Tietons Climbing

Last weekend a bunch of us went up to The Tietons to do some crack climbing. It was a really good weekend of climbing and hanging out. Trad climbing is finally getting to not feel like I'm going to die the entire time I climb. It's now down to 4 moves of sheer terror followed by the elation of not fucking up.

Tieton pictures

Nabe

We did up Nabe again on Sunday. Ron, Jami, Angel, Esther, Ingrid, Matt and Mora came over and we continued the ritual of Nabe. It was good, as usual. Esther made brownies and ice cream, that helped.

Nabe

Rock Of Ages - or how I lost my boots

On Saturday Dan and I went up the Rock Of Ages trail in the Gorge. It was pretty muddy and a pain to go up, but the Devil's Backbone is super cool. It was cool out and we had fog, which made it like Mordor or something. For once I didn't bring too much food and I was eyeing my advil as a source of food. Not that I'd really starve, but once you think about air dropped Philly CheeseSteaks (Dan's idea), it's hard to not get hungry.

While crossing one of the larger streams I thought I'd make it an easier crossing by chucking my boots across.

Bad Idea

As soon as the boots left my hand I knew it was going bad. They might have made it 2/3rds of the way across before landing in the fast part of the stream. As opposed to rushing to where they plopped in the stream, I stared at them in disbelief and thought "I used to throw in High School, how did they not make it?". Dan pointed out where they floated to and I moved there to snag them. They fell under a waterfall and got stuck. I tried grabbing the one boot and yanking on it, but the other boot was stuck somewhere. I regretted leaving my knife at home (I looked at it twice and thought "Why would I need a knife?"). I also regretted using 200lbs tensile strength cord for shoelaces as it's next to impossible to break with one arm.

I saw it getting worse instead of better, so I decided it was time to get heading back to the quasi warm confines of the Van. I had some duct tape and put it on my feet for the 3 mile hike out. After a while Dan pointed out I could put on my socks, so I did that and added more tape. Dan headed out faster to get my sandals from the car and brought them back to me about 2 miles later. A few people hiked by and wondered what the deal was. The deal is I can't throw two boots across a stream.

Gorge

Red Rocks

Ron and I went down to Red Rocks in Las Vegas to do some climbing and to hang out with Jami for her birthday. We had a good time not losing all of our money, making fun of the other people at Circus Circus and getting in some climbing.

We did a sick 5.3 trad climb (Chips and Salsa) that got us to the top of a few nice top ropes. We also got in a few good climbs on the Panty Wall and Ultraman Wall.

Friday and Saturday night we went out gambling at the Sahara. I lost my first hundred over a few hours, during which the
dealer laughed at me for doubling down on an Ace and a Two - I got another two and lost. The second night we got most of our money back after being down to 25 dollars.

I found out my camera has a defect that puts a white line through most pictures, so that added a nice flair.

Red Rock photos

Esther's Birthday

We went out to Lebanese food for Esther's big 29 birthday. The had the largest pita breads ever and it was pretty grub.

Esther's crew