A Day at The Dry

Mondays. Mehhhh.....

I mean, MMMOOONNDDAAAYYY!!!!

This semester Mondays aren't so bad for me. Last semester I had class at 9:00 am. Now I don't have class until 5:00 pm. This means I can leave in the morning, around eight or so, be climbing by around nine, hiking out by 3:00 and back to the house with plenty of time to finish homework and drink a beer before class... Or so I thought, leaving my house yesterday morning, headed for a south facing limestone crag just an hour and a half outside of Tucson called The Dry.

The day started out slow but interesting. We'd been told the road is passable in a capable 2wd vehicle. But with the weather we've been having recently the road was coated in thick, slick mud. The road isn't terrible, but it includes some steep very steep slopes. Luckily we were driving Beto's dad's trusty old Jeep. We slid down hills so steep the road would disappear from view beyond the hood. Finally we turned around a hillside and saw this:

That's right, it's snow.

Neither Beto or I had been to the Dry before, but I had heard a lot about one route in particular named Spinal Twist. A steep and fun 12a that includes an over sized spine-shaped tufa and a steep roof. Unfortunately the rock on a lot of the steep stuff was shiny, wet, slippery and most importantly, too weak to climb on. We still managed to get on a few vertical climbs that were amazing and tricky.

Broken Biscuits (10d) includes fun climbing up to a juggy roof, finishing with a short layback.

The roof makes for a fun free rappel coming down.

We also did Last Call (11a), which goes up a shallow dihedral to a thin, white face, and then finishes on an awesome 20-foot crack/dihedral. The pictures just don't do it justice.

Stella is part Mountain Goat.

By the time we left the crag it was 3:40, and by the time I got back to the house it was 5:20. I was 40 minutes late to class. The best part: it didn't matter at all. I love community college.