The Pit, July 2008


Trip Report Flagstaff, AZ July 26-27, 2008

This weekend, we needed to get the heck out of Dodge, so we packed up the camper and headed north to Flagstaff. Just to give you an idea how much we wanted to get out of the heat, the forecast for the entire weekend was pretty much rain. We figured what the heck and ignored that. We took off around 1pm on Friday and rolled into the campground by The Pit just south of Flag around 3pm or so. Just our luck, the "Campground Full" sign was out and we were out of luck. We talked to Leonard, our buddy who's the camp host there and he told us we'd missed the boat by about four hours or so, with the last site sucked up at 11 that morning. We'd be talking to Leonard later... The skies were already looking pretty heavy, so we opted out of trying to climb and headed off into the woods over by Priest Draw and found a decent site in the trees. I got to use my virgin Lynx Leveler blocks to get the back of the truck up a bit. Everyone said I was daft, but I did it all the same! The first block basically sank in the sandy mud, so I put a second on top of the first... and that one sank as well, but the third block!!! (you sort of have to appreciate Monty Python to get that obscure reference to humor...) So... we got everything set up and about two minute later, it was sprinkling. We were pretty much okay hanging in the camper while the rain came down. Riley snoozed, Felicia read Harry Potter, and I worked some Sudoku puzzles (lately this has been a main camping pastime for us). Below is a shot of Riley in "his" spot in the camper. A little beer, a little pasta for dinner... can't beat that! We actually had a "movie night" going that night, but my stupid caveman old laptop wouldn't eat two out of the three DVDs that I brought for the purpose. The only one that would load was a climbing flick called First Ascent. Felicia had never seen it, so that was okay. The rain on the camper roof was a bit loud, which made it hard to hear the sound, but we made it through. It came down pretty much off and on all night long, mostly just a steady light rain. A little Excedrin PM and I didn't hear a thing. :-) The next morning, we headed over to climb at The Pit. Just as we rollled into the parking area, our ol' buddy Leonard (the camp host) came over in his golf cart and told us someone was leaving that day around 1pm. And our luck was running okay because they were heading out of our "favorite" campsite down on the end. He let us pay for the site, took one of our lawn chairs to leave in the parking spot, and even took our bag of trash over to the can for us. What a guy! Meanwhile, we went climbing... (Felicia and Riley headed down to The Pit) There were quite a few climbers around... packs of them, in fact. It seems like there are a lot more climbers at The Pit the last couple years. Not sure if that reflects more summer students at NAU, or just more climbers around, just seems like there are lots of roving packs of young climbers running around. This shot is actually from Sunday, but a shot of our warmup route on Saturday, Mr. Slate (10b), one of the area classics. Everything else was filled up. We did that and a few other routes before the rain started. It was sort of bizzare how the rain wasn't there one second and then it was just like someone turned on a faucet and it was coming down. We were in good shape when it started, between routes and under an overhang of the Swiss Tower. We just hung out until it trailed to a slight sprinkle and then headed for the parking lot. An older shot of Felicia on one of the other routes we did Saturday, Sporte' (10b/c). A block with the anchor bolts came off this route last winter and it was pretty much anchorless until a couple weeks ago. Back in action now!!! The shot below was a cute, small puppy someone had that was running around all day playing with the other dogs. While Riley is playful and happy around most dogs, he just doesn't seem to like puppies much, usually just ignoring them. This little guy was seriously cute. While we were hanging out watching it rain, some big blocks came down off the top somewhere over by the main area. The picture below is of some tree damage (not the blocks that came down yesterday) from HUGE blocks that have come down off the top recently. Leonard said it's been raining a lot this year and there's been a lot of rockfall. Those trees in this shot are around 6"-8" in diameter. And that block is pretty big. Scary! Sunday we debated where to go... thought about going to the Overlook, but it was already threatening rain and we didn't want to drive over to the Overlook just to watch it rain, so we opted to just walk back down to The Pit and climb. Somewhere in there, we had an interesting discussion about how the camper is making us soft. Not nearly as many people down there on Sunday, although it did get kinda busy later in the day. Shot of Riley hanging out at the base... Felicia on a warmup climb on the Son Tower. We went over and climbed Popeye Meets The Burrito Master (9). This climber was headed up Mr. Slate (10b) from the level below. Riley was there to say "hello!" as she went by. She's just getting into the crux roof moves. Felicia gave her some beta. She was in pretty good shape, and could pull pretty hard, but her and her partner/boyfriend/husband had "beginner" written all over them. Whenever she would clip a bolt, she would say "slack" and then once she had it clipped she would say "take", apparently not so she could hang, but just to tell him it was clipped. Just little stuff like that that made you wonder where they learned to climb...and how many weeks ago. She pulled the roof and flashed the climb. Like I said, they were in good shape and could pull pretty good. I'm thinking they got tired of sea kayaking, mountain biking, or triathlons and climbing was next on the bucket list... We got up a few more routes today and got a pretty good workout in. I have a feeling my deltoids are going to be hurting pretty good tomorrow. I just don't think my workout program of unrestricted eating and little to no climbing is working all that well. Below is a shot of Felicia belaying me on Sporte' (10b). I took the TR... I was bushed. Here's a shot of Felicia scoping her next target, Mordor (10d/11a) to the left of Sporte'. She did a really nice job on it... I got my ASS kicked. Riley was keeping an eye on Felicia while she was leading Mordor. He looks worried! A shot of some guy working on a lead of Purple Shark (12) across on the Swiss Tower. Final shot before we hiked out of the Swiss Tower. In spite of the rain, it was really nice to get out of the heat for a while. We got some critical sleep catchup, and a few nice routes in while we were there. Can't beat that!! G.