Surprised, Scraped, Smacked around, but still Smiling

I was totally unpre­pared to be climb­ing well on the tufa-filled caves of Guadal­cázar. I had either been avoid­ing or unable to join the group on the pre­vi­ous trips for the 3-hour drive up north into San Luis Potosí, but I’m very glad that I did join them this time. It is a beau­ti­ful place, well-off the high­way. I was sur­prised by the sub­tle but beau­ti­ful dif­fer­ences. It def­i­nitely felt like we were more north. Some­how, I totally scraped my hands up on every­thing that I tried, even though the holds tend to be huge. I tend to climb a lit­tle des­per­ately on this type of rock. I had painful flash­backs of Kalym­nos in Greece. So, I got smacked around by every­thing I tried, but I came down from each climb smil­ing. I’m going to par­tially blame being sick from the damn flu-shot for the pre­vi­ous week, but that is only a part of the rea­son I got spanked so hard by the rock. I didn’t try any­thing in the crazy Panales sec­tor, but in both Saltire and the Cuerva, the routes were so nice that they actu­ally made me want to learn and get bet­ter at this type of climb­ing. Easy to say is that I need a lot more sta­mina for the sus­tained over-hung routes. Now, I just wish I had my own car, and per­mis­sion to drive, so that I could go back a lot more often.

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I was torn between edit­ing the pic­tures for longer and get­ting them posted, and posted won.