The Trip Of Northern Agression - Now And Zen

Sorry bud. Had to...

With our time at HP40 done we made our way to LRC for a few days to round out the trip. Two things.

1 - The weekend before the triple crown makes LRC a busy fucking place. Holy hell.

2 - The fact that the weekend was also Thanksgiving weekend just made things crazier. Wow.

So many peeps. I can totally see why locals wanted to keep the day limits on. I'm interested to see how the boulderfield looks in a couple years with that much traffic. Who knows, might be unnoticeable.

Anyways, we tried a few random problems throughout the day, mostly messing around. I wanted to do Incredarete right away which was sadly a very big letdown. Not a great problem. Katie tried Cleopatra a bit before we met up with the Minnesota contingency while she was packing up on Cleo.

We all headed up to Now and Zen to check that bad boy out. Katie had pegged that one before the trip started and was really excited to check it out.

The approach is memorable as you climb up through a hole and then hike a bit up and over a ridge into another hole. The problem starts on a cool right hand and a painful left crimp. You follow a couple of small holds up and then a big move out right to a jug. A few more puntable moves lead to the topout jug.

When we arrived there a guy was getting rather close to sending so we all leached beta from him. For some reason he was avoiding one of the lower jugs and making a huge move to the high jug. After he dispatched and the three of them left we started looking at each other funny, confused as to why he was skipping jugs.

Oh well. Anthony and Katie both got excited and shoe'd up. The last crux move revolves around a very small left hand crimp and Katie took one look at it and defiantly said she wasn't gonna use that one. We all looked at her oddly and she just smiled.

"I'll find a way"

Anthony had a good flash burn and after a couple tries was getting close. With the topout soaked from the rain we'd decided to just drop from the jug instead of grovel up the mud. After seeing the dude crawl up the finish that seemed like the wise choice.

After a couple of good tries Anthony stuck the jug and made his way to the jug. Aces. Quick work and it seemed Anthony had a phenomenal trip as well. Seemed he cleaned up most of the projects on his list relatively quickly.

Anthony sending Now and Zen

Katie had been throwing burns trying to figure out a way around the finicky crimp and after a bit of trying she figured it out. Instead of bumping her right up to the pod she got a heel on the start and went to it left. Genius.

She linked through 3-4 times from the start. Every time punting on the final move to the soaked jug. She took a quick break and linked once more up to the last throw. With a bit of hesitance she threw but just barely hit the sloping side of the hold. She somehow stuck it and stayed on. She hesitated just a second before sacking up and bumping to the jug and matching.

Katie Sending.

Damn quick work. Wow. Nice job to both of them. In total they spent maybe 15 minutes on the problem.

I had an uncerimonious flash attempt and my skin was just not having any sort of fun. I played on Dr. Atkinson a little and that's for sure one I want to come back for. Sadly, before I could give any serious effort one of the pebbles took a chunk out of my thumb.

Mother fucker. Not my trip I guess.

Can't have it all the time, right??