Mark, Katie, Mike, and I had the opportunity to climb the Clyde Minaret this summer. I guess you could say we had a mini-epic. We knew it would be a long day, but the route description we read did not really give us an idea of how long. We had the Peter Croft guide, and he happens to climb all this stuff without ropes. So, he has a somewhat skewed idea of how long these routes are. Anyway, we left camp by 4:30, drove to the trailhead, and started hiking by 5:30am. It's about 9 miles to the base on a good trail, and the climb itself is a Grade IV, about 1500 feet. The climbing was really really good and the summit was tiny, exposed, and fantastic. The problem came when we were on our way down and Katie and I saw some rappel slings in a sucker gully and we convinced the guys to follow us down it. Well...to make a long story shorter, the gully was really nasty and took us 4 hours to descend. The sun set just about the time we made it to the bottom, and we had a 9 mile hike ahead of us. With tired feet and hungry bellies, we arrived back to the car at 2:15am. It was a long day.
The Clyde and its reflection.
The very exposed summit ridge.
The summit register.
Christmas card photo? I think so!
Watching the sun go down while in the descent gully.
4 comments:
glad you are back in the blogging world!! great pics! i'll try the iphoto thing too. when are we gonna hang out again? i'm looking forward to it!!! :)
joy! eric and i are headed down to indian creek oct 6-7. i'm sure i'll have to work that next weekend but i should have another weekend off in october.. i'll email you when i find out. i think katie mentioned getting down there either the second to last or last weekend in october. depending on my weekend schedule (and if you guys are flexible) maybe we can all go down together! eric and i are planning on doing thanksgiving down there too!!!
Hey Joy - your blog site is pretty cool. The pic's are amazing. Keep them coming. Your a brute girlfriend. I didn't know you were such a bad a--. You have inspired me to work out much more. :)
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