One Delay After Another…

Heading out to Poseidon's Adventure in the distance

August 20^th, 2011

 

I apologize for such a long gap between entries-I’m afraid I’m still in college and I was dealing with the end of the semester crunch. But now I’m down to one exam and an internship, so I’ll have plenty of time to catch up in the next few weeks.

But speaking of delays, I have a story to fit this theme…

Ricardo after pushing him out of the mud;
Do you see how he's not designed for off roading?

After the midweek trip to Big Hut and a weekend trip that was extended 2 days because of a bit of snow, I decided to stay around the flat the following weekend and play catch up on homework (I was fooling myself).

I don’t have the attention span to work on homework all weekend, so I decided to go on a local climbing trip that should have only been about half a day with James and Max. I should have known better, because Max at least should be paid for how good he is at delaying things. I believe I was suppose to be picked up around 9, but they didn’t get to my place until about 10 and before we could head to the crag which I thought we were doing first thing, we had to…

·      Go to Jaz’s office to convince him to come with us (he was working on his thesis-on a Saturday morning; seriously, what college student would do such a thing?)

·      Get gear from the Tramping club equipment room while Jaz finished a little bit of work on his thesis.

·      Go back to pick up Jaz, then head to his place to grab his climbing gear.

·      Pick up James’s brother.

·      Stop in the grocery store for them to grab lunch

Gathering Clams for dinner

·      Take a detour to another beach where Jaz and I gathered a couple pounds of clams at the low tide line (not too bad considering their super expensive-more so than lobster in the US I think-funny, because there are no regulations on collecting clams here-we probably gathered about 200-though their smaller than Northeast clams). Jaz made clam chowder with them the next night-delicious-though I did have to inform him it wasn’t real New England chowder

·      Try to drive the car down a dirt road to get as close to the crag as possible (though it would have only added about 10 minutes to a already 10ish minute walk-I would like to note that I voted for walking, but unfortunately they weren’t taking votes for the decision), which resulted in us getting stuck in a mud hole.

The intense bouldering problem

·      We then had to try and push the car out of the mud hole. I don’t understand why some people were keen to get the car over it and to the other side-it clearly wasn’t going to make it. We ended up getting help from this older couple that were walking by. After about 15 minutes we managed to push it out backwards of the hole and though someone was thinking of having us try again via a different route, some of us managed to convince Max to just park little Ricardo (named  by Max for the Brazilian guy he bought it off of for 150$) to the side. We then watched a 4-wheel drive SUV come through and easily go through our hole but have a little trouble with the next one-I’m glad we convinced Max to just park the car.

Me taking my time on PA

Finally, about 3 or 4 hours after I was initially supposed to be picked up, we were making our way to the crag. After the grand 15-20 minute walk, we arrived at the base of our objective: Poseidon’s Adventure. Supposedly one of the best climbs in the area and super long: 45m. Sadly the bottom part was wet so I (being the first to lead it) had to do the alternative start. Then when I got to the last section it was wet as well, so I had do decide if I wanted to climb on slimy wet ledges or finish on the route next to me that has harder and covered in lichen. It took a lot of pondering, testing, climbing, and down climbing before I finally committed my self to the harder, flakier but drier route. 45ish minutes after starting the route, I was finally at the anchors and able to belay James’s brother up.

James watching the show.
The tea was brewed in the pot just left of the fire.

   
      


Luckily, Max, James and Jaz were able to keep themselves entertained. Max and James built a fire and got the pot of tea on and Jaz took on this intense boulder problem which Max had to carefully spot him on-luckily he had soft sand to land on. After James’s brother gave it ago, Jaz hopped on the route, and by the time he finished, I’m afraid there was no time left for Max and James to climb. I think they did at least enjoy being out and sipping their tea and beer while watching the show.