Skaha

Adrianne and I headed up to Skaha to join Sara and Rebecca in celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving ... climbers style. We headed up mid-day Friday and got to the campsite around 10. It was freezing (literally!!) so after finding Rebecca and Sara and setting up camp, I quickly dove into my -5 degree bag and STILL fell asleep shivering (though I did manage to warm up at some point in the night). We woke up and took our time making breakfast and coffee. Everyone was all bundled up in multiple layers of down and fleece all morning and we didn't get to the wall until around noon ... just in time for the sun to have moved to the other side of the crag.

So -- in the future, when climbing at Skaha when it's cold (lows well below freezing and highs not far above freezing), it's important to know where the sun is. The crag is situated such that almost every crag is in the sun for only 1/2 of the day and we didn't plan well on the first day, so we didn't get much climbing in.

Sunday went a little better. I was even sportting a tank top for a few minutes and climbin in the sun actually felt good. But as soon as the sun moved to the other side of the rock, we packed up and by the time we got to the sunny side again, all the routes we wanted had too much traffic, so we called it a day.

Adrianne and I had to get back for Girls Rock Monday afternoon so we couldn't stay and climb Monday morning. I'll have to look in someone else's book to remember the areas and routes we climbed. We only averaged 3 routes a day, but it was a good trip nonethe less and I look forward to future trips! No pictures, we were all too cold to take out our cameras!!

I was hoping to get down to Smith at least once this fall ... but the weather isn't cooperating this weekend. Here's to hoping for at least one sunny weekend for some Smith climbing!!