The Houston Rock Climbing Meetup scheduled an outing to
Reimer’s Ranch for the weekend, so I decided to join them. I arrived at the
campground (Pace Bend Park) a day early and explored their biking trails. I was
able to secure a spot in the improved campground area, which has showers, water
and electricity - nice amenities given that I was going to be there until
Monday. I headed into town to get
some groceries, but managed to avoid buying the bacon jam.
The Houston group got on the road later than expected, so I
climbed with the Austin Meetup for a bit. The upside of starting a little later
was that the wall cleared out a bit, so we were able to get on a lot of routes
in very little time. It also helped that the routes were only like 30 feet long.
I led something for the first time since my King’s Bluff trip in December, a
5.7 on the Dead Cats wall. I got on five or six climbs before the sun started
going down and we had to leave for the day. After the Houston folks set up
their tents, we headed out to dinner. One dinner turned out not to be enough
for one member of the group. So after he polished off his burger and fries, he
got a “dessert” of two chili dogs. Very impressive. A burn ban was in effect,
so instead of hanging around the campfire for the rest of the evening, we hang
around a propane heater. I would have liked to have fallen asleep at midnight,
but off in the distance were the sounds of what sounded like boot camp, as
someone barked out “1-2-3-1, 1-2-3-2, 1-2-3-3, etc” and screamed at the “melon
farmers” (except they didn’t say melon farmers). I guess it would have been
annoying if it hadn’t been so odd.
Fueled by breakfast tacos, we headed over to Reimer’s for
another day of climbing and fun, this time at the Middle Earth Wall in the north
shore area. I lost track of how many climbs I did, but I think it was six. All
I remember is I did a lot of climbing and I had a lot of fun hanging out with
the group. It was a great start to the month of March.
