It’s officially winter according to the calendar (and has been since before Thanksgiving according to the number of layers I’ve been wearing), so I figured I’d give a fall season recap before kicking off the winter season with a two-week trip south.

First off, here are some notable sends by (every-man) people that are not me and therefore (somewhat) impressive (not an exhaustive list):

• Alec sent Universal Socket (V6 P-way).
• Matt, Brandon, and Big Andy caught the send train on Sarlacc (5.12c Shell Pond) to close out their sport season.
• Tommy sent Romper Room (5.12a Sundown).
• Big Andy took the send on Mothra Steward (V8 P-way); see the full “Battle of Big Daddy” here.
• Tommy and Brandon crushed Leave it to Beaver (V8 P-way), Tommy with an icy top out.
• Tristan ended the season on a high note by sending Headz Ain’t Ready (V9 P-way) and flashing Boulder Natural classic Hobbit Hole (V3) and Mouth Full of Chalk (V6) on December 20^th.

So how was my season? Well…I toproped a lot of awesome routes. I “sprained” my ankle the last weekend in September, so all my true sends were before that, making them technically in the summer according to the calendar but fall according to the academic calendar. To make my season sound more impressive, I’m counting them for the fall, so we’ll say I sent my favorite 11b yet (sadly, I have no idea what it’s called) at Shell Pond and the sit start to the Crimp Problem (V5- P-way), nothing overly impressive compared to the sends above but some good lines.

It was a great fall, full of lots of driving to different crags in New Hampshire and Maine and little tastes of climbing at each of them (often due to getting lost, sleeping in too late, or underestimating the vastness of Maine). The wonders of Sandwich Crag were explored, a leaver biner was well lost to Great White at Waimea, and I unknowingly climbed on a broken ankle for two months without missing a weekend until I learned it was broken after Thanksgiving (hence all the toproping to not take big falls on what I was originally told was a  “category one sprained ankle”). I am 237 percent glad that the clinic didn’t see the break initially; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to thrutch toprope laps on Sundown mega classic Eyeless in Gaza, lead a few trad pitches (okay, I was bad a deviated from toprope a bit), or climb in Conway on my birthday during peak leaf season.

All in all, it was a great season with the guys sending and then letting me clean their draws off of awesome (hard for me) sport climbs, and I still made some P-way Friday trips to work on lowballs and spot. Many thanks to everyone who put up with my ankle complaints and never hanging any draws, and even more thanks to Tommy for picking me up to climb every weekend to climb, rain, shine, or snow with icicles crashing around us.

Originally published December 22, 2014, on coffeetapeibuprofenclimb.blogspot.com.