Last night, after the Tarheels’ win over Louisville, Tim and I headed back to the party. They were showing some very cool climbing videos, presented by the climbers themselves. It’s inspiring to watch the things that people have scaled, but I can’t say I’d ever need to repeat their feats. There aren’t any free climbing trips to Nepal in our near future. The following music act was a bit strange, a guy rapping and imitating musical instruments with only his mouth…not very well. Soon after he began, we said good night to the folks we were hanging out with and headed to bed.
This morning started with a Festival breakfast of blueberry pancakes. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten a good blueberry pancake and these were out of this world. We then headed back out to the hills for our clinics. Mine for the day was Top Roping, where I learned how to both make and recognize good anchors for sport climbing. If Tim and I are going to be climbing this summer, we want to be able to both go out by ourselves and do it safely, as well as be able to know if our climbing partners are doing it safely as well. This class was the first step in that understanding. There is a ton more to learn but I feel like I’ve got a good knowledge base to start with.
While I was knot tying, Tim was dangling 90 feet into the air. His class was Photography and Climbing and he got to play with some new and, of course, very expensive toys. His harness was roped into a pulley-based Ascender. With this device, he could pull himself up a static line and look down on climbers below. He sat high above some folks climbing a 5.11 pitch and snapped away. For a baseline, 5.11 is really hard. I never climbed anything this weekend above a 5.8 and it seemed completely vertical to me. So he was able to access some tough terrain quickly and easily. The equipment for the class was borrowed, but if we continue to climb I suspect there will be more purchases to make….ah well….
After a morning of classes, we went back to camp to clean up and listen to some basketball. We rooted hard for the Davidson upset, but it didn’t come through…so we compensated for our disappointment with a trip to Vegas! Now here we are, hooked up on the Strip at a KOA campground (yes KOA made it to the Strip!). We are showered after our 4 day hiatus from bathing and ready to hit Margeritaville! We went there last year with Uncle Bobby, Pat, Minnie, Ann and Scott and had a great time. We’ll relive some good laughs and I have no doubt, create some more!
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