Friday evening we packed up our climbing and camping gear and drove out to meet Livia, Carol, Tyler, and Lauren for a climbing trip at the Monastery. The good thing about car camping is all the extra amenities you can bring. The bad thing about car camping is all the other people.
When we arrived at the camping area there was a small group of high school aged kids hanging out around a pretty large fire. There weren't any other good choices for campsites, so we took it. More kids showed up and we put up with annoying high school kids drinking and screaming the night away.
Despite the lack of sleep, we all rolled out of bed early Saturday in the morning sunshine. The hike to The Monastery is a pretty rough steep up and down roller coaster, but the rock at the end is nice. Between the 6 of us, we had 3 ropes so we were able to get in plenty of climbing even after waiting out an afternoon shower. I stuck to some easy stuff, but Christine went up a really tough looking 5.10.
We learned a good lesson when we got back to the campsite. Always stake down your tent, because even with 3 sleeping pads and sleeping bags it can still blow away. We found our tent about 100 yards down the side of a hill, with our gear strewn about along the way. Amazingly the tent itself was still okay, but the rain fly was ripped up. We ended up recovering all of our stuff except my lip balm (and I'm real broken up about it).
We set the tent back up, ripped rain fly and all. Then we borrowed a rain fly that Carol had in the car and draped it over as much of our tent as we could. It worked for the most part. Shortly after we set everything up, I was in the tent when another storm blew through. I can easily see how the tent blew away now. The winds were really pushing the the side of the tent in, and I was pushing pretty hard to keep it from blowing in too much more. After the rain blew through, we had and amazing double rainbow to look at.
Sunday we decided we were tired enough to not hike around, so we went home and cleaned up all our gear.
Carol kept remarking about how cool everyone was about the "issues" and how impressed he was that we kept having a good time.
ReplyDeleteVery glad we got to steal another weekend with you two.
Awwww...you gave Kuzca her own sleeping pad?
ReplyDeleteI know, isn't it great. It's a really lightweight 3/4 length Thermarest. She used to have a foam one, but it was awkward for her to carry:
ReplyDeleteThe new one folds up really small. Okay, so we're yuppie camping dog owners. :) The dog sleeping pad also gives us something nice to sit on around camp (as Kuzca demoed).
Ok, I think that's the cutest most Colorado-y thing I've ever seen.
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