Matthew and Cassie's Big Climbing Trip.: Summer is flying by!

I can't believe the last blog post was in May. It really doesn't seem like that long ago. I suppose we've just been super busy with climbing and other fun things.

Well I guess we need to catch everyone up on the news.

First, Cassie and I are getting married in about 2 weeks (august 6th). The wedding is going to be super simple. We've rented a beach house on the coast of Oregon and will be doing a nice ceremony on the beach with our families. A couple of days later we'll be headed back to Portland to have a reception with Cassie's extended family. It'll be a great bbq. We're doing pretty much everything ourselves which means our families are going to be helping out with a ton of stuff. It's so cool that we both have such great parents who understand that we're excited about having a non-traditional wedding. We're going to owe them big time for all the work they've been doing. In april we flew out to visit and got things started, now we just need to drive up to Portland and really start getting things moving for the reception and wedding. We're both really looking forward to getting married, and to having our families meet each other (they haven't even met yet). It's going to be a great experience!!!

After the reception we head to Squamish to do some climbing for a few days. A couple we climb with here in Utah is going to meet us there so we can all climb together. It's going to be sweet granite climbing and bouldering. We aren't huge granite heads, generally the slabby friction climbs require such a specific technique that our grades for leading are significantly lower than what we'd normally hop on, but I suppose that's the way you get better is to just climb on it, right?

Second big new: we just bought a VW camper for our big roadtrip. This thing is killa! It's a 1986 Westfalia Camper. The guy we bought it from had almost completely restored it with body work. We completed the project with a new paint job and presto! it looks almost like its new. great new shocks, the 16" wheel package from gowesty, and a custom stereo system with a 10" subwoofer under the back seat. It totally kicks!!! We've taken it down to the Overlook for climbing and camping, and we've been up to City of Rocks for another weekend of climbing. So far it pretty much rules. We're really looking forward to the big road trip (which appears to be about 2 years off) now that we have the van.

3rd Cassie and I both climbed an 5.11d called Heimie the Mexican Gyneocologist at the Overlook after a few tries. It was a vertical climb with cool crimps and small pockets, plus a sick sloper. I usually don't think I climb dead vertical routes well and I tend to like overhanging routes better, but this thing was great. Cassie sent it with style, almost pumped out at the top, but stuck with it and did it! At the overlook our good friends Chris and Emily came with us. Chris surprised us by doing a 10c on his first try after years of being away from climbing and Emily surprised us by getting on a rope and trying a climb. She's quite afraid of heights and we were all excited that she was willing to give it a try. Next time we'll put her on something easier than a 5.9 and get her to do a bunch of climbs. We had such a great time camping with our friends. On Saturday evening Jason and Sam came down with fireworks and sparklers and lit up our evening with much hilarity attempting to build "the perfect firework". We did cool pictures with sparklers and headlamps as a way to celebrate independence day, and even got to watch some fireworks very far away in Parowan.

So, to recap the last month and a half, we've climbed at triassic (crazy cool weather in june), climbed at Maple (sent an 11d at the pipeline) climbed at the overlook over fourth of july, climbed at city of rocks (waaaay to hot in July), climbed at Little Cottonwood (crazy granite slabs) and have had a great summer. Other than that we've been getting ready for the wedding and are really looking forward to having two weeks off!

Today as our final day of fun before leaving for Oregon we went to the Uintas and did a hike along the Duchesne river. Lots of great wildflowers and beautiful waterfalls were everywhere!

Also this weekend we got to watch a desert tortoise. He was really cool. We'd love to adopt him but alas we simply don't have the yard necessary to allow him to enjoy himself. Oh well, he was still super fun.