OK Corral

Yesterday seemed to be a high gravity day at Black Mountain, at least for Cory French, Jon the Brit, and myself. Maybe the McIntosh/Savage/Moore et al crew fared better, but the three of us who remained at the general OK Corral area for the day got legitimately spanked.

First after warming up we headed down to Morphic Resonance, a very tall and hard pure line a little down the hill from the main OK area. Cory, who had been very close on a previous visit failed to send the beast on this day as well, and I failed to even reach the third move.

I did have the privilege of sending this beautiful V3 to the right of Morphic, however. Bad sunspot photo courtesy of Jon.


After hiking back up to the OK Corral, we sessioned both Cosmos and OK Arete, which are actually just left and right variations of the same feature. All three of us failed to send either one, which is very strange, but I guess everyone has off days, even Cory French.

Jon on Cosmos


Cory on OK Arete


When we decided we'd had enough punishment, we hiked back up the hill a little ways to send train Gimme Some, another striking arete. Or at least that was our intention. Once again, none of us sent. After a few bad attempts, I surprised myself by getting through the majority of the problem and staring right at the thank god jug that indicates the end of the hard climbing, but right as I was firing for it my right foot popped and I found myself falling once again.

Jon, me, and Cory on Gimme Some.





In the end, although none of us sent anything harder than V4 yesterday, it was still a beautiful and fulfilling day in the outdoors with good friends. I've been sending a lot of cool and (for me) hard problems lately, so it's about time for some all out failure. I mean, we need the bad performance days to truly appreciate the good ones, right?

Majesty.


Only a few more weeks of Black before the Forest Service arbitrarily closes the gate. We'd better take full advantage.