Finally we hiked up the most civilized trail I've been on. On this trail was a lizard sitting on a cairn. This was the least skittish lizard I'd ever seen. He posed patiently while Dave took numerous photos of him. In a way, he seemed a bit plain (good for a lizard), but on his belly, he had to electric-blue stripes. Very pretty little guy.
Our first tower was Easter Island. This two pitch had everything on it that I sucked at. I thrutched and flopped and seized my way up until the summit was mine. Blrack! I thought for sure vomiting was in my very near future yet again. Happily it wasn't.
Why are all cracks wide? And flaring? Why do I suck so much? 11 years of climbing and it's like I've no skills.
After that pummeling I felt I needed more self-abuse, so we got ready to go up Sunflower Tower. As we prepared we watched a helicopter land at the Cat Wall. That is always a bad sign as a climber. That means someone is very, very injured (or worse). We learned later that a man from Utah decked from 60'. Tragic.
Not surprisingly, I worked hard on SunFlower Tower too. Nonetheless, I thought it was better than the last climb. Pitch Two was really gorgeous. It was hard, but all failings were due to my own weakness/lameness. This pitch did not require any thrashing though I thrashed on it quite spectacularly.
Thrash or not, we summited. Both summits were pretty with the six-shooters in clear view. Plus, the White-Throated Swifts were really zooming us which was fun.
We rapped down on the worst friggin' anchor I have ever seen in my life. I figured if the anchors blew, I'd be killed pretty quickly and it wouldn't hurt too much. Gack. Dave assured me they were perfectly good desert anchors.
We hiked back to the truck and enjoyed another nice evening. I was slowly realizing that this desert tower climbing must not get any easier. I've used a lot of words to convey my Desert Tower climbing experience so far. However, a picture is worth a thousand words so I drew a sketch when we returned to the camper. This really captures it I think.
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