Spring is finally here, and the weather has been taunting us with beautiful days and yet we've been spending most of our time in the climbing gym instead of going out on real rock. By yesterday we'd had enough - the weather was perfect and the rock was calling out to us. Forget pesky work (that's what vacation time is for), we were going climbing. The crew this time was my original partner in climb, Nick, and our new climbing partner Vivian.
Legend: Nick is in the blue shirt and I am in the orange.
When I say the weather was awesome, I mean it. Mid 70s, clear sky, nice breeze, few bugs. We couldn't ask for a nicer first day of the season outside.
Great Falls Park is a a National Park split by the Potomac river and it extends on both the Maryland and Virginia sides of the river. Here Nick is surveying the route ahead. The rock you see in the picture is on the Maryland side and, despite looking pretty steep from this angle, is not that amazing for climbing. The river is significantly higher than it was last year, so we were a little worried about finding a good place to stand on the bottom.
Before shots
We start the abseil down, with Nick going first. There's a path we can walk around, but it's good to go this way when the water's high. We also want to become as comfortable with doing so as possible on the small pitches as we might have to finish out long multi-pitch climbs with an abseil down.
And the climbing begins!
Vivian coming back down after successfully reaching the top
Random candid shot
Nick forgot his climbing shoes, and sneakers are almost useless for this sort of stuff, so barefoot it was. He did remarkably well, despite the obvious painful nature of such climbing:
I belayed Nick mostly, due to Vivian being much lighter than him. Although she can handle the weight difference, it does lift her off of the ground if either of us falls, which can be a little treacherous on the rock.
Towards the end of the day I started to get artistic
Who watches the watchers?
The last climb up was after it already started getting dark.
Finishing up
You must be this tall to ride this ride
Finally, the Great Falls of Great Falls Park
We finished it off with a few cold pints of beer at an awesome Irish Pub in Great Falls, VA. As usual, the full set of pictures are available in the photo album for this trip.
