Lyle Haugsven on belay duty.
After more than 20 days of pulling down and shedding my fingertips on the sharp welded tuff of Smith Rock, Oregon, I can finally take a couple well-deserved rest days. The last 10 days I have been attending an AMGA (American Mountain Guides Association) Rock Instructor course, and have been spent absorbing lots of new industry standard guiding techniques and applying those in multi-pitch terrain. This will lead me down the path of certification in the Rock discipline, over the next year and a half.
Snowstorm!
Coils got a little too short during the Kiwi Coil Races! i was lucky to fit this over my head!
Super classic Cinnamon Crack
Blurry shot of our team on Lost in Space on the Smith Rock Group.
We were able to climb every day of the course, and climbed some of the most classic traditional pitches in the park, including the mega-cool Zebra to Zion on the Morning Glory Wall. After "school", we continued climbing, often until dusk, which was touch since class went from 8am to 4:30pm daily!
The weather has been fair to extremely hot, and on some of the days we had to resort to some Advanced Crowd Avoidance Techniques (ACATs)...
Super Slabbin'!
The MoonDog Himself.
But now I have to say goodbye to Smith and make the annual pilgrimage in the morning back to Yosemite where I will begin work in late May, starting with instructing an Alpine Skills Training for the Outward Bound School.
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