Glorious Warmth

We spent the last four days climbing in Cochise Stronghold, just east of Tucson, Arizona.  It has been nothing short of amazing, with excellent climbing and incredible weather.  Here is Kristal hanging out at one of the crags in a tank top and sandals.  That's right, it's the middle of January.  Awesome.

We jumped on a couple of multipitch climbs.  Here is Kristal belaying me on The Wateland, 5.8, 6 pitchs, from an anchor of questionable quality.  Notice the poorly slung chicken head.  Not recommended.

We also climbed Moby Dick, 5.8, 6 pitches, up Whale Dome, named for obvious reasons.

Both of these climbs were stellar, and involved more than a bit of runout and/or terrifying climbing.  On one 100 ft pitch I was able to place four pieces of protection - 1 cam and 3 slung chicken heads.  Thank God the climbing was easy.  More than half of The Wasteland involved super exposed climbing on pretty much nothing but slung chicken heads.  Amazing.

Here is Kristal belaying me up the fifth pitch of Moby Dick.

In addition to the long routes, we did some bouldering and sport cragging. Kristal's parent's are on a road trip of their own, and when we heard from them it turned out they were only half an hour away!  They came over the Cochise, hung out for a couple of days, and we spent a day doing some easy sport climbing together.  It was great to have some other people with us to belay, so that I could get some pictures other than the typical 'butt shot' or 'follow shot'.

Here is Lyle leading Baby Jr. Gets Spanked, 5.6.

And Lorraine cleaning the route, with Kristal giving moral support.

Here is Kristal leading it with Lorraine belaying her.

And again leading OK Corral, 5.7.

There are still a couple of long climbs we'd like to get on here, but it's hard to stay too long with so many other awesome destinations on the horizon.  We'll see what happens after a couple of rest days.  With the forecast calling for warm weather for the next week, it's hard to go wrong no matter what we do.