Reason #78143 why I love Texas

Would you believe me if I told you this was Texas? Well it is. And get this, this place is only 20 miles outside of Austin. We went climbing this weekend, and it was amazing in every way. I've climbed recreationally for years now, but I've never climbed outdoors. Andrea has recently taken up outdoor climbing so she took me on my first outdoor climbing adventure this weekend. On Saturday we went to a place in Austin called Seismic, then on Sunday we came here to Reimers Ranch. We had to hike our way back to the walls and on our way we had to pass through this. My jaw dropped when we got to this spot. It was beautiful and peaceful. Reimers reminded me of both Costa Rica and Big Bend. I joked to Andrea that this was the child of the two. It had characteristics of both, and those are two of my favorite places on earth, so naturally I fell in love with Reimers.

Climbing outdoors is thrilling. Unlike the gym, you have to find your way up the wall, whereas in a gym you follow marked holds up the wall. And in outdoor climbing someone has to set the climb. So, Andrea would lead the climb for us. Lead climbing means you take the rope with you up the wall, clipping into anchors along the way to secure you at certain intervals on the wall. Once you get to the top you clip the rope into the caribiners in the rock at the top. Whenever you are climbing away from an anchor to another you are at risk for a decent fall, double the radius to the last anchor you bolted into in, in fact. The anchors are placed fairly close to each other, but a fall would still be pretty serious, so therefore lead climbing is very serious. I'd like to get good enough to lead climb one day, and I'm certainly hooked on outdoor climbing now.