Bird droppings

This weekend was a bit... intense.

Friday, I went on a very short hike with nodesignation, the_local_echo, and auntysarah over at Russian Ridge open space preserve to do a sunset picnic. We found a nice place in the tall grasses, sat down, and watched the sun set behind the horizon, which may or may not have been ocean, we're not entirely certain.

Russian Ridge is one of my favorite places in the Bay Area. On one side of the ridge, you have this amazing view of the entire Bay Area. You can see all the way from San Francisco to Fremont to downtown San Jose. It's incredible. On the other side of the ridge is an incredible and amazing scenic view of the Santa Cruz mountains, beautiful forested mountains stretching as far as the eye can see.

Sunset is really the best time to go, as well, because you get to see the whole place during both day and night. At night, you can really see a whole bunch of stars, and the Bay Area lights up in millions of tiny twinkling lights. I'm very glad that I got to share this with such wonderful people.

Saturday, I kidnapped the_local_echo and auntysarah and took them down to Natural Bridges State Beach. We had a blast running around on the sand and rock, and I even got to do a bunch of really enjoyable swimming. I haven't swam in ages, and it was great to get my body moving like that again. I discovered something quite interesting: My increased upper body strength from rock climbing has definitely improved my swimming ability. I was powering through that water faster than I ever have before. Quite nice!

The water was freezing cold, and the waves were really high there, so not a lot of people were out there in the water. Only the body surfers with wet suits were out any reasonable distance. Of course, auntysarah and I were out further than even them, swimming in the 6' deep water, without wetsuits. Yeah, we're hardcore. *throws up the horns.*

Er... okay, well, despite our "hardcoreness" we both didn't stay out there very long, and eventually we just refused to go out there any more. All that freezing cold was COLD! :P

While we were down in Santa Cruz, we stopped by a wetsuit shop to get ourselves some wetsuits for Zion. May I take a moment to lament how difficult it is to get a wetsuit on in 31º weather while simultaneously extolling the sheer sexiness of people in wetsuits? I can? Good.

Sunday, we all got up at dawn to head down to Castle Rock State Park to do some climbing at Goat Rock. We were supposed to have chirik and viesti with us as well, but they both bowed out when the wake up time was announced. (6:30!? Are you daft!?)

We set up anchor a lot faster than we did last time and got to do a whole bunch of top roping on the rock face. In an amusing turn about, the rock face was so easy that we wound up looking for the *hardest* moves to do, instead of the easiest. Just more proof that rock climbers like getting up things the hard way.

There was a women's only beginner's rock climbing course going on right next to us that was a lot of fun to listen in on. We got to shoot the breeze with the instructors a bit and chuckle at the new climbers. "Awww, she's scared of being 10 feet off the ground... :)" "Awww.. Look at her trying to use her arms instead of her legs." New rock climbers are so adorable. And then they grow up to be awesome rock climbers someday. And that's cool.

After doing three routes on the section we have named "Five Dot Fun" we went back up top to move our anchor over so that we could do some climbs on a different section of wall. Due to the precariousness of the anchor location, we wound up taking a full hour to set up our anchor.

When the_local_echo and I were all finished, I dare say that was our best anchor yet. We had two dyneema slings clipped to two nice looking bolts in a sliding X configuration. Two opposite, reversed, and locked carabiners in the connection point of that attached to two lengths of nylon/spectra webbing, putting two other opposite, reversed, and locked carabiners over the side of the rock for the rope to run through. One of the pieces of webbing just had the ends tied into two overhands on a bight. The other bit of webbing was just a simple loop with a water knot tying the two ends together. We adjusted the tail lengths of all the knots until the last two biners were just over the edge. Beautiful anchor, if I do say so myself. We had solid bolts. At no point in the anchor were we relying on a single piece of equipment, so it was quite redundant. The load was equalized over all the equipment and we had a slight possibility of extension if one of the anchors failed, but not terrible.

All in all, a great anchor.

We each tried a challenging 5.9 route once before getting out of there. I caught a pic of the_local_echo doing the route:


Can't see her? Here's a closeup:



I tried to do it, but by this point, I was feeling completely exhausted and could barely get off the ground. I was also a little nervous about the position of the rope, as it was a bit left of where we wanted it. When we had all had a go at the route, I hiked to the top to tear down the anchor, set up for a final rap down, and down I went.

Now here's one of the annoying parts of the day. Between wearing brand new hiking shoes, (which, given my lack of wearing shoes were causing me problems with my hammer toe) and my super-tight climbing shoes (which were giving me problems because of my big toe nail), my feet were killing me. I could no longer wear either of my pairs of shoes. "No matter" I thought. I figured that I'd just go barefoot. This wouldn't have been an issue with the one run up to the top to tear down the anchor, followed by the rap, but oh, no, it couldn't be that simple.

One I got back down from the rap, I tugged on the rope to pull it through the rap ring and bring it down. No good. The rope had managed to get stuck somewhere. So I wound up having to hike *all* the way back up the rock to the top, un-stick the rope, and then rap back down again. Climbing over hot rock and gravel, uphill like that was enough to tear the bottoms of my feet up something fierce.

This placed me in a bad situation. I could not wear shoes because that hurt the knuckles of my toes and my big toe. I could not go barefoot because the balls of my feet were in pain. But I had no other option. I evaluated all my options and decided to go barefoot, as it was hurting the least of all the options. Part of the way back, I figured out that I could wear my socks to add a small bit of protection to my feet. So there I was, shuffling slowly through the forest in my bright white socks, completely exhausted on every part of my body, while my friends ran to the car to get me my moccasins so that I could walk again. I was almost back to the car by the time we finally met up. Tossed my moccasins on and BAM, I was walking like a champ again.

My exhaustion and foot pain lasted for a few hours after we got back, but a delicious and nutritious home cooked meal from parmonster perked me right up, and we all snuggled up to play some BoomBlox before I went home with viesti in tow to spend the night.

This week is going to be all about doing final prep for Zion to make sure I've got all the equipment and gear that I need to function out there. And then, we're off!