Rock Climbing

Yay! Rock climbing day at Crazy Horse Buttress! I am so excited that Jaz is such an organizer. She gets everything going for everyone. She has been climbing for a long time, so she has all the gear, as do a few of her other friends. Keith from Bible study and Galina, a girl who works at a YWAM school and is staying with us for a few days, were eligible to lead climb (meaning attaching the rope to the anchors in the rock so the rest of us could just top rope and be safer). We had a group of 9 people! Jaz, Keith, Galina, Ruth, Ben, Tim (a Canadian), Robin (from San Fran), Kwan (who works with Galina) and me. We only had the one rope, so we each took a turn climbing. This was about twice the height I had ever climbed at the Rockreation gym in LA, so it was a bit daunting. 

Ruth had to go to a wedding and had to leave at 1, so she went first up the rock, after Jaz had lead climbed and attached it to the rock. She had never done it before in her life, so she made it about half way, what I would say is the length of an indoor climb in LA, and then came back down.

Next was Keith, then Ben, followed by Tim and Robin, then me, Kwan and Galina. Tim and Robin had gone cave exploring, so I went to find them to tell them they were up next and discovered the amazing cave they were in. It’s so beautiful and huge. I can imagine it fills up with rain pretty well when it’s rainy season here.

When it was my turn, I did pretty well for a while, but got to a tricky part, just below the top anchor and decided that seeing the anchor was good enough for me! I was like, “OK, I’m done.” Tim was belaying me and giving me advice on where to reach and put my feet and Jaz was cheering me on from below too. She was like “No! You are only a meter and a half from the top!” To which I wanted to reply “I don’t know what that MEANS! I’m American!” Well, after a rest, I decided to soldier on, and I did summit. Jaz took a picture and told me to admire the view. This was a mistake. Upon admiring the view, I decided to look down. This was when I realized that I was only attached by a small rope basically hanging in midair on a rock and was higher than I had ever been without my feet being on solid ground. I was like “OK!! Get me down!” The rappelling is the best part, but Tim was pretty generous with his slack, so I came down a lot faster than I was anticipating! Still, it was pretty fun. I’d do it again.

While Galina climbed with Keith; Ben, Jaz and I hiked up the side of the mountain to an amazing viewpoint of the countryside. Too bad it was so smoggy. L Tim, the mountain goat, kept on climbing up to the very tip top of the mountain. By the time he made it up there to take a picture of us, though, we had already headed back down.

Keith was lead climbing a really hard rock and I was a little worried for his safety. There was a point that he had to blindly reach around to clip his carabiner in to the rock and if he had slipped before he clipped the rope into it, he would have fallen a ways and smashed into the rock wall. He’s an expert climber though, so he was fine. By the time he got back, Tim had returned with Jaz and had a go at it. He made it up and we started back to town so Ben could meet Ruth at the wedding.

I chilled out for a bit at the house and Jaz went over for dinner with Sacha, so she hollered at me across the courtyard to come eat. J Jaz left to go meet her aunt and uncle for massages and street market so I stayed with Sacha and played some piano. I am not good at accompaniment, sadly. I really want to be good at it, but I usually end up just playing the melody in the end. I wish I could play the really beautiful flowery piano stuff, but I just need to practice more I guess. I am so much better at classical because if you get lost, you can just make it sound like you are playing that part slower on purpose. If you are playing songs, you kind of need to keep up with the pace of the song. It didn’t help that I was trying to play songs I have never heard before! Sacha loves Brooke Fraser, as do I, but I don’t know any of her solo albums. I really like the music though.

Anyway, we ended up just hanging out and talking about music and watching videos on YouTube for a couple hours. Yay for cool neighbors whom I can be instant friends with and geek out about movies, music and Glee. :) Ruth and Ben came back from the wedding and I heard about the Thai Christian wedding, which sounded interesting. We all had early church Sunday, especially Sacha since she has to sing, so I took off.