Saturday, March 25, 2006

2006: The Year of

Adventure, yeah that's what I've decided! I mean it has to be right? Within the first week of the new year I did my first trad climb (following) on Table Mountain, South Africa's (and possible the entire African continent's) distinguished climbing spot. So that means I'm packing my vacations with adventure in mind. Thus the training has began.

The new Earthtreks in Rockville was where I first started because of the blasted cold conditions. Pretty cool brand-spankin' new gym. Has a more extensive bouldering cave than the older gyms in the area (actually I'm only comparing it to Alexandria SportRock), really tall climbs, most routes longer than what you find in Great Falls and Carderock, and lots of challenging routes. At first I thought they graded their routes to hard but hah, that could've been just me out of shape.

A couple weekends ago when it wasn't so chilly we did our first outdoor climb of the season in Seculsion and Romeo. It was a great day for all of us, we ambitiously started out saying we were going to warm up on the 5.7's and make the most of the availability in the park. In reality, our winter-ed arms and shoulders could only handle three routes: Snowflake (5.6), Great Beginnings (5.7) and Romeo's Ladder (5.8). After that we've been tackling overhangs and roofs ... we should be in prime shape to tackle everyone's nemesis from last summer: Cornice in Great Falls.

Yeah, so you thought this was going to be a great post, but really it was just my climbing log. Not so afraid of the bouldering cave anymore and starting to work out roof/overhang problems on 5.8's at the gym.

Hopefully this will prepare me for July.

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