First of all, Elu has been returned safe and sound, thank goodness! And I'm also sitting for Safety, Adam's dog. So Sunday I took the kids to the boulder fields for a little romp in the woods and figured I do a little bit of climbing as well. The temperature dropped after the huge storm Saturday night, so the friction was good and it wasn't so miserably muggy to be climbing.
When I pulled up my buddy Dave was in the parking lot, unloading the BOOM...
{aside: The boom is an apparatus built for the aide in taking bad-ass pictures while hanging from a rock. Basically it pulls you out from the rock about 15-20 feet so that you have a better downward angle. The difference of 20 feet makes a HUGE difference in the way the picture looks. It will take a shot from this
(http://www.supertopo.com/photos/0/8/122325_10770_L.jpg)
to making it look a little more something like this:
(http://www.highexposures.com/jencrux.jpg)
(Neither of these are pictures I've taken since I haven't taken any from above on a route yet, just making sure you get the point.) }
SO Dave has the boom, and all the gear to set it up, so we can test it out. I can't really begin to tell you all about all the set-up this boom requires, it's nuts! we've got a 200 foot rope, two ascenders, a grigi, a reverso, and ridiculous amount of carabiners to suspend this thing from the ground. After much fiddling and hooking and me not paying attention to how he did it this thing was hooked up and ready for me to LIFT...
Harness on, locked in and learning to jumar, or ascend the rope. Ok, so pulling myself up the rope is not that hard, I'm used to using my legs and arms to pull my 120 pounds directly upwards... I've learned how to use every muscle in my body, working together to do such a thing. Okay, now this boom does not weigh as much as I do, however it's dead weight. SO I've got to get above the Boom, lock off, put my foot in a rung of the rope ladder, rest the boom on my knee, pull up the reverso first, then the ascender and use two hands to move the boom up about 3 feet. THEN I start all over, me up, lock, foot, reverso, pull.
When I get the boom to where I want it to be, I simply kick off from the rock as hard as I can and grab the boom, walking my way out to the end of it, and tie off so that I'm away from the rock. Overall, a really cool way to wear yourself out and get some cool pictures...
