Paul and April took me on my first outdoor climbing excursion yesterday. We drove up to the top of "Mt. Lemmon":http://www.rockclimbing.com/routes/listArea.php?AreaID=416 to check out what the local crag had to offer. First of all, the drive up the mountain is totally amazing. The desert floor drops away, and you completely change scenery going from saguaro to scrubby pines to full trees as you get higher and cooler (totally forgot to bring the camera). To get to the areas, you drive nearly to the very top, and then hike down, past the cliffs you're about to climb on. After a decent hike in, we tried out a few "warmup" problems (easy 11s). The type of rock on Mt. Lemmon is totally different from what I'm used to at the New River Gorge. The rock here is very sharp, with lots of quartz crystals. This is good because you can make use of a lot of blank-looking sections because of the friction, but bad because I don't have very good callouses built up right now, so today my tips are _blown_.

After the warmup we hiked a little further down to head to an area called "The Orafice". There were a few problems there that Paul and April wanted to work on there. To get there you have to shuffle across a foot-wide ledge, and then go around a corner and hook your harness into a safety line. P + A started across, and I looked and looked and looked and bailed. We were at least 500 feet above the rocks below, and one slip meant you were dead. I had visions of a foot giving way (it was sort of loose-looking choss), or a strong wind coming around the corner or something. That plus trying it with a loaded pack did not sound like my idea of fun, so as crappy as it made me feel I stopped. P + A were super-cool about it, and told me their first trip there they had bailed too, until some guy came and basically made them go across it.

Instead, we went down a really steep section of the cliff, past where a lot of the fire damage was from last year (burned trees and blistered rocks everywhere), and did a HARD 11 which was super-exposed, with a gorgeous view of the other mountains in the range, and all of Tucson spread out below that. Paul got the redpoint, and April and I both went up on TR. By the time I got to the top (long route, like 14 bolts or something) I was wasted. Not tired, so much, but no skin left, so all the prickly holds at the top felt horrible.

It was a fun place, but I'm still in bouldering mode, which is great because we're going to Heuco next weekend!!! Hot weather be damned, we're going to try and find all the shady spots, and just walk around and pick out some projects for the fall and winter. I've heard so many cool things about Heuco, combined with the video that P + A shot there, that I can't wait to see it!