Winter Mojo 2010

East Ridge of the Owls..

Still recovering from my last outing on Lumpy Ridge ( Wolf's Tooth) Aaron Miller and myself headed back up to Lumpy for the Tenth Annual Lumpy Ridge trail days as well as the Lumpy Ridge climbers reunion...We had planned to climb the East Ridge of the Twin Owls via Crackle Crack,.a fun link up that would bring us up to the summit of the Owls in 3 varying pitches, mostly 5.8 climbing due to my still handicap condition. ..Unfortunately while following Aaron up Crackle Crack my injury from last week made an un-welcomed return. Stabbing pain down the left side of my abdomen made me nervous that possibly I had torn my ab-ductor muscle more severely than first expected...Not wanting to climb the remaining pitches due to the fact that I may aggravate the injury more, but also not wanting to be one to moan and complain and shut the day down short, I was having quite an internal dilemma. We talked it over and I decided to continue, me taking it easy and just moving slow through the next pitch...Which is what I did, climbing as cautiously as possible trying not to use my 'core' strength which irritated the injury every time I engaged my abs...Surprisingly I climbed much better, taking my time, finding the best foot placements to re-set my body weight, after one long time consuming pitch, I set the belay relived to be handing the rack back over to Aaron for the last pitch..

Crackle Crack 5.8....

Aaron attempting Pitch 3...This is right before he gets sucked into the off width roof slot....

At this point I think Aaron was questioning the grade of this pitch 5.7-5.8 ? Maybe if its climbed correctly....Stemming through the roof slot seemed to be the most reasonable approach...Lots of fun but quite deceiving....similar in ways to the Cave exit on the Book Formation...

After finishing the climb we made our way back to our packs at the base and contemplated climbing some more....with my abs still burning intermittently in pain I volunteered to belay Aaron on anything he wanted to lead but my climbing today was over, even though I REALLY wanted to keep climbing...Another internal dilemma....this time my nagging injury won and we ended the day short and headed back to the car for some beers....for the first time ever in my 6 years climbing on Lumpy Ridge I was glad to be heading back to the car...

So its been about 2 weeks or so and I feel that I'm slowly healing..Not going to be climbing until at least the end of October... Want to heal properly...I cant complain, its been a awesome summer...

Peace, Jason