eldo practice epic

Dr. Jay and I went climbing at Eldo yesterday afternoon after my million billion conference calls, which started at 5 am, were over.

We decided to climb something on the wall that's across from the Bastille. I forget what the name of our route was. It was supposed to be a fun little multi-pitch climb.

We got to the bolts at the top of the first pitch, and then decided to do the second pitch even though Jay had never climbed it before. We got to the top of the second pitch and realized there were no bolts or slings to rap from. So we free climbed what might have been the third pitch of the climb because it seemed like roping up at that point was just a waste of time. The pitch was only about 50 feet.

At the top of that, we still couldn't find any bolts or slings. Also, there was no way to walk off. By this time, I was in some serious pain. I have been walking around in flip flops so I have blisters all over my feet. Not so much fun to walk around in tight climbing shoes. Plus, I was getting worried. Twice before I've ended up in the same situation at Eldo (with two different climbers) and remembered both situations ending with a long walk in climbing shoes from where we rapped down to where we had left our packs. My feet were muttering "I am SO not happy about this AT ALL" and I was like "quit your bitching or I'll send you back to China".

The sun luckily was not going down as fast as I was worried it would. I was convinced that Jay, who's been climbing in Eldo for years, would figure something out. That something involved downclimbing a very steep and scary rock section to this tree. Jay was standing on the base of the tree, with about a 200 foot fall right in front of him. I started to get nervous and asked him to sling the tree and clip in. Then I down climbed the section. I could tell Jay was nervous that I was going to fall. I had images of me falling, landing on Jay, and the two of us ripping the tree out by its roots and all of us tumbling down the cliff. That made me laugh and I felt less nervous.

Jay slung the rope around the tree and rapped down first, with the assumption that he would find a ledge or bolts and we would be able to get down. Luckily less than 100 feet down there was indeed a ledge that we could use to walk off the cliff. I was hugely relieved. I rapped down and then started to pull the rope. The bastard got almost all of the way down when it decided to lodge itself in a little hook on the rock. I was like fucking great. I hung off the rope with all my body weight and it didn't move. Jay tried to yank it too, but it was lodged tight.

Jay started moving around to different areas on the ledge to see if he could dislodge it. The rope wouldn't budge. I did have one moment where my heart almost stopped because Jay was leaning backwards off the ledge, with about 100 feet of air at least between his current position and the deck, and suddenly the rope twinged. If the rope had dislodged Jay would have gone flying off the cliff. I was like please do NOT do that again! Jay just laughed.

Dr. Jay ended up climbing up this kind of scary looking route to get the rope down. I kept telling him that I would rather leave the rope and buy a new one than risk something bad happening, but Jay seemed to be enjoying the danger. I gave up and let him do what he wanted, which was to get the rope down. Luckily he didn't have to climb up too far to get it and was able to rap down off of yet another strategically placed tree. I was very relieved when he finally got back to the ledge. As he was pulling the rope again we were joking about it getting caught again. But, it didn't.

I hobbled, and Jay walked, back to our packs, and I finally took off my climbing shoes. I had a blister the size of a quarter on the bottom middle of my left foot that was completely filled with fluid. It had so much fluid in it that when I finally drained it (for the record, Dr. Jay told me to drain it) all this water shot out and made a wet spot on my carpet. It was kind of gross, but at the same time fun. Also, a chunk of one of my toenails that has been loose for a while got caught on a seam in my climbing shoe and broke off. I'm so bummed because I was going to paint pink them this weekend, and there isn't enough toenail left on that toe to paint.

When we got back to Dr. Jay's car we were talking about how climbing is a great engineering problem, and how it's kind of fun to have practice epics so you can do some problem solving when your life isn't on the line and you are just inconvenienced. I also think we did a good job of solving problems as a team. I was like "Jay, can you fix that" and he fixed it.

On the drive home I asked Dr. Jay if he was going to get mad if I wrote a blog about the climb. He laughed and said he wouldn't, but then said he was going to write corrections if I exaggerated anything. So I did my best to not exaggerate. I probably got some stuff wrong anyway. Stand by for Dr. Jay's corrections...