Man was the Monastery a gorgeous place, especially the camping site…which if you missed it yesterday go check out the view!
The hike to the climb KICKED MY BUTT!!!! It was 45 minutes of scrabbling up the steep areas and skidding down the negative grades. Thankfully there was some spots where it was flat with AMAZING views (again see the post before about this.)
The actual climb was fun. With the amount of people we had to the amount of rope we had we all only got a few climbs in. The rock is SUPER different than the areas outside of Denver. It is like a dried sandstone, super sharp and ridged. Most of the holds are crimpers. I think I got one or two jugs in on the easier climbs. It was all very balancey though, which I love! (haha don’t you love my climbing lingo, my auto spell check sure doesn’t!)
While I was out there I felt like I took a lot of photos, but I wish I did more. I seem to struggle between wanting to take pictures and to get on the rock. This time I think I favored climbing over photographing because I didn’t get any shots of two other people with us! But I did get this shot of this random guy: haha
The back-lighting was just too much to pass up.
Ya, these are all mostly silly. Especially this first one:
And this one of Mark being a super model camera guy haha.
Michelle at the beginning of a fun climb!
The only photo Jay is in! haha. I just need to go out for longer periods and be intentional about getting action shots!
Mark snapped these last few ones. This lead climb took me FOREVER…I need to climb more…I still fear lead climbing.
Upclose crop of the above photo…to show you the crimpage….new word! Look at those ligaments bulging in my right hand! haha
And my belayer…oh gosh I’m terrible at names, I think his name was Nate! I just met him on this trip.
I decided that I’d totally do the drive up again to the camp site, but not sure about the hike to the climb area…maybe if I got SUPER in shape haha.
Overall it was such a fun trip! Thanks guys!! 🙂