Cream of White Mice

The morning after our aid climbing adventure we dragged our aching bodies out of the tent at about 9am. Heather and Lowell were out for the weekend; since it was the Canada Day long weekend, the whole area was pretty busy. We decided to go climbing in an area called "The Bulletheads" right above the campground. In general this is a quiet area, and we thought it might not be too crowded up there. Ashley and I were very tired and achy from the previous day's adventure, and I kind of was feeling bad about how long it was taking us to have breakfast and get ready to go. At long last we hit the trail, and headed up the hill, winding our way through trees and rocks to finally reach the climb that we selected. But alas, once there we discovered another group of four heading up our intended route. On the way up we passed a short little crack climb, so we decided to go back and climb that while waiting to get on our intended climb. The crack climb was great, and Lowell did a great job leading his way up it (at 5.10c this is Lowell's hardest trad lead to date). Ashley and Heather also styled their way up, but once it was my turn to tie into the rope I decided that today was not the day for me, and that taking it easy was a better idea!

Lowell leading and Paul belaying

Intense focus.

We all made out way back to the other route and found that the other party was far enough along that we could start. This route is called "A Cream of White Mice" (?!) and is four pitches long. Since there were four of us we would climb as two groups of two. Ashley and I started up, and as soon as we were both at the first anchor, Heather and Lowell started climbing. By the time Ashley and I were at the second anchor, and let the others catch up, we decided that we were cold and tiered, and that we would descend and rest for the day. Somewhere during our rappels, we heard the distinctive sound of someone falling (sliding) down the slab (low angle rock). Heather had slipped during a tricky part of a traverse and hurt her ankle. The technical details of the rescue operation are probably not important here, so the foreshortened version is: everyone got back to the campground safe and sound.
I got a message from Lowell today saying that Heather's ankle suffered a minor sprain, and that it should not take more than a week or two to heal.
In the past few days several friends from Calgary have arrived in town as well, so we should get plenty of chance to hang out with them. Last night we went into Vancouver with our friend Amara. It was nice to look around the city, and we had some great sushi while we were there. That's it for now, have to do some laundry and scour the guidebook for the next aid route Bwahahahah!