9 days at Smith

Posted by on April 9th, 2014  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

Wow, what a great vacation! I drove down to Tieton and hooked up with Aaron and Lolo. We did the usual skill building routines on phone call from satan, moscow, lions jaw and sky chimney. We also did a repeat of my fridays jinx to spiderman combo. But then we took a rest day, forced by rain. I got up the next morning and sent karate clean for the first time ever, after 34 years of trying. Daphne was my belayer, Aaron was the Photographer with my Canon 6D.

most of the reason I got up it was that I found foot rests up near the top. And I nailed all of my jams. There is a deep hidden one under the flake up near the top…plus I had two reds…and that was very helpful.

Lastly, at the traverse, I had a low yellow down in the main crack, with a blue up in the start of the horizontal. I shoved it right to keep the jam clear. Then I dropped down into a straight arm hand traverse. I placed the green blind above me while standing on dime sized slopers…that held fine.

I pulled up and threw for the horsey move, then used my last 2 seconds of power to fall into the stem.

that was ultra cool. I honestly thought I was too old to ever get that.

I chicken’d out on outsiders and grabbed a sling to clip, and I forgot my goood shoes when I led peking, and had to hang twice. Daphne led it clean.

Here are the photos. I’m too lazy to embed them in this wordpress interface.

Work has been unusual. There have been big changes in our program. I’m not ready to talk about them publicly yet. I do expect to have more time to paint in upcoming quarters…that will be an awesome opportunity.