The Minivan Returns!
The start of the semester brings Guillaume back from his mountain retreat. He claims to have gotten fatter, but I think he looks as tiny as ever. Eric, Kenway and I joined him for some minivan racing and a night full of lead climbing. On the ride over, Kenway claimed that Guillaume was "sharking" us, a term I have only heard used in very unsavory contexts. Thankfully, I figured out that he meant that Guillaume was lowering our expectations of his climbing by bitching about his "supposed" layoff, only to show us up; a term I assume derives from the same strategy applied by pool sharks, but which is not mentioned in the UrbanDictionary?
I managed to buy a gym rope, which was way more expensive than I had remembered (just buy a 60 m rope on sale and cut it in half, you'll save some cash). With two pairs of leaders, we all managed to get lots of climbs in. I climbed with Eric, who did a great job learning the nuances of lead belaying. I worked on a few 10s, finally sending the yellow one that calls for a nice heel hook to get out from under the big roof. Eric worked some nice 9s and a pumpy 9+ (yellow). Finished with some fairly half-assed bouldering.
Winter is far off, but it's still worth listening to Kelly Cordes ruminate on alpinism and training. What a badass.
4 comments:
I guess I didn't know what sharking meant! (or rather I understood what K was saying, but not what the dictionary mentions...). I promise, I wouldn't want to shark any of you guys :-)
Good session. I really want to do that 11 orange though.
I saw you take a whipper off something on the far wall, was it the orange 11?
yes it was. once again, i owe kenway a few more years to live.
You should have seen Meghan school us after watching both of us struggle getting over the first lip.
Man, she made it look easy...
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