turkey day is upon us, but the sights and sounds of winter have been slow to arrive. fortunately i found climbing as a new passion to fill up the snowless days. for many years i’ve known that the east shore can be plenty warm for all kinds of fun on pleasant winter days and many times on my trips to skunk harbor i’ve looked up at the spires just to the harbor’s north and wondered. well with the kids out of school all week on thanksgiving break (yeah, it’s a thing now, wtf?) i figured we might as well bushwhack our way over and check it out
picture of the objective taken two days prior
we left the car at noon. the hike until you leave the trail is easy and only about 20 minutes. then the fun starts.
fortunately we had a rescue plane circling if we needed it
after about 20 minutes of manzanita we got our first glimpse of the objective and things eased up
first, i tried leading it but things were so loose i chickened out. for instance, the block my left foot is on here is ready to fall off.
so i scrambled up top and set up a top rope. a 60m rope was exactly long enough. views weren’t bad
there was also a perch 2/3 of the way up where i could shoot from. jasmyn went first.
the climbing was easy here. the hard part was just before they came into my view.
a view that never gets old
jazzy about to top out
next up was skylyn, just coming into view
cell phone pic
skylyn reaching the top
i was next so i rapped down quickly as the sun was setting.
at the crux
then i moved left onto the face of loose flakes
selfie before topping out with the sun setting behind
it was a great way to spoend a part of the new thanksgivingukah break. but i’m ready for snow now.