Archive for September 6th, 2010

This is me struggling with the final stretch of the most difficult route we attempted. It was about 10 feet of nearly sheer rock with just a few very small cracks for leverage. I'm still not really sure how I got up and over it, but eventually I did.

As I recently mentioned, some old friends came out to Seattle to visit us over the weekend. We had a great time camping on Orcas Island, hiking, kayaking, drinking beer and making S’mores (the secret ingredient is Hershey’s Special Dark instead of milk chocolate bars), and then to top it all off, we tried some outdoor rock climbing.

My girlfriend and I took an introductory indoor climbing class a few years ago but have done virtually nothing since. Our friends have recently started climbing regularly at an indoor gym but had no outdoor experience, so while they were more advanced than we, all of us were new to “real” rock climbing.

We had a guide to set the ropes, show us the routes, and belay us. He offered some instruction, but not as much as I was expecting. Mostly he just turned us loose on the wall and let us figure it out.  Read the complete post...