And so it begins....

We left NH on Tuesday, June 22nd.  We spent a day or so in Western NY visiting Grandma Veazey and other family, then moved on to Madison, WI for a visit with Jamie and Ellen.  Sandstone climbing with complimentary fingerprint erasing, farmer's market with more fresh veggies, breads and other goodies than could possibly be consumed....good times were had by all!  It was hard to drag ourselves away, but amazing climbing and adventures beckoned! 


We continued on our way west, stopping to play at a roadside sandstone formation called Castle Rock, and eventually washing up in the far west of Minnesota at Blue Mounds State Park.  Mike checked out the climbing (and I use the term lightly), I watched the buffalo roam (well, really, they were just grazing), we rested up for a night then moved on out in the morning.  Stopped in the Black Hills of South Dakota for a day and a half; tried to find the climbing in Victoria Canyon but only succeeded in stream-whacking for a couple miles (that's bushwhacking, but in a stream).  At least it was cool!  I don't think we've had a day yet that was below 90.  We also visited the Needles in General Custer State Park, we put on a show for the tourists at one formation, then explored a little bit farther afield in a nice shady spot.  Amazing spot, unlimited climbing!  No time to linger, though, because we were bound for Devil's Tower. 


Arrived at the tower Wed late in the afternoon, just in time for a severe thunderstorm.  Luckily the predicted hail did not arrive, I don't know if the car could have handled another hail beating!  Colin drove up from Boulder to join us for a couple of days, and we huddled in the car for the evening while the rain poured down.  Luckily the next morning was beautiful, so we went looking for some climbing in the shade.  We were sort of successful.....it's not easy when you're on a thousand foot high volcanic cone in the middle of a plain.  More hot weather brought more thunderstorms, we had just rapped down and were considering what else to climb when we heard the first rolls of thunder.  Packing up and hiking out quickly were suddenly a priority! 


The next morning the three of us got up early to do the Durrance Route to the summit. We were hiking in by 6:15, but there were still two parties ahead of us by the time we got there.  It's a popular route, and the weather was supposed to be very hot again so I guess we all had the same idea.  Luckily it was a windy day, so the heat wasn't quite as bad as it could have been, but rapping down in 95 degrees and full sun was, shall we say, a bit uncomfortable?  Still, it was amazing to be on the summit of such a unique formation and have a chance to play on some very cool rock!   We stuck around one more day to try a few more routes, including El Matador which is one of the classics of the tower.  Imagine climbing up the inside of a 6 foot wide hallway for 150 feet and you'll get some idea of what it was like.  Extremely intense!  The sun finally chased us off the wall, and we jumped in the car to continue West.  We stopped one night in the middle of Montana, and one night just north of Seattle, and today crossed the border into Canada!  We just arrived in Squamish this afternoon and are looking forward to settling in for some serious playtime on incredible granite!  Tally so far: 2 weeks, 14 states, 5 climbing areas, 3,200 miles.

Blog 1

On to the next adventure...

When last we met, our intrepid adventurers had just arrived home to jump into major house renovations.  Fast forward 18 months and one wedding and here we are, hitting the road again!  So, for those who are interested in keeping up with our travels the blog will be revived for the summer.

We really enjoyed catching up with family and friends at our wedding.  It was such a whirlwind, we wished we could have spent more time with everyone but I guess that's how it tends to go for the bride and groom :)  Thanks to everyone who made the trip, and for those who couldn't make it...you were missed!  Thanks also to all who shared pictures through email and Facebook, it's been great to see all the different perspectives on the weekend.  For anyone who'd like more wedding pics, please check out our friend Kump's official site: www.weddingprints.com  Search for 'veazey', click on 'select', then put in the password: kumpy (no need to enter your email address).  You're able to order prints if you would like, or just check out his amazing work!

Heading out now...more to come soon!

Yosemite Valley

Well, this last month has definitely flown! It doesn’t seem like so long ago that I was sitting in Ben & Meghan’s living room typing out the last post, but a quick check of the calendar has revealed to me that it’s been….26 days. Yipes! And almost time to be leaving the Valley now. Sigh. Mike was telling me this morning that he feels like we didn’t do anything while we were here, so I’m going to have to make a list and prove to him that we haven’t just been sitting around!

A quick rundown and then some details:

We’ve climbed Stately Pleasure Dome, Lembert Dome, Fairview Dome, Cathedral Peak, bouldered for 2 days in Bishop, climbed the Nutcracker (and some single pitches nearby), Pillar of Frenzy (ditto single pitch stuff nearby), East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock, 2 days of bouldering in Yosemite, climbed Serenity Crack & Sons of Yesterday, sport climbed for a day, hiked/climbed Higher Cathedral Spire, Bircheff- Williams Route, Munginella, Werner’s Ant Trees/The Surprise, Commitment, Jam Crack and the East Buttress of El Capitan.

Eight of the above days involved 900 feet of climbing or more. So there!

With the exception of a cold first week we’ve been blessed with unbelievable weather. Gorgeous sunny days with temperatures in the 80s! We’ve actually had to postpone some of the routes we wanted to do because it was too hot to be on a south facing wall in the sun! Hard to believe it could be this nice in October. We’ve been staying at Camp 4 (of course); it’s the ‘official’ climbers’ campground here in the park, and the place where all those history making climbers of the ‘50s-‘70s stayed. Not the most glamorous of campgrounds but it’s definitely fun to be here and be at the heart of all the climbing action. We’ve seen climbers here from all around the world: Germany, Austria, Spain, France, Argentina, Japan, Canada, Denmark, Australia, Poland, Norway, England. And that’s just in the 5 or 6 campsites around ours! Pretty amazing.

We spent our first week here in Tuolomne; the northern section of the park. We met up with my friend Candy from back home and spent a few days climbing the granite domes. The highlight of the week was definitely our climb of Cathedral Peak. Our hike in was somewhat epic, since we missed the shorter trail. Oops! We added a few miles to the approach, but did get to see Cathedral Lakes so it wasn’t a complete loss. The long scramble up the slabs and slippery scree slope on the back of the peak was less than entertaining but we survived it! The three of us got to the base of the last section of the peak where we started the ‘real’ climbing. Harnesses and ropes on and up 900 more feet we went to an amazing picnic-table-sized peak! There was barely room for the three of us and the ropes. The descent was very tricky; lots of scrambling down steep sections of rock and slab with a little snow leftover from the weekend’s storm to make things even spicier! We made it safely down and hiked out the correct trail (phew!), getting to the car just a few minutes after dark. When Candy and I climb together we always seem to end up off trail, off route and adventuring, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it happened yet again!

The rest of our time here has been just as much fun. We spent 2 weekends bouldering with our friends Ben, Meghan, Dan and Andy…..and it took me several days after to recover! Bouldering is not exactly easy. Mike and I tackled lots of classic routes (most mentioned in the above list), and so far we’ve only had one after-dark epic rappel session. Quite the accomplishment! The crack climbing is amazingly fun and challenging; I’ve definitely gotten a lot more comfortable with this whole multi-pitch thing since our first days in January. The vistas from these climbs are just incredible, I love being that far above the valley floor and seeing the vast expanses of granite walls and domes all around. It’s easy to forget the hustle and bustle of the valley up there and just drink in the peace and gorgeous scenery. We’ve done two really long climbs: the East Buttresses of Middle Cathedral Rock and El Capitan. With 1200 and 1400 feet of climbing respectively they were definitely the most challenging days for me. The hike in, the climbing, the gear and rope management, the long descents on steep rock….it adds up to an extreme amount of exhaustion by the end of the day! But, it’s been great to test my limits and push myself to try something so hard and manage to get through it.

We still have a couple days left here and then it looks like we’re in for some rain, so we’ll be trying to pack in as much climbing as we can and after the weekend start meandering our way to Indian Creek in Utah for a few days. The trip is winding down, we’re planning to be home by November 15^th so we’ll just try to fill our time with as many new experiences as possible before heading back east.

Yosemite

What we did on our summer vacation….

Well….we spent the last 2 weeks of July in Squamish climbing as much as possible, leaving on the last weekend in July to travel back to New England for my family reunion and our friends’ wedding (hi Ben & Meghan! J) After many many hours in the car we got back to NH on a Wed afternoon and spent the next couple of days helping my parents get ready for the reunion. We had a great time visiting with family, barbecueing, setting off rockets, playing wiffleball…..the torrential downpours weren’t too fun, but we made the best of it!

The following weekend we traveled to Vermont for Ben & Meghan’s wedding. More torrential downpours! But, luckily the day of the wedding was beautiful; we visited with friends, partied (and slept) in a barn and Mike pulled off his groomsman duties flawlessly.

As for the rest of August, we did some climbing around home, visited family, took a little trip to Acadia in Maine, and just for fun bought a house! On Labor Day weekend, a few days before we were planning to leave for California, I went and saw a house on a whim. It’s in the neighborhood where my parents live and I’d gone by it all the time when I was out taking Loki for a walk, so I figured I’d just go take a look. Well, a look turned into a weekend of soul searching because I fell in love with the house and couldn’t decide what to do. We had planned to leave for California for the last leg of our trip, it wasn’t exactly the time to be buying a house! After not being able to put it out of my mind, Mike convinced me to at least try to put in an offer and see what happened. Tuesday morning I applied for a mortgage, Thursday evening I made an offer and on Friday night my offer was accepted!! I was just astounded. The next couple of weeks were filled with inspections, paperwork and getting ready to move. It was a complete whirlwhind! On September 21^st, 2 weeks and 3 days after my offer was accepted papers were signed and homeownership began. Yahoo! The house is great, but we have a lot of work ahead of us: painting, renovating kitchen and bathroom, and ripping down faux wood paneling just for starters. Still, I think it’ll be worth the effort, this house has the potential to be a very cosy little home! Our friends Ri and Sarah are going to be our housemates and we’re pretty excited to have built in climbing and adventuring partners! So, are we rolling up our sleeves and getting right to work? Not quite. We moved all our stuff in the day after the closing, spent a couple days cleaning and getting a little bit unpacked, then hit the road again last Friday! With stops to visit friends in New Haven and Boulder we arrived in California last Wed night. Whew! Time for one more stint of serious climbing before we settle in and get down to work at home.

We’ve stopped in Davis to visit with Ben & Meghan (and to avoid a bad storm in Yosemite), and we’ll be heading into Yosemite Valley on Sunday to climb on some big rocks, lie in the meadow and watch the clouds go by, hike some beautiful trails…. Can’t wait!

Hope this note finds everyone enjoying the fall!

Summer vacation

Squamish, BC: Climbing and weather paradise!

Well, having been in Squamish for just over 2 weeks now I can definitely recommend coming in July! We’ve had only one rainy day the entire time, and considering the lushness of the vegetation it must rain the other 11 months of the year! We’re about an hour north of Vancouver, camped in a beautiful little campground just at the base of the Chief—the 2300 foot tall granite cliff that looms up from the waters of Howe Sound. Climbing is one of the main draws to the area, and there are climbers here from all over the world. We’ve seen people from almost every state and province (though no one else from northern New England), as well as folks from England, Sweden, Mexico, Japan, New Zealand and I’m sure many other countries. It really is a climbing paradise! There’s enough rock within a 30 mile radius to keep you busy for several lifetimes. The one drawback is the construction going on right now. The main North-South highway is being widened in preparation for the 2010 Olympics here, and since the road is squashed in between the Chief and the water that means a lot of construction noise just 50 yards or so from where we’re camped. It’s not so bad, just somewhat annoying when they’re working overnight and backing up the trucks a lot….beep, beep, beep at 3 a.m.!

Our friends Jamie and Ellen were here for two weeks, we had a blast climbing and hanging out with them. We’ve done some hard sport climbing, some one-pitch trad climbing, some bouldering and several multi-pitch routes up part or all of the Chief. Really, we’re spoiled for choice here! Mike had an opportunity to climb the Grand Wall with a friend we met here; it was a long-term dream of his to do that route so I was thrilled he got the chance. We may try to climb it together before we leave, but we have so many things on the to-do list who knows how much we’ll actually get done! Although we’ve been having an amazing time it’s almost time for us to leave and head back home for a little bit…some family events and a friend’s wedding are calling us home for August. We’ve got a lot of climbing to pack in to the next 10 days, so wish us luck and hopefully we’ll get a chance to catch up with NH/Maine based folks soon!

Squamish 1

On the road again: Colorado to British Columbia

We left Colorado on June 17^th and traveled north and west to eventually land over the border in British Columbia. On our way we made a few stops to climb: at Vedauwoo in Wyoming (just to see, no climbing there), at Maple Canyon south of Salt Lake City in Utah, and at City of Rocks in southern Idaho. We also spent a day at Mt Rainier National Park in Washington. It was an amazing 10 days, we traveled through some gorgeous areas (and some flattish, boring areas too!), enjoyed some new climbing spots and I went through 3 states I’d never been in before!

Maple Canyon was just okay, the rock was very interesting, it’s called cobble and it’s made up of smooth river stones embedded in a natural concrete. Cool in theory, but not all that pretty to look at and just mediocre to climb on. Oh well, now we know what it’s like at least!

City of Rocks was phenomenal, so it more than made up for Maple! The formations there were great, a lot like what we saw in Joshua Tree but in high desert, so there were a lot more trees and shrubs. But it was still hot!! We really enjoyed the climbing there, and there’s an almost infinite amount of it, so we’ll definitely have to go back someday and spend some more time there.

After our 3 days we packed up again and moved on, this time through Oregon and into Washington to stop at Mt. Rainier. There was still an unbelievable amount of snow there! Banks over 8 feet high on the side of the road! We did a little walking around (the forest is just incredible! I’ve never seen trees so big!), Mike hiked a little ways up onto the mountain (in the snow, in his sneakers!) and then we headed out to make our way towards the border. We were planning to meet up with our friends Jamie and Ellen once we got up there, but oddly enough we just happened to be driving through Seattle at exactly the same time! We stopped to say hi and catch up a bit, then they continued driving up to Squamish (about 3 more hours) while we decided to stop for the night and take a break since it was after 8:00. The next day we got back in the car for the last leg of this particular journey, crossed the border into Canada and made our way slooowly up to Squamish (delayed several hours by an accident on the highway). And now we’re happily esconced in a campground at the base of a 2000 foot granite cliff with more rock in a 30 mile radius than can be climbed in a lifetime! But, more about that next time!

Northwest jaunt

Colorado: the grand tour

We’ve been in Colorado for the last three weeks and loved (almost) every minute of it! We stayed with our friend Colin in Boulder for two weeks and spent the middle week touring around the state. Except for the 2 ½ days of rain in Rifle (aaaugh!!) we had perfect weather….blue skies, warm and sunny. We managed to get a taste of 10 different climbing areas! Boulder Canyon, Flagstaff, Clear Creek Canyon, Rifle, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Shelf Road, Eldorado Canyon, Lumpy Ridge, N. Table Mountain, and the Flatirons. There’s an unbelievable amount of stuff just around Boulder, 6 of those spots are within half an hour of where we’ve been staying. Climbing paradise! We did several days of long multi-pitch routes, a good amount of sport climbing and a little bouldering as well….pretty well rounded jaunt overall! Boulder is a fantastic place; very easy to walk or bike just about anywhere you want to go, lots of parks and open spaces, good food, great farmer’s market, and the scenery is pretty darn fabulous! I love it here! Staying with Colin was a lot of fun; his friend Rudy was here for a week so that was great, we also got to hang out with Cristin (who we met in Kentucky and was on her way to California), my friend Becky (another interpreter), and visited my brother Roddy and Mike’s aunt, uncle and cousins from Denver. We also visited Great Sand Dunes National Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park and managed to throw in some hiking and exploring while we were at it. Kind of a whirlwind!

This morning we’re back on the road, our eventual destination is Squamish, in British Columbia, but we’ll be stopping along the way to do a little climbing in Utah, and Idaho and maybe Washington. July 1^st should see us camped out at the next great climbing mecca and ready for more exploring and adventuring!

I hope this finds everyone enjoying the beginnings of summer!

Colorado