Ice Climbing

We just got back from our ice climbing trip last night, I was sad to leave such a beautiful place but am glad to be home. The week started off with me being sick – yuck. I was working last weekend and then had to get ready for the trip that I was leading, but I could barely stay upright let alone think. Anyways life went on and we started our drive for the Adirondacks in NY on Monday morning. We got to the cabin where we were staying and it was beautiful, it was a log cabin with a cold kitchen area, a heated living/eating area, and two large rooms for sleeping one was semi warm. On Tuesday to Friday the plan was to be ice climbing but since I was sick there was no way I was going to be able to stay outside all day let alone climb a pillar of ice. So I ended up staying in the cabin for the first two days but fortunately for me Drew and David were both sick so I at least had company. Then on Thursday the weather was very cold and so an option of going into town to shop was given. So I shopped and did some sightseeing in Lake Placid. For those of you that don’t know where I’m talking about Lake Placid reminds me of Banff it is a cute little mountain town and they held the Olympics twice. So I’ve decided that one of my “hobbies” if you can call it that, is going to be collecting pins and patches from places I go (this would have been great to decide this at the beginning of my program but oh well). Friday came and I was finally able to climb four people did multi-pitch climbs (this is where you climb up about three rope lengths and you get to do what is called seconding which is taking out screws that the lead climber placed in the ice) But seeing as I had been sick all week I only got to top rope climb, these are climbs that aren’t nearly as high and you walk up to the top set up the ropes and then climb, there is no seconding involved. So I was sad that for my whole trip I only got to climb three times, they were harder climbs and I was dying at the end but I was still mad. My trip wasn’t nearly as hard as Drew’s though, he got the brunt of the sickness during the trip and ended up going home with Lorn one of the leaders on Friday because he wasn’t getting any better. It was hard to lead a trip while being sick, but it was even harder see so many people not being able to participate. On Saturday we had an optional hike up a mountain, which was going to be about a five hour deal but it ended up being about a seven hour hike. Luckily I chose not to go seeing as I am still recovering from being sick and didn’t think I could last that long. The hike, so I hear, was up a pretty steep hill so that when they were coming down they sat on the backs of their snowshoes and slid down parts of it! So four of us went into town again and then got our gear packed up and ready to leave Sunday morning. Now that the trips over I don’t regret going or anything like that I had some great times and had fun hanging out with the guys in the cabin, and got to see another part of Gods beautiful creation.

The beautiful town of Lake Placid


Check out my wicked awesome glasses!!!

In the van with Henrietta! She comes on all our trips.

Esther decided that we should play scrabble but none of us actually new how to play...and we found half our words in the official scrabble dictionary. (Davids pointing to the word toga by the way)

We were all going insane playing the game but for some reason none of us wanted to quit so we played until we found out that we had about eight extra E's and it was supper time.