We camped in deluxe style--space heater, laptop for movies, flushable toilets and hot showers. We arrived at the camp in the dark. Quickly made camp (in our church clothes) and hopped in the tent for a movie. The next morning, this is what we woke up to.
A little bit better picture once we were up and about...
We climbed the first day at Elk Slabs. The climbing was fun and easy. The approach, not so much. Seems the trails are a lot harder to find than one would expect. Fun nonetheless, and I will eventually drag Dayna back up there (now that we know where we are going). Oh, and shutterbug forgot her camera.
The second day, we headed over to the narrows area.
With our late start and our bad luck, the only other climbers in the refuge were on the route we wanted to climb. No biggie, as there were plenty of open routes. We climbed this route (picture from the bottom).
Conor getting ready to climb (just had to adjust the sleeves a bit)...
Climbing in progress...
Dayna at the top...
And one of our buddies who were everywhere...
The second day, we headed over to Mt Scott (highest point in the refuge). The refuge borders Ft Sill, which has some artillery units. They were having practice that day, and we could see where they were hitting the mountain across the lake from us. Pretty cool! I headed up a "5.7" called high anxiety, nothing like the 5.7 I did my first sport lead on. I seemed to forget the hand jams and the "power" moves high anxiety was requiring. All was well and I made it to the top. Dayna jammed her way to the top as well (just kidding, just a couple of jams were needed).
Using all my knowledge, I managed to burn my finger one night. The granite quickly took care of this. My finger after high anxiety (and washing my hands).
We heard about a rumored burger place up the road from Mt Scott. Naturally, we just had to go. We settled on the "seismic burger," which was a full pound of beef w/ bacon, onion and all the fixings. Supposedly, pure Texas Longhorn Beef (no hormones). It was awesome. We also had onion rings, freedom fries (the owner is apparently conservative) and fried peaches.
The owner also has a sense of humor...or does he???
To help settle our Burgers, we headed back into the Narrows to attempt the route the other people were on the other day, but felt there was not enough time (the gates are locked at "sunset," whatever that means) and didn't want to risk getting stuck. We took the time to grab a Christmas Card picture--what do you think?
A picture of me defeated from the early sunsets.
We woke the next morning to rain (all our stuff is out drying as I type). We packed up everything wet, cooked breakfast and left. We chatted with our kind "neighbors" for a bit, who kindly got us a cinnamon roll from a place we had read about online and told them about it. They made it, and we didn't, but they were kind enough to bring us one. And on the way out, we stopped at the Ft Sill Museum to see some "canons," aka artillery.
And, we'll leave you with this bit of happiness.
