24 Hours of Horseshoe HELL

aaaaaarrrrrgggg how do I describe raw fingertips and a sore back in black and white words? Imagine climbing on friendly sandstone jugs for 24 hours and just try to think how your skin would feel after the fact. Yikes, we couldn’t even zip the bags closed to fly home.

This awesome event took place at the Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Arkansas last weekend (sept 26-27). The 4th annual 24 HOURS OF HORSESHOE HELL event brought 130 teams from all over the world, men and women ready to climb through the night, suffer and laugh together, and don’t forget the whiskey drinking.

The Patagonia teams showed up in awesome style, Brittany Griffith and I wore flowered pants, and fairy princess wings, and the boys, Colin Hailey and Mikey Schaefer had matching green shorts, and a pink rope from the 80’s. High class!

The shotgun went off at 10am Saturday morning, and all 260 participants scattered running for the crags.

Brittany and I started at the far east, cranking out a day of 5.11 and 5.12…. unfortunately around dusk, when you would normal go home, we headed across the canyon to keep on keep’n on (in the dark). With an Icon headlamp on the forehead, and Spots around the waist, we climbed 5.10’s till midnight, and then we kinda hit a wall.

We lagged for a while, looking for climbs in the crowded dark, watching some of the scary spiders, and walking sticks, trying not to step on people sleeping on bouldering pads…..

we carried BD’s Titan lantern to the base, chugged some caffeine and got our 4th wind, climbing 5.9 in o the dawn.

Before we began we wrote out 10 tenants, to keep us on track, one was to drink a PBR, which we made happen at 5:30AM. this settled our stomachs and rallied us for the oncoming light.

Another really important one was to not be TOO bitchy…. we did fairly well on this one too. One minor laps occurred when I short roped Brittany, cause Colin and her were sharing the same first bolt, and oops, I was paying more attention to Colin then Britt. I yelled up “It really helps to keep yanking on the rope when the GriGri is locked up” and she yelled back at me to stop my bitching and pay attention…. the quarrel was diffused and we laughed as she pulled through the burly roof of the Granny Tranny (unfortunately now downgraded from 12a to 11c).

Looking HOT was another of our tenants, which we took to heart, wearing matching everything, Gandolfs, Pink Nanos, wings, suspended stone necklaces, Demon duffel… all the crucial items, which you can admire in the pro photos I snapped while rushing between climbs.

Well all this to say, that next year I cant wait to go back. Brittany and I had an awesome time as one of the few all girl teams. I would highly recommend this event of suffering! But sign up early! The registration filled up in just 2 days this year. Hope to see you there!