Practice to Reality, Run-out, and 1st 14,000 footer

Sunday, June 21
Friday, we were yet again practicing high angle rescue for SAR training. This time we went through the whole routine, everyone setting up a section of the mainline, belay line, or packaging the patient. After everything was set up, we practiced a couple of times the lowering and raising of a patient over a cliff edge. I do feel really bad for the first patient (who happened to be a really nice guy originally from Australia who lived in South Africa for a few years), who was stuck in the litter for about 2 hours because it took us so long to initially set everything up and review everything that needed to done. During our second run through in the afternoon, we were interrupted by not one, but two SAR calls. One conveniently only two miles from where we were (what a “lucky” guy). I believe both cases were heart issues. Unfortunately, I did not get to go on the calls, though about half our trainees left to help. I had to stay behind to help raise our fake patient back over the cliff and clean up the gear. Oh well, both calls didn’t really turn out to be much, all the rescuers that left us were back for the debriefing by the end of the day.
After training though, I got another evening of climbing. After training, I went with Brian Drew, Matt, Christina and a new friend, Sam (who I met through SAR training-he does something with fire education) to the Thomson Ledge. I got on 2 climbs, but I did one of them twice to clean it up.

So Saturday, I was determined to get some cardio in by going on a long bike ride and getting a few other things done. But all those plans were dropped when I got a phone call at 6:30 in the morning from Brian about going climbing. I figured we’d only have a morning to climb because there was a 50% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon and the clouds in the sky weren’t looking promising already. So I planned to go biking afterwards. We ended up staying at the ledge until about 5:00. Oh, and now I have a new climbing friend who went climbing with Brain and I-Garritt, who is sort of in charge of coordinating cutting/spraying the pine trees with the pine beetle problem.
We went to the Combat Rock (slab), and started off our morning by doing 5.9 trad, the Diamond. It was actually a fun route, except that our two ropes continuously got tangled, so the route took us forever, even though it had only 3 sections on it. Then when we pulled the rope after rappelling down, they got stuck on a flake and Brian had to climb up to recover it, and then had trouble retrieving his gear (turned out he put one cam in a hollow flake that moved when he put his wait on it). It was just a mess. That incident wasted about an hour of our time.
After that, I was anxious to get on a hard route so I actually felt as though I really did a full day of climbing and didn’t just sit around on some ledges in a harness (which is mostly what I did). I decided to do this 3 star route a little over a 100 ft long, 5.10c. In the guidebook, it looked like the bolts were close together so I figured it wouldn’t be that bad to lead. The fact that there were only 6 bolts on the whole route didn’t click. After I clipped into the second hanger, I realized that there was a good 15-20 ft between bolts. I was just a tad bit scared a few times. I finished the route though, not cleanly, but well enough that I didn’t lose any skin off my knees, hands or face. I got to finish off the evening on this really short, easy, 5.8 with a large roof. I loved it-so much more calming than the previous route.

Today I reached new heights. I rose at 5 in the morning, to drive with Christinia to be at the trailhead to Longs Peak (the only 14000fter in RMNP) at 6 to meet Detterline. Due to some technical difficulties and an unexpected tour, we didn’t start our hike until 7:30 (and we all thought we weren’t going to make summit). Oh, but it turned out to be a beautiful day and a fantastic hike. Jim was great at guiding us and the views were fantastic. When we were going up the last 1000 ft on the North Face (completely covered in snow and very steep; ice axe and crampons required), we went at a good steady slow pace, so the altitude and the exertion didn’t bug us at all. The summit is like none in NH-it was really the size of a foot ball field. I tried to call dad for fathers day from the summit but unfortunately was unable to get a signal from the top. (oh did I mention that Jim did this hike in ripped jeans with long underwear? and he stayed drier than I did-I really need to buy a pair of gators. Oh and this was his 315th time up Longs. I guess you can say I had the best guide you can get for that hike)
After we got down, I went to meet with Bruce and his family for dinner. First time I had seen them in years and it was wonderful to catch up with them. Now, back at my place, I’m packing up for my 4 day long trip for work.