The Nature is Angry

It has been unusually warm here.  Unusually and aggravatingly warm.  Skin softening warm.  The kind of warm you find in a baby hedgehogs anus.  Needless to say the weather is playing a tough hand and giving us no facial hints as to what its holding.  So, we wait.  Today we did not wait and instead shredded our skin at Dales camp and then crushed one of the best slab climbs I have ever done in my entire life.  Not only is this thing tall and beautiful (notice the seafoam green lichen drizzling the wall), the movement is challenging and beautiful.  Even though the day left me feeling like a moist patch of green northwest moss, sending the Green Hornet made me feel somewhat accomplished and very proud.

And finally, today, the impossible happened and I finally sent something hard!!  Or, at least hard for me.  Above is a picture of the introductory crux on Swanky Sit(V.9).  Today marks the fourth day I have spent working this problem and the weather was as epic as the send.  Rolling down the roughly grated buttermilk rd. highway my car came to a stop.  A shroud of light brown dust coated the windshield and passenger windows.  A full blown dust-nado had enveloped my car.  Guess it's a little windy out there.  We made it to the Pollen Grains parking and warmed up amidst several other visitng climbers who thought they could escape the winds at the pollen grains.  they were wrong. 45mph gusts ripped through the valley sometimes coming front eh forth other tiems coming fromt he south.  jumping on our pads as if they were deadly grenades about to explode was a regular occurrence and we started to think this was a bad idea.  At least the conditions were good.  I sat down at the base of the climb and thought about the thirteen moves I had to do in order to call it a done deal.  I felt instantly tired.  The rock was perfect; sticky and warm enough to make the rubber stick.  I had felt good on my warm up circuit and I knew that was a good sign.  I had one really solid first burn and got to a high point, staring down the last move to the jug.  I fell to the ground and felt as if I had nothing left.  The wind kicked hard.  RJ smoked a cigarette and we talked about how intimidating the wind was.  Getting that close to a victory I had literally been dreaming about for the last two weeks was enough to set a fire under my ass.  The wind was starting to show signs of a lull in the horrendous blasts we had been receiving so far and I pounced on my opportunity to climb.  Every move felt harder than the last until I perched on  a good left foot and grabbed the last sloper before the jug.  Needless to say, or at least for those who know me, it was an emotional top out.  The 45mph gusts only added to the electricity of the send, and honestly, it felt damn good.  Looking forward to some great climbing in the coming months.