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Well, here we are at the end of the trip. We start wending our way home on Saturday, it's hard to believe that it's time to get back to jobs and home responsibilities, but it has been wonderful to have this time together to explore and enjoy the first months of our marriage.
Mike did one alpine peak in BC--Mt. Habrich-- with his friend Duncan (from England); they hiked in 4 hours or so to reach the final headwall, 1000 feet of climbing! They really enjoyed it but it sounds like a long haul! Just before we left Squamish we took a 3 day backpacking trip in Garibaldi Provincial Park. It was a great time; beautiful, pristine wilderness, hardly any people around and relatively good weather (one day was rainy off and on). We have lots of pictures to share, so I hope you enjoy them
Since then we've been 'camped' in Boulder, staying with our friend Colin and enjoying the luxuries of life under a roof: refrigeration, running water, etc.... ;) We've done a lot of climbing at small crags which has been a nice change from the long, committing days we had in Squamish. The three of us did do one adventure climb in Rocky Mountain National Park: the Petit Grepon. It was 5+ miles of hiking in to a remote little pond surrounded by granite walls. The Petit Grepon is a free-standing tower, 1000 feet high, with a tiny summit--maybe 8 feet by 25 feet? A pretty amazing spot, and a fun day for us. The climbing wasn't particularly hard, but it was a long strenuous day altogether, we started at 7:30 a.m. and didn't make it back to the car until 9:00 p.m! We were ravenous and exhausted but very happy to have done it!
Hope you all enjoy the pictures, and we look forward to catching up with everyone when we get home!
Well, I was supposed to write this post a week ago, but time flew by and here I am a week later just getting around to it. Oh well! We've just finished a little backpacking trip and will be leaving BC tomorrow, but I'll save that story for next time.
For now, most of what I have to report on is climbing, climbing, climbing. We did as many long routes up the Chief as we could fit in, as well as visiting other spots in the area like the Malamute, Slhanay, and Bulletheads. I was most excited about doing the Grand Wall; it's a pretty classic route with some hard climbing and it's one of the routes we didn't get to do together last time we were here. The last few pitches of the route--called the Roman Chimneys--are not generally climbed anymore, and after doing them we could see why! A bit dirty and mossy, a bit harrowing and not so fun. But, after talking about wanting to do that part for 2 years, at least Mike can say that he's done it!
We continued to have beautiful weather until the evening of July 31st, when we saw the first rain since we arrived. I guess July really is the best time to be here! Since then we've had a few more showery days, enough to make it hard to climb but not so bad that it's a pain to be camping. We also got to enjoy the local 'Logger Sports' festival, with competitions in more kinds of wood chopping than you knew existed! Tree climbing and log rolling in water were also fun to watch.
Just a few new pictures this time.....since we've been primarily climbing there isn't much new to show. You can only take so many pictures of a person climbing above or below you on a wall; they all pretty much look the same!
