Sunday, December 13, 2009

10 days of climbing left in Hueco

The weather has turned to 60 and sunny in El Paso...finally. The first day we were here it snowed and for the rest of the week it was frigid with one day being incredibly windy (gusts up to 50 mph) McClure flew home a few days ago and Darryl showed up day before yesterday...incredibly psyched I might add. Mike sent Left Martini on his first go of the day which was awesome. I started to work out the moves on Big Iron on His Hip. A pretty hard v7 that is the second half of Right Martini. I managed to send Girls of Texas, a problem I could not do last January. Mike is working out the moves for Tequila Sunrise and is consistently sticking the first move of Loaded Direct (which is the crux.) We are going out to East Mountain on Tuesday so he can try and send Full Throttle. I am going to try Hobbit in a Blender, a classic 5 on East Mountain that I made all the moves on but got distracted by a v7 with some sort of blender in the name as well that was a little more appealing to work on because it was not in the blazing sun. Never thought I would be chasing shade a week ago. Here is a picture of me working on Hobbit in a Blender:



We are taking two rest days, this being the second. Yesterday we spent most of the day at The Percolator, a fantastic coffee shop downtown. After we went to Target and had a little fun there. Here is a picture of the lovely duo on our rest day:



Today Mike and Darryl are hoping to get into the park to take an easy day (no reservations) But it looks like we may be just heading into town soon to see what else El Paso has to offer.

It is crazy we only have ten days of climbing left on this trip. Seems we have been out on the road for a long time even though it has only been 3 1/2 months. Thanks to everyone who has offered a place to stay, shared their bottle of wine, given beta, spotted and encouraged, shared chalk, given us a good laugh, and hung out around the campfire with us during all the cold nights. It is good to know there are so many genuine climbers to meet and I hope I get to climb with you all again soon!!

One more thing...looks like we are moving to Salt Lake City so if anyone has some useful info on where to live etc that would be awesome!

Will post more pics later today possibly. Running low on battery:)

-Kaiya