For Judy and myself, this was our second trip to Rock Creek. For Patty, it was her first. And for Brian, this was old hat. We drove up Friday night and ended up not leaving SD until after 7 PM. That night we camped at the campground right next to the Rock Creek trail head. The trail was loads of fun, and we got some cool little videos of Brian and myself trying, and in most cases pulling off, some of the more technical sections. After the ride, we hit Schat’s where we had some tasty sandwiches and then filled up on the free dessert samples afterwards. It was too hot to climb during the day so we headed up to South Lake to enjoy the scenery and relax. When it got cooler, we hit the Peabodies for some climbing (we had originally planned on climbing at the Druids, but the fairly steep 40 minute approach did not sound very appealing in the hot sun). There were some fun problems, but everything there was really high-ball so we did very few full climbs. Judy and I discovered the hard way that Patty’s new Maxi-Pad basically, ummm, let’s see, how should I say, sucks. Afterwards we hit the Pizza Factory for dinner.

That night, we camped nearer the climbing area. Our plan for the next day was to climb in the morning and then bike in the afternoon. We got a pretty sweet campsite right next to a running stream and Judy and I decided to join Patty and Brian outside to sleep beneath the stars. We got a reasonably early start the next day, but it was already pretty hot. We found some pretty fun problems that weren’t nearly so high-ball. Judy showed everyone up by smoothly sending a fun V1 and then a classic, very fun V2. It was Schat’s again for lunch (although I decided to grab some high-fat burgers and fries from the Carl’s Jr. across the street) and then Rock Creek once again.

Here’s the pics and vids. NOTE that the last two vids are sideways. This is because Judy took the vids with the camera in portrait mode (instead of landscape). I tried rotating the video (in Flash and Quicktime) and it works OK locally, but not over a web browser. I’m not sure what the heck’s going on so until I can figure it out, you’ll have to watch these sideways.

Posted by Roger at 8:50 pm.