James' Travels: Near Nasby

Now that spring has sort of arrived, we plan to get out into the backcountry more and more. Last weekend was the first of our spring trips and the official title was 'climbing'. But more and more it seems that things usually turn out completely differently than planned so we left expectation aside for the most part.

Friday afternoon we set out in the school van for a relaxing weekend of climbing and near car camping. Our understanding being that we would walk fifteen minutes from the van and camp near a rock wall all weekend. On our way out Timo (our leader a.k.a team-bro) explains to us the basics of climbing. In particular he explains that there are three integral parts of climbing that can be summed up in the three C's of climbing. These are climbing, coffee, and candy. So we had a quick pitstop at the candy store to stock up for the weekend. We arrived a little later at our wall and had high hopes of perhaps some dry spots as it was raining but quickly found that we were not getting anywhere higher then two feet that day. So we packed up and went to a wind shelter some Swedes had set up at some point to camp in the rain. As we had a fairly short walk to our spot we carried some serious food and some pretty heavy pots. For the rest of the day we talked a bit about wilderness shelters and the like, finally building a few in the surrounding woods. We then started a nice big fire and cooked some backcountry pizza in the coals. It was a great and relaxing evening. We had a large pot to make some cowboy coffee on but unfortunately it didn't have a handle. To solve this mighty problem we looked around for some wire to make a handle out. To my great joy and surprise we happened on some rusty barbed wire. With this we then fashioned a completely bad-ass (sorry, no other word to describe it) handle for our coffee pot. I felt pretty red-green. The next day dawned bright and sunny and we wasted no time in packing up and getting to the rock. Timo lead climbed three routes and set up a top rope on each. The routes were of varying difficulty and provided some pretty good challenges. So we spent the day eating candy, drinking (or watching others drink) coffee, and climbing some pretty cool rock. My new climbing shoes worked great, they hurt my feet like none other but they really help on the rock. Size 15 climbing shoes look pretty goofy. Anyway, we finished the day there and set up our camp on the top of the hill. We slept under a tarp, but carried tents for back-up. The next day we had a mighty surprise when we discovered that our leaders decided to leave the night before and ditch us with all our gear. They left us a map and told us not to walk through Vetlanda (which happened to be the most direct route back to school) and that we had to avoid main roads and hitch hiking was not an option (not that that was a big deal considering Swedes are too grumpy to pick us up anyway). So we were stuck with a large cardboard box full of food , five tarps and roughly ten five liter water containers plus two flippen long/heavy ropes (thankfully they took the gear rack back with them (which was smart of them cause we might have sold it on the way home)). At this point I had the opportunity to laugh at my friends who had packed way too heavy (for example, one brought a glass bowl), or brought uber light daypacks with crappy harnesses or only had running shoes or sandals. So we divided everything up as best we could and set off back to school (we had to skirt Vetlanda by at least two kilometers which was kinda depressing) It was beautiful and sunny and we saw some awesome countryside so we were having a great day. We had a goal of being back at school for 530 as we only had lentils for supper and that wasn't too appetizing after a day of walked with way too heavy packs. Well to cut a long story short, we walked really fast to get back for supper and ended up not being signed in for supper so we pulled out our stoves and cooked lentils back at school. As we had a pretty intense pace for the last few kilometers most people had some serious blisters going on and all of us were walking a bit funny for the next few days. Thankfully I brought liner socks and my backpacking boots so I was fine. Fun side fact, I like my pack hip straps really, really tight so most of the load is on my hips so I usually endure some level of pain after a long day walking. I guess I tightened it a little too much this day because my hips had small egg sized swelling on them, it was weird/awesome. I also got some cool cuts on my shins. It was a good trip.