Why are E.T.'s eyes so big?

Why are E.T.'s eyes so big?

Because he looked at his phone bill :)

What a week this has been! I was terribly sick last week and kind of the week before, so this has been one huge game of catch up. But I managed to get all of the most important things finished and most of my... less important schoolwork as well.
Thursday I was freaking out a little bit because I thought that I was only going to have time to climb once this week, but I managed to calm myself down and remember that there's always time to climb if you're willing to look/work for it.
Crisis averted.

So, basically, I planned an AMAZING weekend at the price of working my tail end off all week. I ended up, on friday, taking two exams (and doing really well on them), attending four hours of class (where I learned integration in calculus, awesome), establishing a boulder problem on the side of my apartment building(v4-v5ish), and hiking up Y mountain to camp at 8,520 feet in preparation for Mt. Whitney in two weeks! Busy day!

My boulder problem! I numbered the bricks here. It's actually a circuit that starts at 1 and 2 and goes to fifteen. I want to build up to being able to do four laps on it. That would really roughly translate to 100 feet or more of climbing! 

So, Cameron and I brought this random girl who wanted to hike Y mountain with us friday night (props to her, there really aren't a lot of people that I know that are willing to go to the top of a mountain and camp in freezing weather with two crazies like us), and did an awesome trek up in the snow! While up there I learned some valuable lessons to take up to Mt. Whitney with me.

1) It doesn't matter how nice a sleeping bag is, if you are not in a tent or on a full-length sleeping pad, the wind or the snow that your bag is exposed too can and will suck the heat out of you like a child demolishes a 7-11 slurpee. This is important to know if you want to get sleep.

2) Sleeping on level ground is the best option. Always.

3) Tennis shoes are cool for snow until you have to put your feet back in them the next morning.

4) Base-layer thermals are ALWAYS a good idea.

5) If nothing else, worry about your feet getting too cold.

6) Hot chocolate is worth carrying up a mountain for the end of the day.

7) Stop learning these lessons the hard way.

So I was pretty uncomfortable all night. Not really that cold, just very uncomfortable sleeping, and I only got 2-3 hours max.

The next morning we booked it down the mountain, got down by 8:30, and, after dropping them off, I got back by 9, just in time to get ready for my date at 10...

Against all odds though, the date seemed to have gone really well (I at least had an awesome time), and, by the blessing of deity I'm sure, I was awake enough to really enjoy myself!

Well, the awakeness was short-lived. As soon as I dropped my date off at home, my body decided that it had enough and started to shut. me. down.

Just then I got a text from a friend reminding me that I promised to climb with him right at that time. 

This was a good opportunity to evaluate how I really felt about climbing. Did I really want to go out while I was dog tired and start exerting myself by carrying all the gear up the canyon and then try to climb something really difficult? Or would I rather spend a warm evening at home, maybe watch a movie, and go to bed early to catch up on sleep?

Matt and I ended up on a climb called Double Jam because I was able to convince him to do some trad routes instead of a multi-pitch climb (for those of you who don't know, trad climbing is a style of climbing where, as you climb up, you place gear into cracks and crevices that will keep from hitting the ground if you happen to fall Here's a little, not great but better than what I want to write, article on trad climbing). I just wanted to work on my placement of protection and see how Matt broke down the climb for placements. He led the climb first and I just followed him and took his gear out of the wall so I could look at exactly how he placed it and what he was thinking.

I'm pretty sure Matt and Craig were scheming at the bottom because, when I got down, they both asked, "well, are you ready to lead it now?" 

This was probably the crux of the climb for me, I ended up having to climb up past my protection (pro) and hoping that I wouldn't have to put a cam to the test that day.

I have to admit, I was really tired and actually a little bit upset with them for even asking me if I wanted to! I freaking fell when I was on toprope trying to get the stupid gear out of the wall, how in the world was I going to lead it??

Well, five or so minutes later I find myself thirty feet off the ground and messing with a large cam trying to get it into a crack from a very exhausting position on the wall. What can I say, unless I really see a safety hazard from doing a climb, I can't say no!

So I sent the climb after a pretty hair-raising runout that I think scared Craig and maybe Matt a little bit (gotta work on feeling the need to place pro more often), and felt pretty dang accomplished!

After that, as if I wasn't enough of a glutton for punishment, I asked Matt if he'd belay me while I worked on my project Meadow Muffin (first bolted 5.12a climb in Utah!). So I actually remembered all the beta I had figured out before and then sent most of the climb after a third-or-so try. Matt wanted to give it a shot, and, with me shouting beta and encouragement to him, got way past where I did on my first try. That guy is crazy strong even though I'm pretty sure he doesn't realize it!

Now today... I think I'm just going to revert to that, watch a movie-stay inside-go to bed early tactic that I mentioned earlier. I earned it this week.

Let's see what damage we can do next week. :)