Wednesday, 11-March-15

One of the fun parts of spring, and a huge advantage of being unemployed, is getting to take short trips out to my favorite climbing spots to see if they’ve come out from hibernation yet.

Quincy… wasn’t quite thawed, as the pictures below show.

But, that hadn’t stopped a trio of adventurous climbers, who were scaling some of the easier walls… so it definitely didn’t stop us from at least hiking around and exploring the area…

Quick notes from the trip:

• There was lots of snow, and we fell through a lot.  Like… a ton.  It was sort of possible to float on top of the snow sometimes, but most of the time it was just wading through the mess.  Sometimes, I even jumped in on purpose… I admit to nothing.
• One thing I noted… was there a rockfall?  Maybe… not 100% sure, but “The Big Top”, a semi-cave on one side of a pond, seemed a lot smaller than I remembered it being… I couldn’t get a good picture, but once the final thaw happens, we’ll have to check.
• We both, at various times, fell through into the pond… fuck.  Okay, it’s okay.  We were both pretty much fine… though the amount of semi-frozen water in our boots was definitely less than ideal.
• For the final stretch we climbed up and around the primary ridge… it was really pretty, and the day had warmed up pretty nicely! But the ridge was still covered in snow, so the traverse was pretty slow, making sure that we didn’t fall into any of the holes between the rocks.