Spring Break Day 6

Day 6 of our trip was, unfortunately, our last day full day in Arizona. We decided to try to pack in as much climbing and adventuring as possible, which resulted in a huge overload of photographs (meaning this will be a long post). We started the day climbing in the Prison Camp area again, since there were still a few routes there that we wanted to do in that area. After climbing until we were exhausted we drove higher up the mountain to catch the sunset. Unfortunately I foolishly deleted images on my SD card before I transferred them to my computer, so almost all of the sunset images are gone. If anyone has any miracles to recover files from a formatted SD card I would love to hear them!

Spring Break Day 4

Day 4 started as a nice, lazy day. We had camped the night before, and after waking up just lounged around the campsite for a while; we drank coffee, ate what little food we had left for breakfast, and enjoyed the sun. Eventually we got rolling, and drove up a bit further into the mountains to climb at a new spot. Scott and Ben were pretty exhausted from the day before, but decided to climb anyways. Unfortunately, the route ended up being not as easy as expected, and so they had to bail and leave it unfinished. As I result, I didn’t get many pictures that day, so this will be a short post.

Spring Break Day 3

This post will need a bit of background, so I am going to quickly go back to January of this year. At the beginning of January (January 2nd to be exact) I had surgery on my elbow to fix nerve damage there. I had injured it while climbing last spring, and essentially had a pinched nerve for about 8 months. The surgery moved the nerve from the outside of my elbow, where it typically sits, to the inside of my elbow where it is more protected and freed from being pinched.

The day of surgery, shortly after I arrived home.

Since surgery I have obviously been in recovery mode. After lots of physical therapy I felt like I was finally getting back to normal (somewhat at least). I had just started climbing again about a week before our trip, and even though I knew I would have to be extra careful while in Arizona I was still fully expecting to climb almost every day. However, Tuesday morning of our trip (day 3), I woke up in extreme pain. I thought I was taking it easy climbing wise, with only 2 easy routes both days, and yet I could hardly make a fist my arm hurt so bad. The guys were wanting to do a multi-pitch (essentially climbing a route longer than one rope length) on Tuesday, and with the state of my arm I knew I had to take the day off. I went to the base of the climb with them, and hung out in a hammock and read while they were off climbing above me. I shot around a little bit, with my Polaroid and digital camera, but because of the position of the route I wasn’t able to get many shots (or any good ones really) of them climbing.

And the Polaroids. All of these were shot on my SX-70 with Impossible Project film.

 

Spring Break Day 2

Day two (Monday) of our spring break was spent in the Prison Camp area again. We still had quite a few routes in that area that we wanted to try, so after cooking breakfast and making a quick run back to Tucson to get some more supplies, we hiked in and climbed for the afternoon. I don’t think this place could get old to me. I also shot some Polaroids here, but will share all those in one post once I get them scanned in.

 

Happy Sunday everyone!

Spring Break Day 1

Last week was our spring break here at Kansas State. Scott, our friend Ben, and I flew down to Arizona for a week of climbing, camping, and sunshine. I, of course, took a ton of photographs, and will share them based on the day that they were shot to avoid an incredibly long post.

We flew into Phoenix late Saturday night, and after picking up our rental car drove to Scott’s sister’s house in Tucson. We crashed there that night, and then Sunday woke up to get supplies and head into the mountains for a few days of camping and climbing. We camped at the Prison Camp area (Gordon Hirabayashi Campground) in the Santa Catalina Mountains. The great thing about the Prison Camp campground is that there is a ton of climbing just a short hike down from the campsites. It is a beautiful area in a little canyon with a cool view of the city in the distance. Enjoy day one, and be on the lookout for day 2 soon!