at Teale’s parent’s house around 5pm. That’s a record for us, we’ve never made that good of time before. We mostly credit the fact we only stopped once for fuel on the entire trip from Longmont to KC. Good MPG is good on the wallet but hard on the bladder if you know what I mean.

After some fun in Springfield, MO catching up, we high tailed it down to Jasper Arkansas in time to set up the tent in the dark. Not too much of a problem and both Teale and I have set up my REI Half Dome in much, much worse conditions. To say that the stars were out would be an understatement.

Unfortunately, it seems my 5 year old Big Agnes Insulated Air Core pad had burst a seam sometime between the Lander comp and the 24HHH comp. First off, let me say that I don’t blame it for leaking. I’m hard on gear and this poor pad has dozens of patches, ranging from thorn holes in Joshua Tree, Scree scrapes in the Rocky Mountains and even a burn hole from dropping a cook pot. I normally consider myself a master of patch jobs with inflatable pads but seams are a different story, when they go, your pretty much doomed to spend the night on the cold hard ground.

On the plus side, since a comfortable nights sleep simply wasn’t happening, I did manage to get up before sunrise and take some great camp photos. It was a very peaceful start to a crazy day.

Soon it was day break and Teale and I set up a slackline using A-Frames in our camp site. We didn’t have any trees handy which is more than enough of an excuse for me to show off my new rig. Lots of people dropped by to say Hi and tried their hand (or would that be feet) at our line. Pardon the tent in the photo below, no one thought to get a photo before other people started crowding the camping grounds. If you look carefully you can see the east bluff line of the climbing area.

Around 10am we headed down to the Trading Company and gave the organizers our banner to put up and our stickers to be put into the competitors bags. Woo, we’re the yellow one. I hadn’t thought to bring a banner to be hung up, instead I just assumed we’d have one at our table at the trade fair & comp, otherwise I’d have gotten another banner. I’ll have to remember that for next year.

Soon everyone getting pumped up for the upcoming event and people started rolling in from as far away as California. The early registration started at 3pm and there were photographers and even a TV crew interviewing folks about the competition.

Two years ago when we first sponsored the comp we forgot to get a couple extra T-shirts for our volunteers. Turns out, they still had them at the Trading Company so we nabbed the very last two they had and they just turned out to be the size we needed.

At 5 they had a spaghetti dinner and everyone started congregating in the Barn Loft where the slackline comp would start. Lots of beer was served and people started warming up on the slacklines.

Our friends from the Natural High Club showed up just as the Slackline Competition was getting warmed up. They were a great help at ensuring we had video, getting people to line up and handing out T-shirts for us. They did it all out of the kindness of their hearts (and the fact they could mooch free shirts).

The slackline comp was simply awesome. We had good music, tons of people and lots of crazy stunts.

We learned a lot from last year though, we found it very hard to convey the tricks with photos, what we needed was action. So this year we shot the entire comp in high definition. It will take me a few weeks to get around to start the editing process, but I promise it’ll be worth the wait.

We had an interesting and amusing slideshow from one of Patagonia’s sponsored climbers and then it was off to the after party. Of course, the after party had most people playing back and forth on the slacklines, I think we had just as crazy attempts at tricks during the party as we did during the competition itself. I think it was all the free beer.

I’m not sure why but I decided my next trick should be giving someone a piggy back ride on a slackline. My goal was to have them juggle up there while I was walking. By this point I was really tired and it was a lot harder than I expected. We only got as far as a few steps but I proved that I could hold my end of the deal if I can get someone else on my back to juggle.

We made it to camp absolutely exhausted. The idea of sleeping on random lumps of extra clothing wasn’t all that comforting but I managed. Thankfully I wasn’t competing, as I could barely move and the climbing comp hadn’t even started. We woke to another beautiful day. Exceptional, even for Arkansas.

Our friends from NHC camped next to us and Barret was nice enough to make everyone cider in the morning. Kerry seemed to especially enjoy the warm apple cider.

It was about sunrise as we started gearing up. Today the canyon would see hundreds of climbers. Despite loving to climb at horseshoe, we’d decided to move on to another location to get our climbing fix in for the day.

I’d spent the last six years affiliated with NHC so I’d volunteered to teach a climbing clinic. We called it “The Next Step Climbing Clinic”. Basically it’s goal is to take climbers who’d learned to climb with others safely take that next step into climbing on their own. We didn’t need to cover things like belaying, instead it was a half day filled with climbing anchors, knowledge building and field practice as well as in depth discussions of climbing area ethics. The choice of locations was easy, Sam’s Throne. A midwest trad climbing paradise just down the road from Horseshoe. Horseshoe may have great sport climbing, but we needed room to teach today.

We geared up and got to Sam’s fairly quickly. We worked on various techniques to make top rope anchors and discussed a lot of safety considerations. I think the biggest lesson was that it’s all a trade off and compromise. Things like equalization vs extension were talked about in depth.

One of the interesting aspects of Sam’s Throne is that despite it being a trad climber’s wet yet sandy dream, top roping is perfectly normal, even among stronger climbers. I chalk that up to rock quality in some spots (I’ve had a lot break on me), gritty sandstone doesn’t always hold protection well and the fact that almost all of the routes are easily set from bolts from access on the top. Walk ups are present and the guide book is one of the easiest to navigate of any guide book I’ve found. It offers lots of routes and not just easy or hard but the entire spectrum. It basically makes it an excellent place for beginner climbers to learn the ropes but keeps the stronger climbers interested as well.

While hanging out during lunch we ran into some local wildlife. The bug on the left looks like a wingless wasp of some sort. I found first hand that their sting burns fairly badly when one fell into my sandal while walking. Teale tells me the lizard is a striped skink, funny, I’ve seen them all my life and never knew the right name for them.

One the group had completed the team rigging practice we decided to go put it to use and go climbing. One of the most lead climbs at Sam’s Throne is Poison Ivy, a 5.7 or 5.8 (I forget). It’s a classic climb and one of easiest to teach crack climbing technique on. Since most of the group had face climbing experience only I figured they had to at least get some crack in. Not everyone had rigged for rappel before so we walked them through that as well.

After the first route we snacked a bit and enjoyed the exposure. The rock isn’t high by Colorado standards but the 60-80 foot cliffs Sam’s offers is quite good by Ozark standards.

We headed down the way to rig on White Trash wall for a few other climbs. We walked Barret through rigging off of a safety and they all easily sent the route. It seems I should have set a few harder for them, but we were all getting hungry by this point.

Dinner was calling at camp so we hustled down the walk up and started making our way back.

The evening was quite enjoyable and despite the raging mosquitos we had a good time. We headed down to the bluff line around 10pm and saw several shooting stars.

Again, fortunate for you but not so fortunate for me the sleeping on the dirt thing didn’t exactly help make a deep sleep. So yet again, I was up well before sunlight to take some final photos before we began our trek back to Colorado.

Sam’s and Horseshoe will always be one of my favorite places to climb. While neither offers the stunning exposure, mountain summits or climbing culture of my new crags in Colorado, it is where I had lead my first climb, took my first big whipper, rigged my first un-supervised anchor and where my climbing roots first took place.

Balance in Life,

Joe Kuster

So, for the day Teale and I decided to have some fun with a dye kit and some of our white webbing. Enjoy the pictures (click on them to see a larger version), and yes, a couple of these lines may be for sale but I don’t know how many and due to the nature of this method of dying fabric, I can’t promise I could make another that “looks just like that” of course. I could try, and maybe get close, but who knows. I don’t know about doing these commercially but it was very fun to do and the dye we used should be safe on the slacklines.

+ =

• The number of out of focus or blurred shots is < 1%
• It’s fast enough to catch wild action on slacklines (see below)
• At 11mb per raw photo it blows through memory cards like crazy
• My external photo bank doesn’t support HC SD cards
• I really can live without framing photos using an LCD.
• Raw files are cool for loss-less editing and all, but take a lot of time to convert to usable jpgs in large batches.
• If you figure out your camera settings you can forgo Photoshop adjustments altogether.
• I have a lot to learn.

Balance in Life,

Joe Kuster

We’re still based out of my house right now but we are currently trying to find some office space since we will be also sewing packs and tents for Gossamer Gear. Slacklines were space intensive to start with but making it 5 full timers + part time workers would simply be too much.