Another Vedauwoo Party

Its funny, the amount of time that I've been spending of late in the equality state since i broke all employment and residential ties with it last year....

But, common sense be damned, we tromped back up to Wyoming last weekend with the regular crew of Dyl-ann and Mar-kate and camped out Friday and Saturday night. Liz and i were excited to get onto the crags, if only to relieve stress, but also to inaugurate the newest member of the family - our new rope!

Saturday morning saw us heading over to the Lower Blair Formations, where, after meeting and picking up Sean as well, we spent the majority of the day dancing between shady spots and belay positions. We shimmied up three climbs the first part of the day, which were all directly in a line and in respective difficulty ratings of 5.7, 5.8+ and 5.9-. (In case you're not familiar with the climbing grading system, here's a good page to reference. If you haven't noticed, much of the posts found here have something to do with this Yosemite Decimal System.)

After these wonderful climbs, we decided to set a top rope on one last route for the day: Intimidation, 5.9+. The climb turned out to be a 100 foot grunt fest of a crack, and certainly put me through my paces by the top of it (read: exhausted me) and sent home for the day with a wonderful Vedauwoo souvenir: exfoliated skin.

Sunday morning we rolled back over to the same spot once the tent was rolled up itself and did a pair of fun crack climbs before liz and i bolted in the afternoon. The first was a big, fun roof-prone crack 5.7, and the second a glorious 50 foot 5.6 handcrack that I could have spent all morning doing laps on, if only to hone the mystical art of crack climbing.

I put a few photos up on flickr here, but, per usual, Kate, Dylan and now cousin Ann all recorded much prettier shots, the favorite of Dylan's ill handily steal and post here.