On Friday, March 18th, I flew in to Austin from Chicago to begin the big adventure. From there, I joined my climbing friends, Clint, Sarah, their two daughters Hannah (2.5 years) and Hillary (2 months), and Clint’s mother, Betsy, on a road trip up to the backwoods of Arkansas to the small, quaint town of Jasper. More specifically, we were heading to climb at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch (HCR), which is located just a few minutes outside of town.

To start off the trip, we headed up to Dallas on Saturday afternoon to stay with Clint’s aunt for the evening. The pit stop here provided Clint’s grandfather an opportunity meet Hillary, the newest member of their family. We had a great evening filled with good food and great company followed by some evening entertainment when we went downtown to catch the tail end of a crawfish boil his aunt’s employer was sponsoring. When we arrived, the crawfish boil was winding down, but the band playing, Steve-n-Seagulls, still had about an hour left. If you’ve never heard of them, they are a goofy little band from Finland of all places, that plays cover songs in a hillybilly bluegrass fashion. It turned out they were actually more entertaining than I had anticipated and to top things off, their last song of the night was “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf. This song carries some significance in two ways. First, it has been my goto for karaoke night, since it’s one of very few songs that fits my voice pretty well. Second, if you check out the lyrics, it’s pretty fitting to my adventure!

Early the next morning, we head out on the highway, lookin’ for adventure! (I know, super cheesy, but I couldn’t resist!) It’s about a 7 hour drive from Dallas to Jasper. We had intended to detour slightly before getting to Jasper to hit this semi-secret climbing spot we found last year, Hudson Mountain. However, due to a lack of cellphone battery life and service, we missed our dirt road turnoff. Realizing it several miles past, we decided to just continue on and stop at the ranch for a couple hours of climbing while we still had some daylight and hit Hudson the next morning. I think it turned out for the better, since it ended up being fairly chilly and Hudson is primarily in the shade at that time of day. It also, would provide us with a full day of climbing at Hudson instead of just a couple hours.

After climbing for a bit, we headed into town to grab some dinner at our regular spot, The Ozark Cafe, a quirky little restaurant located in downtown Jasper. They’ve got good food and an all you can eat salad bar which is perfect when you’re starved after a day of hard climbing (or driving). No waiting for food while your entree is prepared! Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the shakes, yea, those are seriously good! Oh, and also can’t forget to mention their warm brownie topped with ice cream, yea, that’s seriously good too! However, for this trip, I reserved ordering those items only for when I successfully climbed one of my goal routes for the trip to give myself a little extra motivation.

After dinner, we headed to the cabin, at Dogwood Campgrounds, just outside of town to check in. Jeff, the proprietor, was quite a character. Very friendly, very accommodating, and his defining characteristic, very chatty! You could spend hours talking with him in the office if you wanted. He set us up with a two sided cabin that would eventually be split with group two when they would join later in the week. For now, Clint, Sarah, Hillary, and I took the side with two beds and Betsy and Hannah took the other containing only one bed. Later in the week, we would rent two additional cabins, one for Betsy and Hannah and one for myself, David, and Sarah B.

Late that night, our friend Travis got in to join us on the trip, and early the next morning, we all piled into the car and headed over to Hudson. Hudson is such a cool place. You turn off the highway onto this dirt road, take that for a couple miles until you come across “Dead End” sign with a 5.10 brand sticker on it, head to the end of that road, park, then wander down this path into the wilderness. We have no idea who, if anyone, owns the land, but after about 20 minutes of hiking, you come upon a cliff line with about 15 or 20 high quality, bolted sport routes and a couple cracks to climb if you want to get your trad on**. This crag, especially during the week, is almost completely vacant. Both this year and last, there would be only one other group of climbers sharing the wall with us. This gives it the feeling of being a private and secluded climbing spot.

The rest of the trip would be spent climbing at the ranch. Horseshoe, a dude ranch nestled in the rolling hills of the Ozark Mountain range, has become somewhat of a tradition in our climbing group. We make a yearly trek up there and it always feels a bit like home when we return. Cliffs line either side of the ranch and offer up over 400 high quality, single pitch** sport routes to climb. There is something for everyone there and we even got Clint’s mother, Betsy who has done very little climbing before, to the top of a route! The whole week was filled with great climbing and I completed all 3 goals I set out for myself before the trip started. 1: Red-point** a 5.12. I checked off, Lavender Eye, a 5.12a! 2: Red-point “Love Slave” on my first go, a 5.11c I’d tried two years ago to no avail. 3: Lead Hackberry Crack, a 5.9 trad lead. Three goals complete, one shake, two brownies!

The only unfortunate event of the week was when Travis came down with a fever Tuesday night. He joined us to the wall on Wednesday but didn’t climb, just watched, read a book, and kept his distance. None of us wanted to catch what he had! Then Thursday, he decided he wasn’t improving and it best to head back home to Austin.

The next day, however, our group swelled to double in size. At 4am Friday morning, the second wave of our group finally joined us. David, Sarah B, Ron, his wife Melissa and two daughters, Sydney and Natalie, and cookies. Yes, cookies. The best cookies you’ll ever have! Sydalie’s Cookies. Owned and operated by Melissa, we get special privilege to enjoy one or two of the finest cookies Sydalie’s has to offer on our trips! If you’ve never tried them, you are seriously missing out. Do yourself a favor, head over to www.sydaliescookies.com and order yourself some now, you won’t regret it! Anyway, as you can see, I get pretty excited about these cookies, but I digress.

The latter half of the trip was also a great success. I had the honor to be apart of two pretty amazing experiences, of which my role was photographer for both. Clint and Sarah got Hannah on her first climb ever! At 2.5 years, you need some encouragement to climb, so throughout it, they scattered jellybeans for her to collect and eat on her way up. It was incredible to watch her climb, making actual climbing moves, and so adorable to see her face light up when she saw her next jellybean! It wasn’t until the very top, after climbing nearly 30 feet, that she started to get a little nervous and requested to go down!

The second was Ron’s girls, Sydney and Natalie, completed their first lead climbs! Clipping bolts and all! They both did such an amazing job, and they even managed to climb without the aid of jellybean encouragement! So proud of them both and it was super fun being able to watch and take photos while they climbed!

Overall, I couldn’t think of a better way to start of my adventure than heading to Horseshoe. It is always offers up high quality climbing and a great time with the best friends anyone could ask for! I will eventually have photo galleries here on gavintravels, but my current state of laziness has them not quite ready yet. So in the meantime, here’s a link to a facebook gallery for you to view all the images from the trip! View Photos

**Climbing jargon explained

Different types of climbing explained: Watch this!

Red-point: Climb from the start of the route to the top without falling or hanging on the rope.

Climbing Difficulty Grades: Range from 5.1 to 5.15d. Up to 5.9 it increments by a whole number. Once 5.10 is reached, it is separated into 5.10a, 5.10b, 5.10c, 5.10d. The same applies for all successive numbers. The higher the number the higher the difficulty.