Awesomeness

The day couldn't have been better for climbing. As we drove out Route 2, we kept running into pockets of mist and sprinkles, so we just hoped it would be relatively dry at Index. It was, although cool enough to need a few layers while belaying. Our son warmed up on a 10b gear route, and hung quickdraws on some of the bolts on the route next door, his project, a 13b/c called Amandala. I followed the 10b Sagitarius, which I've done before pretty nicely, and had a hard time on the little chimney section; misunderstood the advice, and went into it the wrong way. Ah, well. At least my companion was climbing beautifully; he redpointed the route, and continued up an extension of it which made for about 120 feet of thrills and chills. For both of us: As he got past each clip, my heart beat harder; it might have been palpable up the rope. He's been working on this route for a while, and it was great for him to make it all the way up without falling off. I tried an 11+ route next to it called Iron Horse, named for the trains that go by occasionally. It was beyond my skills right now, I didn't even get halfway. This climbing area is challenging, and demands excellent footwork, as well as overall strength, neither of which I possess in great quantities at the moment. We went along the cliffs and did one more route, a 10b called Tatoosh; again with the damned hard footwork. I struggled on the opening moves and had to pull up a few inches on a quickdraw - cheating - to be able to continue. Managed to get to the anchors, but at one point looked up and saw what looked like just a slender crack and blank walls. I was determined to finish, so I kept working on finding the shadows and scoops that are "footholds" in this neck of the rocks. Nice finger jams, and lots of grunting and a bit of stemming did the job.
Wonderful day!