Aid Climbing Break

Since the weather is still extremely hot, we did not plan any trips to go climbing. Instead, we figured that we would just get up early and head into the hills in back of our house to do a little climbing before it got too hot.

Unfortunately, we did not get up as early as we wanted to. And then the hike to our destination was quite far. There are no easy and clear paths that far up the hill. We did discover another wall that looks very promising that Christian wants to develop at a later date.

Our goal for today was a traverse across a horizontal crack using ladders and hooks. Of course, Christian went first to set up protection.

Emily went next. We had to climb up and clip our rope into the protection as we made the traverse. 

We move across by hooking ladders on to the small ledge and moving them an arms length at a time to traverse across. It is a lot harder than it looks and takes a lot of strength to hold yourself up on the ladder.

I went next. One of my hooks actually popped and I got one foot caught in the ladder. I was in a real awkward position and it was pretty frustrating and a little scary to get out of. Caitlyn went next. She was pretty scared but ended up doing the best of all of us in the end as she is very careful and meticulous in her every movement.

Christian had to go back up to clean our gear and so by the time we made the arduous hike back down again, it was pretty late in the afternoon. We were pretty fried from the sun so we ended up just vegetating the rest of the night to recuperate.