Friday morning was wet & cold. We decided to wait a little bit to let things dry out. We had a leisurely morning, and left for the crag around 10am. As we ascended the slope, my excitement was building…look at all these amazing cobbles! I was psyched.
The hike uphill to the crag is a nice 15 minute warm-up. The views aren’t bad either!
We started at Super Slab (See above picture of the left side of the crag).
We climbed Super Arete (5.8) and Clast Action (5.9). Both routes were excellent. We liked them so much we did a couple laps on each. What fun!!!
After doing these two climbs, the wall was completely in the sun, so we took a break for lunch. I had lemon pepper tuna & tortilla chips.
When I was done with the Tuna, Cookie Belle was excited to clean out the can!
She licked every morsel out of the can, and then would not give it up…we watched her carry the can around in an attempt to keep it, but eventually I was able to pry it from her!
After lunch, we went over to Walt’s Wall and did Walt’s Wall Waltz (5.8). The base of the climb was still in the shade, but the top was in the sun. We were both pretty hot from being in the Super Slab heat, so we took some time to chill at the base.
Lauren launched up this climb, and when she got in the sunny crux bit at the top, I thought I could see steam rising from her helmet. It was sizzling (90+dF) in the sun!
After WWW, we headed back to the van. We were totally baked. I kept thinking about Kramer in the episode of Seinfield where he was rubbing butter on himself and sunbathing…In any event, we were out of water, so it was the wise thing to do!
Tags: El Rito, NM, Road Trip, Rock Climbing