South Early Winter Spire, near Washington Pass

We had a day of climbing and ski hunting yesterday. We found Rich's ski From December and the 2nd missing pole. If you don't know how he lost his ski and poles, don't ask, you'll worry. We meant to get on a 5.11 climb, but ended up on a 5.12 by accident, which Rich lead and did great on. How come we never end up on easier climbs when we're lost? The scenery was gorgeous and fun was had by the whole family, Maggie included. The goat was close, but Maggie chased him off before I could snap a good picture, and he ran way up on top of a peak. The flowers, especially the mountain heather, was blooming up high and the mosquitoes, too.

Squamish Climbing

Rich and I went to Squamish, BC for a week, our annual trip to one of our favorite climbing destinations in the world (convenient that it's only a 7 hour drive). For those of you who've been to Vancouver or Whistler, it's right between the two on Howe Sound.

Our first couple days were packed. We did the Grand Wall to Roman Chimneys- 12 pitches of 10+ climbing in 10 hours. This was a long, strenuous day with Rich leading everything and me pulling on bolts, gear and stepping on bolts all over the place! Not my proudest climb, but I did it and didn't slow us down. Rich did an awesome job leading and didn't even seem all that tired at the end, but I was out of commission for the next day.

We then had two days of rain:( We tried to make the best of it- Rich biked in the rain, we went to a yoga class, went to Whistler, saw movies and did a lot of sleeping and reading. I'm not quite sure how mountain biking counts as a rainy day activity for Rich...definitely not for me. The sun finally came out and we did a very wet multipitch 5.9. Scary when wet, but we were just happy to be back on the rock.

We didn't take a whole lot of pictures on this trip, these are the best.



Looking over Howe Sound from the Squaw wall. This was a great 5.10d multipitch.

























Slabmaster Miranda- ha ha. We actually did 7 pitch climb of all slab- 10.c. We even had fun!





Rainy day hike to some waterfall on the way to Whistler.






















Our new friends Beth and Kristen. We met them the first night and had a great time hanging out with them in the evenings and doing a little climbing together. Beth lives in the mid west and Kristen lives in San Fran. We hope to climb with them in the future.

There were a couple slacklines set up in camp, and Rich could not resist them. We had a lot of fun watching him.




This was a super hard and runout 5.11 slab at Shannon Falls (Local Boys Done Good)- 58 meters long. I fell multiple times trying to follow Rich to the first bolt, which was about 35 feet up- I don't know how he kept it together. He did this clean- a tick for any slabmaster.