eor

Last week I took one of the guys from work out to the South Freeport boulders rock climbing. He wants to take his kids out climbing, so I volunteered to show him some of the basics. There is one small slab that's good to demonstrate top roping because it's easy and only about 15 ft high. I showed him some of the basic setup, we rappelled, and then tried to climb the slab. The bottom of it was covered with wet pine needles and the rest was sprinkled with pine needles, lichen and moss. I hadn't brought the climbing shoes so we were both in sneakers. It was basically a low to the ground slipfest with neither of us getting up even that short easy slab.

But being out there under the trees by the rock reminded me how much I like messing around on the rock.

So last weekend

derien and I went out on all three evenings, roped up and climbed. On Friday and Saturday we climbed different little routes on the slab. As I climbed up and as I came back down I cleaned the holds along the way. Now almost the entire rock is clean to climb. On Sunday we tried a different rock, that I'd never climbed before. I made it up that rock once, though not by the route I first thought I would take and

derien made it almost to the top.

It's been years since I've climbed and I didn't realize how much I missed it. We haven't gone this week because

derien has been working until after dark, but if she gets back on her regular schedule we'll probably go in the evenings again.