Ready or Not

Ready or not, here we climb.

I realized right away that I was the most prepared for this trip when I climbed into the ‘jimmy’ in Saskatoon and heard the whoops and hollers in reaction to the cooler bag I brought along filled with food and juice. The three boys, one previously unknown to me, continued to confirm my suspicions as we went along and I realized that mine was the ONLY food or drink in the car. Nevertheless, after an overnight stop in Calgary at someone’s parents house, and a trip to MEC for (essential) climbing gear, we were ready to hit the rock…or so I thought.

We made the short drive to Heart Creek and started unpacking our gear in the parking lot at the base of the mountain. This is when I realized that I was the only one to pack a backpack. So, during our trek up to our climbing spot, I carried all of the gear including the rope, which I had just bought, brand new draws, and harnesses and shoes for all. By the time we arrived at our destination (Solstice), we were all ready for a drink, which is when we realized that I was the only one to have brought a water bottle. In fact, none of the others had brought water at all! Pushing the thought of a day of climbing and hiking without water out of our minds, we started to set up our route. Brett climbed first and completed the route on lead. Unfortunately, as he was finishing the route, some dark clouds rolled in accompanied by thunder. As we were quite high at Solstice with a valley below us, we decided to strip the wall (notice, no more draws on the rock) and get down. We got poured on during the hike down but by the time we were at the car the rain had stopped and we enjoyed a quick lunch in the sun before heading back up. We continued to climb all afternoon until the newbie, made a rookie mistake and left a knot in the rope before trying to take it down at which point it got stuck in the anchors at the top of the route.

After Brett had hiked around to the top of the route and failed to retrieve the knotted end of the rope with a large stick, I hiked down to “first rock” another, more popular climbing spot, to ask some francophones if I could borrow a rope to be able to climb back up and get ours down. They were kind enough not to laugh at our rookie mistake and so I made a third hike back up to Solstice with a heavy rope in hand. Upon arrival I realized that the boys had found another method using the other end of our rope, to climb back up and get ours down.

Other than a few scraped knees, the next day went a lot smoother and we got much more climbing in (without the added bonus of dehydration). We may not have been the most prepared or experienced climbing group at Heart Creek that weekend but it sure made for an interesting trip – one to be repeated.