there is absolutely nothing worse than climbing while it’s 90 degrees outside with 90 percent humidity. except maybe falling off the empire state building and catching your eyelid on a nail (what IS grosser than gross?). but that’s what i did this weekend–climbing in nasty weather, that is. and i have to say, i would do it again in a heart beat. the reason being, the thing that is worse than climbing outside while it’s 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity, is climbing with your husband and kids who are grumpy because of the 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity. this weekend, i left the boys at home and joined three other moms for an all girls weekend of climbing, and of course, sweating with some laughter worked in there in a lot of places.

now, i really do love climbing with my family. i don’t normally like to leave them all at home. but sometimes it’s good for a mom’s heart and soul to get away for a bit. to refresh and reconnect with friends.

saturday we hit the road at about 9 am to drive 3 hours to summersville, wv where we spent the afternoon and part of the evening climbing. we sat around a good bit too, which is something that is difficult when the kids are climbing with us. i miss the sitting around part of a climbing weekend. we didn’t complain about the weather. much. it really wasn’t complaining to say how gross it was to have sweat running down every body part, especially hands that are trying desperately to hold onto moist rock. it wasn’t complaining, it was merely an observation. a statement of fact. we tried to avoid scary, young inexperienced climbers who didn’t know what they were doing. we were not witness to, nor did we incur, any injuries.

we left the crag at dusk. the low-lying clouds made for a beautiful sunset too, with the misty mountains along the horizon. we set up our tent. we showered. we enjoyed drinks and tex-mex at diogies in fayetteville. we went to bed.

the rest of the trip went in reverse, so i’ll allow you readers to imagine it all in rewind. the short of the long? we got really sweaty and stinky again, did a little bit more climbing, but mostly, i think just really enjoyed each other’s company. so it didn’t really hurt that it was 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity.

but the next time we do it, i hope that it isn’t. not a complaint. just a statement of fact.

Posted on July 25th, 2011