Season Not Yet Open for Climbing

Tracy and I took off late Tuesday night, driving for an hour in the wrong direction to pick up a bum. Fire training was over for the evening, and there was a period of time when we weren't busy, which coincided with a period of time when Kelsey wasn't busy, so something had to be done. Arriving at Kelsey's place at around midnight, I persuaded him to take the wheel, and we drove for two hours in the opposite direction.

Sometime in the neighborhood of EARLY we made camp, dropping off the road into a ditch overlooking Weiner Lake and settling in. Here's Kelsey, digging himself a cozy tent trench.




We awoke to Kelsey's complaining footsteps, crunching away to the road early in the morning. Then we went back to sleep. :rofl

When we DID eventually crawl out of our giant pile of comfort (car camping, while often disdained, does have its benefits), I wandered down the road to find Kelsey pacing in his sleeping bag, enjoying the magnificent views Alaska has to offer and basking in the warm morning sun. My friend owns a cabin overlooking the lake, although we didn't stop in to say hi. It's a nice place.





After some aimless enjoyment of all this majesty, we had ourselves some delicious freeze-dried food over the stove, and moved camp to Kelsey's commandeered pullout. We may have looked a bit odd to the average passer-by, laying on the road in sleeping bags, but the view and company were both great.









A couple hours later we decided that the rocks were simply not going to warm up, and abandoned our hopes of early season climbing on the crags overlooking Weiner Lake. Besides, me and Kelsey had business to attend to, so we packed our gear into my car and took off on a leisurely route home.

Along the way we stopped by some boulders in the shade of King Mountain. It was too cold to climb there, too, so we ventured out onto the frozen Matanuska River to see if we could get to the other side. It looked like we could if we angled between two sections of open water on a slippery slope of what looked like snow mixed with overflow. We left it at that, and explored our side of the river. :rofl

Here's a crack in an impressively thick piece of solid water.




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It never did warm up enough to climb, so maybe we'll come back next month and try again. For now, enjoy the earthbound pics, and keep up the global warming!