The Heat Of February

I went rock climbing yesterday. This is noteworthy because it is Feb. in SLC, UT. It is normally rather cold this time of year and I would be climbing ice, not rock. Here is an interesting anecdote about ice. One week ago I went snowshoeing with some homies of mine up little cottonwood canyon. On our way up (as with any time I drive up the canyon in winter) I checked out the ice climbs that form in the canyon. They looked fat, blue and solid. I decided it was necessary to climb ice next weekend. Well a major heat wave hit SLC and I spent my lunches outside. The weekend came and I talked to Braden and we decided that it was warm enough for rock, and not cold enough for ice. Sure enough, within one week the ice had turned into milky, air filled, slush, highly unsuitable for safe scaling. Ice. What a fickle thing.
So I went climbing. It was very, very good to get back on rock. I was a little rusty with gear placements but it felt good, I felt good, Brade felt good. We got into a minor epic situation where we rappelled down from a climb but the rope was too short so Braden set up shop on a 5" ledge and I rapped to him. We decided to just sling the rope over said ledge to rappel the rest of the way down to the next solid anchor. This was a little nerve racking because if you lifted to hard in the up direction, the rope would have come off and we would have made it to the bottom very quickly. (Pete, I thank my stars that you were not present. No offense, but I think this would have been very phobia taxing.) It ended up working out great, almost too great; the rope got stuck when we tried to pull it. After 5 min. of Braden practicing his magic rope wave propagation, I decided I needed to climb up and dislodge the rope. I only had to climb up about 10', and there were little cliff trees, but I still had to down climb unprotected. Long story short we made it down safely.
Braden made a good point: It is always fun to have the mock epic situations. These act like little training sessions in case we ever do find ourselves in an epic situation. Good point. I always liked them because they are kind of fun problem solving exercises, I guess that is good training too.

Picture: Climbing. Moab.