Don’t throw that rock (or water bottle) off a cliff

I’ve been urged by some people to write about a rather scary experience Dave and I had at Rocks State Park a week or so ago. We were climbing at the bottom of Breakaway wall and I heard a rather large rock hit the ground behind us. I proceeded to do one of those, “woah’s” in which Dave knew something was up — even though he was about 40 feet off the ground climbing. After asking what happened and me explaining that a big rock just came tumbling down, a water bottle comes flying off the edge of the cliff and topples down. Needless to say we both started yelling and, unfortunately, no one had the courtesy to say sorry or even acknowledge us, leaving us both a little worried about what would come toppling over the cliff next. I understand that rock sometimes falls but a deliberate act of throwing a rock down on climbers is a little scary. I can only hope we scared the rascal that threw the rock and water bottle just as much as he scared us. Probably not though…

Beyond that, I’ve been very successful climbing routes in the gym this week. I flashed a 5.11a this evening and began working on a 5.12a that spit me off three times on the first try and once on the second try. I was burnt out after that and wasn’t too successful on my third or fourth tries. I’ll be sure to give the route a try sometime next week and hopefully surpass one of my previous goals which was to simply “work” on climbing 5.12’s, not necessarily send them. Boulder-wise, last week I flashed a couple v5’s which was nice but no news on breaking through the v7 barrier that I’ve been stuck on. Soon, soon.