20130817 - Up in am and sore from the huge hike to the natural bridge from the day before. D had been up for a while and was playing his obsession iPad game. We had a couple Cliff Bars for bfast and then headed to Torrent Falls Climbing Adventure for some excitement. We received, what I felt for the proportion of the risk we were about to take, a very short lesson on staying alive on the face of a cliff.... Then we started up, and up, and up... At the top there was a short hike to the rappelling site. We ended up at the top of a 125' vertical drop :-o I went first, lowering myself over the edge of the rock face and repelling a few feet before i was hanging below the overhang I was just standing on. WOW it was AMAZING to be that high up dangling from a string... I went down slowly, stopping a few times to look around. I went first first to give D some courage, if this old guy can do it... and also to make sure I didn't chicken out. I made it down and next it was D's turn. He came over the edge slow at first, but then let loose and zipped right down. It was SO COOL!!! This pic is of him about 1/3 of the way down.
We took a short break and then headed back up the rock face for one more reppel.
On the hike to the rappel site there was a feather... so I knew everything was going to be ok o:-) This time it was a bit easier and we came down faster. Still taking time to look around at the awesome sights. Next was the Via Feratta course. There are 6 sections of it and they get progressively harder. We started at level one and it took us about 1 hour to make our way across the rock face about 80' up. It was pretty amazing and D just scooted right along like a lizard. I kept up as best I could...
After the first course we took a break and ran to the gas station and got a couple more of the huge sandwiches we had last night (YUM) and had a picnic at our campsite and talked about how cool and scary it was. Refreshed and ready for more we headed back and headed up to the second course. It was higher and had some places where you were pretty much on your own to figure out how to get to the next safety zone :-s D got to rest more as I was not as fast on this leg... After we finished leg 2 I couldn't go on, at least without a sizable break so I headed down the exit route and D headed into leg 3. Soon the workers called out to him and said he had to come down if I was not with him. He came down and I offered to give it a shot. He said he was fine with being on solid ground and was really tired. i think he was just being nice... So we turned in our gear and heard a scream... One of the climbers on course 6 fell, his safety harness caught him and in a flash this little girl crawled up the cliff like a spider with a huge backpack on and got him back on course... Certainly that would have been me on leg 3 had we continued :-oWe headed back to our campsite and D was ready to head home. We were planning on staying another night, but we were both sore and EXHAUSTED. We packed up camp and headed North. On the way we stopped at a Boonesville, one of the first settlements in KY to have a look around. It was a cool fort / settlement that Daniel Boone started. We explored a bit but neither of us wanted to do too much walking... OUCH!
Full and satisfied with our adventure we hit OHIO and headed for home. We had one last stop in Gahanna before heading home; the theater where we watched Elysium, GREAT MOVIE, getting us in the door a little after midnight. We got cleaned up with what little energy we had left and off to bed to recuperate. Another FANTASTIC ADVENTURE with one of my favorite people! D is growing into a fine young man, and other than the usual teenager smack, he is a GREAT BOY! how lucky am I?!
Other news from today: D's team got beat in their first game, J caught the largest fish at a Cub Scout outing, the ice cream didn't work, G's team lost their first game.
