1st Climb

I did my first rock climbing the weekend of October 13-14th 2007 up in Leavenworth Washington with my buddy Nate and some of his cohorts: Heather and Doug. After work on Friday I headed up the busy busy I-5 to Tacoma to meet up with Nate, our plans were still up in the air, we weren't sure if we were headed to Leavenworth that night or not depending on the plans of others. We figured out we were going to leave early in the morning so we decided to go out and stir up some trouble. Our first stop was the Cloverleaf. I told nate I wanted some good pizza and he thought I would like this place, turns out he was right. Some of the best greasy pizza ever, we got the Huge Larson with bacon, candian bacon, sausage, and some peppers, awesome. While we were there we got some Mac & Jacs which if you can find it is a very fine beer. As we were eating up pulled a PRISTINE 1969 Hurst Olds. Now for those of you who are not aware I own a 1969 blue Olds Cutlass S, and this car is the same body style but with a 455 and some other nice features. I had to have a chat with the guy about it and it turns out we have two things in common, both engineers, and both own/owned a 1969 Cutlass S. We headed back to Nates and picked up some pedal bikes and a few other folks, postma whom I have met a couple other times and a lady friend of his. We biked down to the Parkway, very wide selection of beers at this joint, I was here one other time and have liked the atmosphere. Played a couple games of shuffle board and called it quits for the night. Got to bed by midnight and got some shut eye until 5:00 a.m.

We headed up to Seattle in the dark and picked up Doug and his vehicle and we all headed north on I-5 to hwy 2 east (after a little scenic jaunt). This was my first time on highway 2 and I enjoyed it tremendously. We pulled into Leavenworth and came accross a marathon. We saw people dressed in leiderhosen and other German themed garb. After buying some hard-boiled eggs at the gas station we headed up icicle creek road to the 6 mile mark and up to keen acres. Nate gave me a lesson on belaying and some other safety things and a short little session where he took a lead fall and hoped I would catch him, which I did. From here we moved over to "kilt twister" which had all ready been top roped by Heather. Nate went up and placed one of his new big cams in a crack and wanted to take a fall on it just to test it, he did and I caught him again. He got up and it was my turn to follow and clean the gear as I went. It went pretty smooth, nothing too tough, but I did have an anxious moment or two when I realized I was trusting my life to some rope and a friend. Made it to the top and then did my first rappel down. We moved over west a bit to another wall with routes such as aquamarine, strait street and kitty korner. I was following nate up one of them rated at a 5.10 and got to a point where I realized I was out of my league and just couldn't find anything to put my foot or fingers on. So I had to be rapped down. We ended up trying to do more than we should have that night because the sun was going down and we were still on the wall. Well we got a nut stuck and couldn't find a quick draw on the wall but had to get out before it got too dark. The hike out was interesting. We had one headlamp that worked and we played follow the leader.

Back to Leavenworth. We headed towards the Oktoberfest festivities but realized it cost $10 to get in so we decided it would be cheaper to go to Gustav's to get some food and beer. Turns out this wasn't the best decision. This place was soo over priced. In total we got 2 brats, 2 burgers, 2 orders of fries and 2 beers a piece and it came to 75 bucks. RIP OFF. From here we had a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some Kokanee. Then out of town up some crazy ass forest service road to a "secret' campsite that doug knew of. Got really bumpy at the end but we pulled up and got a great open view looking down upon Leavenworth and up at a massive amount of stars under a new moon. It was a chilly night, we sat around a fire pit but didn't have the energy to stay up with a fire so headed to bed quite shortly.

I woke up hearing footsteps. Turned out it was a deer hunter who was walking through the area. I talked to his hunting partner and he told me we were pretty dumb not to be wearing any blaze orange because there were a bunch of mexicans out that will shoot at anything. I thought that was pretty funny. We packed up drove to town dropped doug off to do some homework, got a great breakfast burrito that took for ever to get and we were back to our crag we left the previous night. We got up there and the gear was still there. Climbed for a few hours, I got stumped half way up "straight street". Picked up doug in town and went to do some bouldering at swift water. We were on the road by 5:30 headed back to seattle. Unfortunaltly there was a mess of other folks headed that way on hwy 2 and there was some major delays, an accident or something. It was stop and go for an hour and half. Heather brought her travel scrabble and she was aghast that I didn't know how to play... she taught me and it was a good time killer. We dropped doug off and got back to Tacoma by 10. I made it back to Portland barely awake at midnight and called it a weekend.