Buzzz....Buzzzz.....Buzzz....My alarm wakes me at 5:30am from a comfortable deep sleep. Eric and I got an early start to climb a 1040 foot rout called Dark Shadows. Most people stop at the 4th pitch, we decided to continue to the top and complete all ten pitches. (For those of you who don't know, a pitch is a section of the climb. Since we only have a rope 50 meters long we need to break up the route into sections. )
Anyway, Dark Shadows was the most epic day of climbing I have every experienced. It took us nearly eight hours to complete the route from bottom to top. Then we had an amazing decent rappelling through a gully down to a ravine with a creek in the bottom. Walking down through the ravine, we reflected on the climb, things that went well and sections we could have improved on.
We choose to use the traditional method of climbing which involves placing your own protection in the cracks the rock provides. This method requires that we take along all different size pieces of protection and then clean it out as you go leaving the rock as un-touched as possible. It is quite a mind game to say the least. Being so exposed hanging on things you place in the rock praying that it holds. You learn to block out everything around you and simply focus on the aesthetics of the climb. It is at that moment when all your senses are redlining that you can focus the most and completely experience the moment.
2 comments:
beautiful.
That is amazing! Love it! Post more...
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