13 Years!

It's been thirteen years (aside from a trip to REI Seattle a couple years ago) since I have stepped into a harness, thrown on small uncomfortable shoes, chalked my hands, and put all four to the wall. So when the Bakers (NoPoGirl, BarkerNews, and Hazel) invited me and my family to come climbing I said absolutely, let me check with Ky.

Fastforward, I loaded Drew and Ky into the car and headed north for a glorious weekend.

As seen above, we were treated to an amaizing view of the South East side of Mt Rainier. It has taken me almost 10 years, but I finally got a photo worthy view of Mt Rainier. You would think a 14,000 ft mountain would be easy to get a photo of, well it's not, it likes to hide in clouds when I have had a camera and an angle. It took 3 years before I even knew that you could see Mt Rainier from I-5 South of Seattle.

Back to the climbing, here is Ky working her way up a nice and hard crack route, I don't care what the raiting was, crack climbs are hard. Especially for your first climb ever. Good work Ky!

Here I am, biting off more than I can chew after recieving enough peer pressure that I had to give it a go. It was a very successful weekend of climbing for me, I wasn't as bad as I thought I would be, but it still kicked my ass. There is a reason why you don't see 200 lb climbers on the cover of Outside Magazine.

Victory, our motley crew stands atop our final climb of the weekend, with wild fires burning the canyon nearby.

More photos available on Flickr