We went for a little sport climbing on Sunday at the Palace. This is an area about 15 miles up the Poudre Canyon with probably over 100 different sport climbs of a wide range of difficulties. It was really blazingly hot for most of the afternoon on Sunday, but after an hour or so, the clouds came out and the area cooled off quite a bit.
I am soooo out of climbing shape. That’s all I have to say about that.
Last Sunday, Mark and I headed to Vedauwoo for some fun sunny climbing, per the usual weekend plan. Unusually, however, there was a large bus parked in the middle of the entrance road when we got there. It turns out, last Sunday a Laramie theatre group were putting on an aerial ballet among the beautiful rock formations that make up Box Canyon.
Vertical Dance is a strange sort of tradition at Vedauwoo. The area was origially named and ‘created’ as a recreational area in the early 1920’s due to the efforts of a woman at the University of Wyoming; who used the natural ampitheatre to exhibit her plays and music. The tradition was rekindled in the late 1990s but, as the area had become famous more for it’s amazing climbing opportunities in the previous 30 years, the art performance was lifted off the ground and on to ropes! Each dancer had a rock harness, rock shoes, and kept themselves stationary on their (probably static) rope using a grigri! At the end of the performance, they all droppd the coiled extra rope and lowered themselves back to the ground.
Mark and I payed $13 to see the festivities last weekend. It was very nice. The performers were all talented dancers, but possibly a little nervous about being so far off the ground while performing. :-) I had the vague preminition that somebody had told the dancers just before the performance: “Oh, you’ll be totally fine. These anchors are bomber. Just don’t bounce around too much or anything…”
There were three or four “sections” to the performance. One guy in white that you can see at the top of the photo would come out between sections swing wide circles, doing front and back flips in the air, and then dissapear back into the crack. The three girls on the left went first, and spent their time doing choreographed arm and leg waving and small twirls on their ropes. The two barefoot girls hanging on the rope and pulley out in space mostly lifted each other up and down and slowly rotated in circles while holding on to each other’s arms and feet. And the couple on the right did similar work raising and lowering each other and a couple flips and swirls. It actually looked alot like a Wyoming rock-climber’s version of Cirque du Soleil. Pretty cool.
A shot of the west face of Devil’s Tower at the golden hour. The setting sun was like a giant orange spot-light on the side of the tower.
The route we worked on (Durrance 5.6) was on the south side of the tower, so off to the right of this picture. Still, it was a gorgious evening.
Just got back from a great vacation camping and climbing with Mark and my parents and my little bro Kev. I’ve got almost 300 pictures to sort through, so I’ll be a busy little girl this week. Here’s a shot of an awesome sunset over Devil’s Tower just to keep ya’ll happy.
… Is sometimes just getting down. We had an excellent weekend camping and climbing in Vedauwoo. I will never get tired of this place. We climbed routes we have been on before, but even little changes make them exciting still. In the case of this weekend, we climbed all three pitches of Walt’s Wall (with Rachel), and then rappelled the whole route with two ropes. That was a looooong (200ft) rappel.
The shot below was from the end of the day Saturday. Last summer, Mark and I climbed up to the top of this formation with Tom, and did this same rappel. That was one of the most exciting, wildest, scariest, most wonderful rappels I have ever done! I finally ended up in the right place at the right time to get a picture of somebody else doing the same thing.
For more shots from a great weekend, check out the photo gallery.
Well, my old blog got spammed into oblivion. This time, I’m just putting up stuff for people to read, not to comment on. If you’re interested in commenting on any of these photos, please do so in the photo gallery or on my flikr site. Thanks!
