A number of years ago, we may have done some sport climbing, or gotten out the ropes for a little mild mountaineering. But, when it stopped being fun, we retired. What we do now is mostly fourth-class scrambling, with the occassional fifth-class move thrown in. Unfortunately the waterfall we wanted to get past today required a little more commitment, so we were forced to retrieve the aging hardware in the hopes that it would protect us on a 40-foot wall.
I'm not a good lead climber, and we were going to give the sharp end to VSO, but she was a little uncertain about setting up an anchor at the top. In the event, I went first. It was inelegant, to say the least, but I eventually battered my way to the chains and got ready to belay the girls. EDO came first, and we asked her merely to unclip; VSO followed and did the cleaning. With all three of us up, we proceeded through a beautiful, narrow canyon. After a quarter mile of hiking, we encountered a second waterfall that would have required an additional belay. Given the hour, and our general inexperience, we called it a day.
We went back to the first fall and rappelled to the valley floor. We hiked to the road in the growing dark, and I was relieved not to be on a second climb with darkness closing in. On a side note: I generally post pictures of EDO or of the beautiful canyons of southern Utah, but today I was compelled to feature VSO. The sun was obscured and the canyon was dim, but she provided her own glow. She was beautiful. A super model. Literally. The camera was drawn to her.
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