Out in the Koots - AKA Sausage Festival 2019

I ended up taking last week off of work for a much needed vacation...

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Those of you that follow me and/or my blog somewhat closely will know that I attempted to take a vacation about a month ago, but we all just traded turns having a vicious flu -- not cool.

But this time was different

Myself, @jkms, and another buddy made it out to Revelstoke BC for four days of climbing, and then a soak in a still-pretty-wild hotspring. There may have been some nudity involved at the hotsprings -- (un)fortunately, there will be no photos of that evening out of respect to the others that were there.

@jkms starting up a razor-sharp 5.9 route

I was absoloutely mind-boggled by the density of climbing crags located around the park we were staying at. I had been to some climbing towns before -- but this was different. We were only 15 minutes outside of town, and there was an endless amount of climbing. The forest is this place is wild, the mountains are tall, and the canyons are carved in deep from thundering creeks and rivers -- there's about 100 lifetimes worth of climbing to do here that has been found already, and probably an infinite amount that's waiting to be discovered.

The one and only me, lowering into the canyon on some fixed ropes

We made our way into Blanket Creek Canyon, because we read something interesting in the climbing guidebook. Something about something called a 'tyrolean traverse'. I feel like I had seen it somewhere before, or at least heard the name. Then I saw the pictures in the book, and it clicked -- "That's how that chick died at the start of Cliffhanger!! This must be DOPE!". So we investigated -- and then we did it:

Again, here I am, being a fool in the forest. But this was serious fun.

I feel like this photo of @jkms on the traverse shows the scale and exposure better.

We only went on after strapping on our heavy heavy gear-bags as a quick check -- but we bumped into some of the fine folks that maintain the area, and they assured us it was safe and that they "used to send their kids across all the time". I'm not sure what I liked more -- climbing on the rocks, or gliding over the creek. Though -- the rock was definitely incredible.

Me, pulling over the roof of a 5.10a route I was leading. Incredible view of the creek from the top, and pulling into the sunshine was the nicest feeling I've had in a while

It started to rain on us, and the rock, later in the week which prevented us from climbing too much more -- but we were starting to get tired by that point and had more-or-less tuckered ourselves out. We still needed to scope out another area though, in preparation for when we inevitably come back to town to play some more. We needed to see "Waterworld" -- a climbing wall along the east side of Lake Revelstoke -- which can only be accessed by rapelling down from the top some 80~100m (that's around 250~300+ ft for you Americans -- or even 25~30 storeys for some context).

Voyage Cliff	The view	The Raps @ Gangplank

We were anticipating trying out our first multi-pitch climbing ever, and in a group of 3 no less. However, we took stock of our situation and decided that it probably wasn't the best time to attempt this because of:

• We had just had to shorten my rope by ~5m because the sharp rocks kinda-sorta almost cut it off for me;
  • This means we only had one 60m rope -- which was fine -- but we would feel better w/ a backup;
• We were already 3 days in to our trip, and some of the group was starting to get tired;
• The wall gets lots of afternoon sun, but it was cloudy today, and kind of raining anyways;
• To access -- you NEED to rappel to the bottom -- about 70m down;
• To exit -- you NEED to climb out -- and as mentioned about -- some peeps were tired;
  • The leading would have been fine for me -- 5.8 is no big deal, really. But, I'm the more seasoned climber on the team, and certainly not the weak link. Most of the routes we had been doing were about 18~25m tall.
  • There were only two routes to get out, but they were 35 and 45m tall respectively -- and w/ rappelling down and then climbing back out w/ 3 people (on our first multipitch) on some long-ass climbs -- I feel like we would have taken MUCH longer than expected.

So we didn't do it. We've got our eyes set on some easier multipitch stuff, and then we're 100% going back to tackle this wall (and some of the harder routes as well). We popped into the town of Revelstoke for a quick lunch, and high-tailed it to the hotsprings -- which did NOT disappoint. We were so psyched through our entire trip that we decided that this is the "Inaugural Boys Trip" that we're going to start doing. We'll be recruiting more friends and family to join in next time -- but no chicks. This was the Sausage Festival (with an accent, like the Brazilian CarniVAL) 2019. And we couldn't have finished it off any better:

You can see the raindrops that were hitting. It was a cold day -- but the water was bigtime warm in the pools

They've recently built a changeroom out here -- nice little feature

It was for SURE the place

Just a few dudes havin' a soak

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Side-note: I'm posting this on PalNet to check things out and see what all the fuss is about. If you're reading this -- you should strive to claim your airdropped PalCoins (go to https://steem-engine.com > go to the "Wallet" page > click the blue button in the top-left of the screen. You'll need to have the SteemKeychain browser extension.)