Getting there is half the fun

Skahahaha

This past weekend was the VOC's annual climbing trip to Skaha. Around 50 VOCers went and all camped together.

Bob was orignally our driver, but unfortunately was called to work down in SJ for the weekend so couldn't come. Seeing that we were in a pickle his boss leant us his old car to drive up instead, nice guy! So after making a quick stop or two in Delta we were finally off at 8pm. With a stop in the 'Wack for dinner we were the last people to arrive at the campsite at 2:30am!

Our intended wake up time was 8am, but with only 5 hours of sleep that wasn't going to happen. Instead we left camp after 10 and high tailed it to Red Tail to climb with the crowds.

The first climb at 11:30am was super tough, even though it was a 5.6, because it was so damn cold and our fingers were frozen. But we warmed up and were at least able to climb some slightly harder stuff.

Greta at the roof of a 5.9 "What's Left?"


For some reason the climb "What's right", a 5.10a, had stumped a few people. So I took a shot at leading it!


Saturday night we had a halloween party at Christine's house(mansion!) high in the hills of Penticton.
Two crazy clowns:


The temperature dropped during the night and we woke up to a little bit of snow! Also, check out our ride! (Jeff and Rob in the pic)


It was too damn cold (6C) for us wusses to climb, so instead 10 of us headed into the caves. A few brave souls did actually do some climbing, and some just headed home after the morning Timmy's run.

Rob, Greta, Jeff, Jowen and Christian at the start of the cave system:


The cave was really cool. It took us 90 minutes and involved some good/nasty down climbing and a few good drops and squeezes. We wore harnesses and brought a rope, one rack and rappel gear, but didn't end up using any of it.

Here is Greta traversing across a 8m deep hole!


One of the neatest parts is this feature called the "Photocopier". You have to climb down into a crack, then squeeze through a horizontal crack into this trench thing that is waist high. Here is Christian entering the Photocopier:


Once at the end of the cave we had a nice view of Penticton:


We tried to take a "quicker" route back to the car in order to bypass a nasty rock gully, but our "easier" route ended up in bluffs. So we had to rappel a 20m cliff with packs and then downclimb a gully. Definitely not the faster route.


Returning to the car at 4pm we made one last stop at Timmy's and then did the 6 hour drive home through snow along Highway 3.

Some people say going climbing at this time of year is crazy and no fun, but they obviously haven't been on the Skaha trip yet!

Posted by Evan at 6:04 PM