Camp Life

It’s a funny thing about climbing trips – the better the playing is, the longer you spend not playing. We’re back in Red Rocks, and the long, hot days in the canyons are leading to lots of days chilling out indoors, primarily at the library. Over the last 4.5 months in the van we’ve played a lot of scrabble and backgammon, and picked up a few hobbies that would probably never have occurred to us in our “normal” lives. Megan is on her second book of crossword puzzles, and Dave (taking advantage of the miles of cord and rope in our van) has been learning the fine art of decorative knotting. A rope we retired early in the trip has become a small rug, a belt, and an assortment of less useful items. Scraps of accessory cord and climbing-rope core decorate many of the small items cluttering Moby the minivan.


string theory

We’ve also accomplished some van ‘farming’ with several small crops of sprouts. Our successful crops were hard-won, our first few attempts were foiled by overnight freezes – sprouts don’t like to grow in freezing temperatures… Generally, we have eaten quite well considering we only have a tiny cooler and a camp stove and don’t always have access to fresh food. The Outback Oven given to us by Dave’s mum has greatly added to our cooking possibilities – baked mahi-mahi was a recent dinner highlight. However, upon our return to Vancouver and ‘normal’ life we don’t foresee PB&J sandwiches or oatmeal being top of our list for food! Cooking is generally not a problem, with the exception of cooking during a high wind. Wind really does blow when you’re cooking on an open flame stove!! We figure if we had to title our trip it might be something along the lines of “Cooking in the Lee of the Van/Outhouse/Any available windbreak”. This has been a source of some frustration and occasionally the inspiration to go out for cheap Mexican!

We have, somewhat predictably, gone through a small mountain of books and magazines, taking advantage of library sales in several states. CBC podcasts and the thousands of songs on our iPod have helped pass the time, but the Harry Potter books have been the listening favourite. We’re halfway through book 6 now, which is well over 100 hours of magical entertainment. Books on tape are great for winding down at the end of the day, but we have a habit of waking up wrapped in headphones, and Megan has had a few dreams where she was attending Hogwarts. Speaking of sleep: as the days get longer we’re sleeping a bit less, but 10 hours a night is still pretty common – especially after 12-hour climbing days in the Red Rocks canyons. Early in the trip, when days were shorter, we’d usually spend at least 12 hours in our two-sleeping-bag cocoon (or even longer when our water bottles froze in the tent).

We’ve been taking lots of pictures, mostly in bursts as we get to new places with new scenery. We promise to cull a few of the 100+ ‘gator pictures Dave took in the swamps before we make anyone sit through a slide show. The latest photo-favourite has been the desert wildflowers near Red Rock. The heavy rains this spring have led to the most amazing colours in the desert - and you can only take so many climbing pictures anyway…



Our latest ‘camp’ activity is a huge novelty: TV. We got a hotel room to chill and recharge before heading into Yosemite. The howling wind in the Red Rocks campground hasn’t been conducive to rest, so we opted for a night in a bed before we enter the ‘nylon ghetto’ of Camp 4. In keeping with that, our poor tent is looking a bit tattered. The 50+ mph winds over the last week tore loose one of the anchor points of our ‘4-season’ tent and flipped it over, which led to tears in the fly. We will definitely be having a chat with the manufacturer when we get back to Vancouver.

Red Rocks Round II, Part 1

We arrived in Red Rocks/Vegas just after a major climbing festival, but had no trouble getting a campsite and settling in. After our marathon drive, it was wonderful to set up our tent in a place where we could stay for weeks instead of just a few days. We settled pretty quickly into a routine of long climbing routes, cragging days, and lots of chilling out in the shade. We've also found the local YMCA, so instead of buying showers at the climbing gym (which are often cold) we can swim and soak in a hot tub for only a few extra dollars. We’ve spent so much time around here that it’s starting to feel like a second home - Dave even got a Vegas library card!

Megan’s various finger injuries are almost fully rehab-ed, so we’re getting on routes that she didn’t feel strong enough for in January. With this and the wonderful new Red Rocks guidebook, we have way more exploring to do than we can manage in a few weeks! One of the routes that we climbed this time was Birdland, a stellar 5-pitch route with a nice short approach. Well, a nice short approach for someone with less talent for taking wrong turns – Dave’s early-morning navigation gave us a bonus 40-minute scramble through manzanita bushes, but we still managed to be the first of the ten or so parties on the route. When we walked away there were six people sharing a two-square-foot ledge, with two more on the way – definitely glad we’re still operating on east-coast time.

North Carolina

We started out North Carolina by bringing a huge rainstorm to the Outer Banks, a group of sand islands that are infamous for many reasons – the site of the first English colony in the Americas (who apparently completely disappeared without a trace and have never been found to this day… the next colony in Jamestown, Virginia worked out a bit better for the Queen), a graveyard for sunken ships due to the shifting shoals, the site of the first flight by the Wright Brothers and of course, pirates, Blackbeard in particular. Sounds exciting historically but unfortunately we were pretty much rained out. We did spend one afternoon walking on the beach and checking out the area's many lighthouses.



Racing west away from the rain, we ended up in the mountains of North Carolina, known as the Appalachian region. Here you find the Great Smoky Mountains, which are famously known for the blue mist that seems to hang eerily from their tops. We admired the blue from a distance, as it was definitely too early season to go up to the high mountain areas.

We did spend some time on lower mountains, enjoying a few days of fun climbing on the south side of Looking Glass. The climbing here was similar to Lovers’ Leap, on excellent granite. The difference being that at Lovers’ Leap the routes make use of horizontal quartz dikes, the Glass has lots of short incut wrinkles known as ‘eyebrows’. These make for interesting climbing, as it’s hard to gauge until you reach the next brow whether it has a good hold (or placement) under it. Unfortunately the rain caught up with us after a few days, so we didn’t get to finish our climbing “tick list” at the Glass.

As a place to be rained out, Asheville was pretty friendly. Asheville is the major city of the region and is a fantastic place, full of arts and crafts, funky eateries and the best all-you-can-eat-pizza place ever. The pizza place became a favourite for us as alongside the pizza they showed second run movies for $3 where you sat in comfy chairs and could drink excellent local beer. Mmmm. We also checked out some local craft markets and got some great ideas about future craft projects…

Rain continued though we did do a lot of hiking around the Looking Glass area, hoping for some more dry days. We also got quite familiar with the Brevard Town library, another great place to be in the rain. And it REALLY rained. During the evenings, we have been moving right along on our Harry Potter books on our iPod. We started with book one in September in Peru, we’re now just finishing book five…They have truly been a sanity saver for some long evenings without electricity; sometimes a book doesn’t cut it, you just want to be entertained.

Psychologically we felt ourselves attempting to revamp our trip plan, as we were trapped by rain where we were but it was still snowing towards the north where we eventually wanted to head. Ideas varied wildly in quality. Instead of the Appalachian trail leg we had considered in Virginia, we flirted (very) briefly with the idea of hiking the Bruce Trail (across the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario) in May and early June and having our only source of entertainment be a portable, solar powered radio with the local CBC. (At this point we realized that we were a bit homesick for Canada) Other ideas included working on a local organic farm, staying in Brevard and working on craft projects, going to Florida, or just simply going back to Vancouver to work. Crazy. Most of our plans were based on our being in Kingston, Ont. in mid-June for a week-long sailing trip on a tall ship. Alas, this was not to be – maybe next year…

We had wanted to climb for April at the Red River Gorge in Kentucky however obsessive weather checking revealed an excessive amount of rain, sleet, hail and of course flooding in the area. Then we checked the Red Rocks/Vegas forecast – it showed extensive perfect, long-term sunny weather. Hmmm… So we booked. The 3.5 day drive straight back across the country to Vegas was slightly complicated by the fact that Megan had a pretty yucky flu bug for the entire trip. Dave gets major credit and bonus points for having driven the ENTIRE 2700 miles single-handedly, with the added bonus of a barfing ‘navigator’ throughout Tennessee… Fun times!

We stopped a few nights along the way and even lucked out with a motel room showing Ferris Bueller on our second night. Things were looking up! And we did have one token touristy stop, at a tiny town who's economy appears to be entirely based on having been mentioned in an Eagles song.


Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...