Friday, March 8, 2013

Fall & Winter recap

Dima on the approach to Purblind

Lest the reader (hi, all 3 of you!) think that there has been no climbing this past fall and winter, I would like to submit that I did do two trips. One was to Red Rocks in early November with Dima, then hooking up with the Minnesota crew, and the second was to JTree with part of the aforementioned MN crew.

In Red Rocks we climbed Purblind Pillar on Angel Food wall. It was great, but the whole time I was thinking how we should have been doing Tunnel Vision, because that looked amazing. Stilgar's Wild Ride and Group Therapy also looked awesome, so they are definitely on my tick list. The descent was quite Olympus-like, though. Definitely plan some extra time for that. On the second day I screwed up our approach beta and we overshot the area where we were supposed to meet the MN crew (wherever Great Red Book is, which is now also on my tick list). So after a bunch of wandering around and figuring it out, we decided to head to Ice Box canyon to investigate, since it seemed like a reasonably warm day. We got on Shady Ladies (meh) and Cold September Corner (insane!), and it *was* really cold in the shade. The trip was topped off by a huge thing puncturing my brand new Yoko tires, which irked me to no end. But thankfully by Monday morning I was able to find a place that could patch it, for free, to boot, and head on home.

The second trip to JTree was a bit impromptu, when I found out that my peeps from MN were heading out there for a weekend. We did the Eye, Stichter Quits, whatever the route with the one bolt is a bit to the left of that, and top-roped Battle of the Bulge. And had glorious glorious Indian food, which was at least as good as the routes.

So, in spite of two long international trips, getting sick three times, and shit-tons of work, I did manage to get out twice. Score!

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