Friday, April 4, 2008

This is a little example of the decent. It was loose rock for about the first 1500 ft. A little sketchy when you are already tired. FYI Most moutaineering and climbing accidents happen on the decent because of fatigue. Your mind and body start to relax.

I am so grateful for this experience. It tests so many parts of you mentally, physically and even spiritually. It helps you build faith and trust in the people you climb with. It teaches you how the body can endure so much, yet is so frail. Being in nature like that shows you how completely loving and amazing our Father in Heaven is to allow us to play in his wonderful creations. This was a very big accomplishment personally for me as a climber. PS if any of you would like to learn I love teaching. :)







Josh and me at the summit. Ps the sun was blinding me. We look really hot. The gear gets to be a little heavy.





Here are my tired boys at the summit. It is now 6:30pm. We climbed for 12 hours straight. Now we have a 3 hour decent.











Here is a picture of Jeff leaning out from the wall so I could get a pic of him and the view. We are about 650 ft from the top of the route. Pay attention to the dry creek bed. It is getting smaller and smaller.












Here is a shot from about half way up the route. This picture is a pour attempt at capturing the view, height, vertical angle at which we are climbing. The right side of this picture captures a little bit of the vertical wall we are climbing. I wish every person could feel the emotions and absolute sensory overload you feel at this point. Adrenaline, wind, you see birds flying below you. You feel so tired, yet completely energized at the same time. Your muscles ache yet you seem to get a little more from them each pitch. There are times when you think, "I just want to be done, but it is 1000 ft to decend and 1000 feet to climb." There are other thoughts like "I can conquer anything."
Here is an example of a pre-hung bolt that creates a belay station for climbing parties. There are usually two or three bolts to back yourself up on just in case one bolt happens to fail.









This is the hardest part of the climb. "THE CHIMNEYS" the technique of climbing them is to wedge your body and create enough friction that you don't slide or fall back down. Most people stay out on the face or front of the rock till they just can't anymore. You can kind of see the upper person in the grey is now about to get into the chimney. There are approx 400 ft of chimney climbing. Yuck!! Yes, i cussed a few times.




Here are Josh, Jeff and my feet at the top of the second pitch. If you pay close attention to the bottom right corner of the picture you will see a cluster of bolders that is the canyon floor. The wall on the opposite side of the canyon is approx 280 ft tall. To kind of give you a perspective.





Here is my update. I am sure no one is tuning in anymore. I don't blame you

Here are the men in my life that I have shared many climbing adventures with. Ryan Cannon and Jeff Osguthorpe. My husband is taking the picture. The four of us took on this adventure together.

We left SLC at 10:15pm after Jeff's flight from Detriot was delayed 4 hours. We drove all night to Vegas. We arrived in Vegas at 4:00am. We started our 3 mile hike to the base of the route and arrived approx 6:15am. We are suiting up in this picture. We started to climb about 6:30am. The trick to "big wall" climbing is to start at dawn hoping to miss afternoon storms.




Epinepherine 2000 feet of Beautiful Climbing

this shot is from the bottom looking up. You cant see approx 1500 feet of it.

IT WAS BIG!!!