Early signs of spring.

The grass is always greener on the other side...

On Saturday Ben and I did a little climbing on North Table near Golden. It was a lot of fun but it definately got the nerves going a little bit. Where we started climbing is already about 500 feet above the town (I checked in Google Earth) so that doesn't help much. Some of the routes were really hard (one was almost perfectly smooth) and others were fairly easy. Definately the trickiest part for me was overcoming that feeling of an impending fall onto some very hard, and in some places very pointy, rocks.

The bottom picture was the last route of the day; we only did two anyway since it was crowded. We had hiked around the backside to get to the top so we could top rope. There was no way we were going to lead climb this our first time, the first anchor is quite a ways above the ground in a pretty tricky spot. Ben repelled from the top but I didn't want to because I have never done it before and I didn't want to try it my first time from about 40-50 feet above the ground. Basically I chickened out :). I did however attempt to climb the route and got about 75% of the way to the top. I made it so my torso was above the overhang in the picture (where the rope is against the rock) but ran out of juice in my left arm and was getting a little nervous since a fall resulted in a pretty big swing (a fun but bowel loosening experience when unexpected). Unfortunately Ben didn't get the chance to climb it as we ran out of time but I think we should try this one again if we go back.

All in all it was a good day of climbing and a little nerve racking since I haven't climbed outside in a good 6-7 years. Although this really wasn't that bad, you guys should look at a picture I took of some climbers in Boulder canyon. Oh and I really need my own climbing shoes, climbing in street shoes SUCKS.