Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Aya K
Trad climber
New York
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 16, 2008 - 11:05pm PT
|
I'm moving to Ithaca (Cornell) - 5 hours from ANYWHERE. But on the other hand it gives me a chance to explore a lot of the climbing in the Southern Adirondacks (if I have time)...
I already have a partner and we're meeting a friend out there who is probably going to come along with us, but I guess if you run into us, say hi!
I doubt we'll be stopping at Eldo though I'd love to climb with Crimpie... isn't it going to be way hot there this time of year??
|
|
neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
|
|
|
Jul 16, 2008 - 11:07pm PT
|
hey there aya.... wow, congrats... !!!! .... animals need folks that really care about them... :)
edit----hmmm, say... that was meant to follow your FIRST post... NOT to follow that picture.... (nice happy pic, aya)
|
|
Jingy
Social climber
Flatland, Ca
|
|
|
Jul 17, 2008 - 12:13am PT
|
Russ - True happiness is found within, and until that happens.... I plod on.
P.S. My soul mate may not exist
... but that another story
|
|
Aya K
Trad climber
New York
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 3, 2008 - 07:54pm PT
|
We're back. Joe climbed every day; I climbed every day except one. AMS STINKS!!!! I hiked down from Spearhead with what felt like the worst migraine ever!! But anyhow, we had a grand old time. I think it went like this:
Thursday: Leave from my last day of work at one of my jobs early to go to the Doctor because my lymph nodes are the size of walnuts from some infected chigger bites. Get prescribed abxs.
Friday: Leave from the last day of work at my OTHER job early to go the dentist and end up having an emergency root canal. I need to go back to the dentist tomorrow to have it completed. They want to refer me to an endodontist but honestly I can't afford it. I get more abxs and painkillers. Yay.
Friday PM: leave, drive almost straight through. I'm beat, though, so can't pull my weight on Saturday night and pull over to sleep from around 1 until 6AM.
Sunday afternoon: arrived after a long drive. Felt great, ate a turkey wrap in the lot at Lumpy, and started off. Twin Owls are closed for peregrine nesting, too bad. Vomitted on the way up to Gollum's rock. Uh oh. I know I suck at altitude, always have - but ALREADY? Boo. I make it halfway up a 5.7 and decide to bail off a blue camalot because I feel so nauseous. Joe bails me out, and I struggle up another route. Nearly vomit on the way down to our friends' just north of Boulder, and start feeling better after a shower.
Monday: back to Lumpy. A quart of gatorade chugged in the lot before leaving, plus 4 liters of water over the course of the day mean that I don't die on the hike in. However, I am huffing and puffing so badly that we stick to stuff with close approaches, and go to Batman rock. Funny how stuff from the path doesn't look so big but once you actually get on it, stuff goes on and on and on... Stellar views of Longs/the Diamond.
I vomit dinner.
Tuesday: Take it easy, go to Animal World in Boulder Canyon. Nice, easy, mostly bolted climbing. I vomit lunch. Yay!
Wednesday: Get up at 4AM and drive to RMNP. This Better than Love route on Hallett's is our objective. It's an easy (mostly paved!) 2 mile approach, but as we're getting to the base of the wall, the skies are still overcast. A couple is already on their way down; they figure that it's not a question of if, but when, on the rain, and since they're locals, they'd rather climb in the sun. Whatever. We know it rains every afternoon, but since the weather seems to be holding, we start flaking out the rope... and it starts to spit a bit. Only lasts about ten minutes, so we head on up. I'm feeling pretty crummy the whole time, but we make it to the top in reasonably good time. Great rock, easy climbing, easy routefinding despite dire warnings in the guidebook. Of course, as I'm coiling the ropes at the top so we can make our way over to the rap off, the skies open up and we're pelted by hail and frightening lightning. The descent is pretty improbable, but easy enough. It's finished raining by the time we return to the packs, and the hordes of tourists litter the path as we hike out. My head hurts and my right eye is blurry despite the 3 liters of water I've had since leaving the car, but it doesn't take me too long to recover, thank goodness. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera. Oh well.
Anyway, blah blah blah. We climbed at Boulder Canyon a couple more days (Cob Rock, Bell Buttress) and Lumpy a couple more days (rained off of Sundance, boo!!!) and spent two more days in the Park.
So the big mistake we did when we decided to do the Flying Buttress on Meeker was that we decided to sleep in the truck in the parking lot.
We figured that despite the fact that it's not allowed, we'd keep a low profile and it'd be okay. It'd also save us the 1hr drive from where we were staying in the AM. Big mistake. First of all, the guys in the Denali next to us were up watching Blazing Saddles on their little back-of-the-seat monitor and cranking Tom Petty and the Red Hot Chili Peppers off the stereo while sucking down their huge 7-11 sodas and chatting away until around 11PM. To their credit, I heard them get up around 4AM, and they were gone in about 45 seconds with a "Ready? Let's go!". Unfortunately, nobody else that pulled into the lot between 2:30 AM and 4:30 AM was so quick and quiet.
"We'll check in on the radios every hour, on the hour, right?"
"Is that all you're taking? You're going to want a hood, dude."
"No way, dude, the orange anorak is all I want. If it starts raining, I'm going to be flying down the mountain!"
And so on. It sounded like half those people were not climbers, which makes me wonder why they had to leave so early...
At any rate, when OUR alarm went off, we said screw it, and slept till 8. We had a brief chat with the rangers before setting off.
"Hey, you know, I'm glad you don't enforce the no camping in your car rule, but I'm never going to do it again!"
"What do you mean?"
"There were at least 15 people camping in their cars in the lot last night."
"Really?"
"Yeah, and they weren't being discrete about it at all. Watching movies, listening to music with their lights on..."
"Well, then, they weren't sleeping, were they?"
Ha. You have to give him that!
We get all our gear and hike up, for training purposes. We get to the junction up above in about 1:15, which seems pretty good. I'm feeling pretty good. Yay!
BOO!
It starts raining!
On the hike out, I make no effort to keep up with Joe (he's WAY faster than me and I gave up on that a long time ago), but there IS a fellow behind me with his hands in his pockets whom I am determined to stay ahead of... and essentially I run the 4 miles down from Longs. Ugh. I am USELESS at the bottom! And I arrived maybe a minute behind Joe. My head's pounding, my right eye is useless, I'm super nauseous, but most of all, I can't breathe. My chest is super tight, and stays that way the rest of the afternoon/evening. I sleep with my back propped up on pillows, and feel better the next morning. Frightening.
Our last climbing day objective was Syke's Sickle on the Spearhead. Again, we sleep in and don't start hiking until around 8, but YAY! No clouds in the sky!!
However, I'm still nervous that the daily thunderstorms are going to roll in as I'm trying to pull the crux 5.9 roof with a pack on, so after some deliberating, I convince Joe that we should run up the North Ridge (mostly a bunch of 5.0ish pitches with a couple of 5.6ish and one 5.9ish pitch) instead. So, we do. I'm huffing and puffing after the first pitch, so in the end, Joe ends up leading everything. It's just as well; I can barely breathe by the time we get to the top, and my head's starting to hurt.
It ends up staying pretty much clear the entire day; we're caught in about a total of ten minutes of spitting on the second to last pitch.
The summit is very, very cool; at the end of the route, which ends on a shoulder maybe 100-200 feet down from the real summit, we ditch our packs and scramble up the 3rd class rock to the top. There are these cool kissing rocks with a hole that looks straight out onto the valley below:
And the actual summit is a bunch of scary, overhanging blocks which are super easy to scramble out on... but I haven't got the cajones; they look like they're just balanced up there. I stop a few blocks shy of the real summit.
While Joe scampers all the way out
He's particularly psyched, because the last time he was there (I think something like 30 years ago), he had been too pooped after finishing Age Axe to actually go touch the summer.
My head is starting to hurt as we begin to descend, and by the time we get back to the packs at the base, it's got the familiar pounding, my right eye's blurry, and I'm feeling nauseous. Joe basically loads up EVERYTHING except my water in his pack, and we start the long walk out. It is the longest hike I've ever done, where every single step jars my brain, I'm having trouble breathing, can't see more than a few feet ahead of me... The 5 miles must have taken us over 3 hours; it's 9:30 when we finally get back to the truck. We hike past a herd of elk, a sunset, so on, but I'm in such agony that I can barely appreciate them (or hold the camera straight)
As you can maybe gather, I spent a good portion of the trip feeling the effects of altitude (We optimistically stopped for tequila and beer on the way out and I drank all of 1/2 a bottle of beer while out there because I was feeling so poopy!), but I did have a great time all the same.
We left Boulder at noon on Thursday and got back Friday night at 8:30PM. Golfed all day yesterday, drank a lot without feeling nauseous. Yay!!!
I'm going to try to go for a run tomorrow. I bet that I will feel like a superhero!!!
|
|
mark miller
Social climber
Reno
|
|
Why do they call it Animal Husbandry when truley it's more like animal wiving?
Good luck with VET school and marrying a well to do businessman to supplement your practice. My Wife went down that path and now has a good job managing a nursery.
|
|
Standing Strong
Trad climber
sunlight on the surf
|
|
sorry to hear you got sick. hope the beauty of the setting you were in made up for it.
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
Some kind of award should be given for having persevered up those high-altitude routes despite Awful
Mountain Sickness each day (not to mention the infected chigger bites). A lesser person would have
retired to bolt-clipping in Boulder Canyon!
Nice angle on the Flying Buttress. That's quite a line.
|
|
Aya K
Trad climber
New York
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 5, 2008 - 11:50am PT
|
Uhm, I DID bolt-clip in Boulder Canyon :) Somehow, 5.8 there just wasn't quite the same as 5.8 on Spearhead.
We were lucky to be able to summit two of the three peaks we wanted to do, despite the fact that we absolutely SUCKED at getting up early and trying to get off the rock before the weather hit.
Of course, it figures, the day we tried to get out to do Grapevine on Sundance, we actually DID get up reasonably early by Lumpy standards (we were hiking by 7) and yet we got totally rained off. Oh, well.
I felt like such a weenie complaining about feeling sick so much, even down in Estes Park, but I really did feel really crappy. I'm also bummed that I bought a huge bottle of tequila and a bunch of New Belgium brewery beer while out there and ended up enjoying not even a sip of it because of feeling sick. On the upside, I think I lost a few pounds while I was out there, despite gorging on taco bell's value menu on the drive out/back.
How can they give you so much beef and beans for so little money? It boggles the mind.
|
|
Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
|
|
Are you sure it was beef?
I'm just saying,..
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
Well, more power to ya for staying up high in thin air.
BITD nostalgia: reading the Spearhead summit register after climbing the N Ridge, 1970:
|
|
Aya K
Trad climber
New York
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 6, 2008 - 09:32am PT
|
There was a summit register??
Few more (like I said, I wasn't really able to see too straight...)
Descent from Spearhead
Elk hanging in the cirque
Spearhead
Can't quite make out Spearhead...
Care to play good bolt/bad bolt??
|
|
Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
|
|
There was a summit register??
Useta be summit registers on just about every summit. Reading those and seeing who'd been
before you was a cool part of the mountain day.
On the day of our photo, I recall we saw a note from the Covington party after their
1967 FA of Obviously Four Believers. That was the first I'd heard of the route, which
became a new goal for me. Paul Sibley and I made the second ascent the following year.
SuperTopo thread/photo TR:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=431046&msg=432431#msg432431
|
|
Anastasia
climber
Not there
|
|
What beautiful trip Aya! It is also nice seeing you with such beautiful smile on your face. I am very happy that you did such a good job escaping the city.
AF
|
|
klk
Trad climber
cali
|
|
|
Feb 26, 2009 - 08:43pm PT
|
bump 'cuz this is probably as close as i'm going to get to dry rock in rmnp. and i'm still sick of the lame political threads.
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
|
|
|
Feb 26, 2009 - 09:17pm PT
|
stuff like this, is always worth bumping.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!