Camp is established at the second anchor (their fourth), and everything is up here. Ropes are organized, gear is sorted, and I’m ready to lead tomorrow.
Driving out here on Sunday, it struck me what a study in contrasts such a climb is. I marvelled as how effortlessly I could drive compared to getting even three feet once motion depended on my body. You know, the human body seems a very inefficient machine! When I consider how much work a tank of gasoline can do, and what that weights, and I compare that with how much weight in food and water I had to move up to this high point, it’s just ridiculous how little I can get accomplished for the “overhead” of fuel compared to my car.
But the subject of moving all the weight of food and water up here brings me to the title of this post.
I got up early this morning to make the final round trip down to the car and back. On the way down, I encountered a group of people that were taking a tour of some sort, so they were hiking the trail. Really nice people, and they had spotted my camp up on the wall, so they connected the dots and concluded that I must be the climber (perhaps the “scruffy look and preceding odor contributed to the deduction). They had lots of questions, which gave me a rest period, and then they produced a tray of pineapples chunks to go around. Of course, being nice folks, they offered me some. Wow, SO great! What a treat! (If you guys find this blog, my warmest thanks to you!)
Perhaps most amazing about some of these trail encounters is that people seem genuinely impressed with the whole climbing thing. Usually watching big wall climbing is worse than watching paint dry, and talking about it makes people’s eyes glaze over. But people on this trail seem to be both interested and impressed. They talk like what I’m doing is actually important, which makes me feel sort of connected to the human race in this process. It’s easy to feel really isolated in this project. I mean, here I am alone, just working my way (slowly) up an obscure mud wall that turns out to not even be an important climb after all. Yet, one woman was bowing and only semi-jesting as she intoned: “We are not worthy. We are not worthy.” Both hilarious and uplifiting.
Well, it’s blasting wind up here this afternoon. Amazing how hard it can blow! But tomorrow I’ll see how far I can get. The “rocket” is staged!