Thursday, November 13, 2008

Yosemite

It's been a little more than a week since I started my little climbing trip. On Sunday Rob and I escaped bad weather to climb at Jailhouse. I got super worked there, falling on a couple routes I had wired, and only doing 5 and a half pitches. I went back the next day and shook my way up the warm up before quitting. The day after that I headed up, fired the warm up, tried a harder route, fell in the middle of it, smoked a bunch of dope and drove straight to Alex's house. The Dirty Bird, Alex Evans, lives in Curry Village over on the east side of Yosemite Valley. When I tracked him down, I convinced him we should go climb a wall. We could do the Prow on Washington's Column in a day. He was excited. He photocopied the topo, got his thick lead line from his storage unit, and was amped to get pysched. I racked everything and waited to meet the Dirty Bird last night. He went off to a dinner party with a girl named Dance Dance 2000 and did not make it back until rather late. We passed out with our alarms set to 5 am. I never heard Alex's alarm ring. He turned his off as fast as it rang. Mine woke me up. I got out of bed, woke the Dirty Bird, and threw the rack into the car. It was early. Actually, it was very early. Justin Wood and Ben Ditto slept on the floor, ignoring our early morning clamber. The Dirty Bird looked at them jealously. They slept warmly in beds of pillows and down.
"Want to go back to bed?" Dirty Bird asked.
I laughed. "Sure." I wanted to go back to bed. I also wanted to climb the Prow. I headed off to use the bathroom and when I came back to the cabin, the Dirty Bird had laid out my sleeping bag and pillows, and was hiding under his down comforter.
"Are you bailing?" I asked.
The Dirty Bird glared at me. "Let's go back to bed." I laughed and went back to sleep.
Most walls go like this. Getting to the base is always the crux. I would like to climb a wall soon. My hand started to hurt again after climbing at Jailhouse so now I do not know what I should do. My hand's still sore from the bouldering this morning.

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