Apparently, Winter Continues...
Well, I thought my winter was over, but apparently not. This past weekend, I went ice climbing in the Ghost Range for the first time.
The Ghost is a pretty big, pretty remote area. You need a 4WD just to get to the parking lot, and we spent 90 mins walking to our objectives for the day: the Joker, a WI 2-3, and Hidden Dragon, a WI 4. This involved climbing a couple of snow slopes (ugh, that's hard work) and doing a little M1 scrambling in our crampons. What's more, there was some rambly "approach ice" we climbed up without ropes. So now I've soloed WI2 ice. Heh. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
We bagged both climbs without incident, took some cool pictures, and hiked back to the car. The only really noteable moment was on Hidden Dragon. I'd started climbing on toprope when my belay jacket got caught by the wind and started to blow away. Will, my belayer shouted "oh, crap!" There are few things more terrifying than being 15 feet up and hearing your belayer shout "oh, crap". :-)
I've also been invited out for 2 more days of skiing, so it looks like I'll hit 9 days skiing this year anyway.
In related news, I huffed and puffed so much on the approach hike that I'm thinking I need some form of general fitness training this summer. I'll think about how to integrate it into the rest of my goals.