Vichyssoise

Revenge might be a dish best served cold, but a dehydrated soup packet is only made tolerable by heat….and the stove broke.

We had it all planned. We wanted to do climb with a two hour approach, the days are shorter this time of year (and there were no places to stay close by), so we hiked up the first hour or so and put up a tarp, you know, to get a head start on things. We had our sleeping bags, air mattresses, plenty of water and a little camp stove with a flint so you don’t have to use a lighter or matches….normally.

Except the flint decided to not work, and we didn’t bring matches as a back up. We tried dumping the soup into cold water and made ourselves choke it down, but those sorts of soups are never that good warm and this didn’t help much.

We had breakfast, though, Tupperware containers with yogurt and cereal. No tea or caffeine of any sorts (I was tempted to break open a tea bag and chew on it like tobacco, or rub it in my armpits: ‘caffeine and deodorant!’). Then we got started hiking to the start of the cliff. And the stupid guide book that my partner uses said, clearly, “go to the pass and then descend to the west and follow the cairns”. We did and…followed the cairns almost all the way up to the rappels to come down the mountain. Nice little typo there, it was east and not west. Our head start was lost and we didn’t start climbing until almost noon.

We’d already given up on doing the whole climb to the summit, so we decided to stop at 3pm and start belaying down. Except my partner really wanted to do the tafonis in the ninth pitch. So we didn’t start the belays until almost four and the rest of the afternoon was spent rappelling and hoping the rope wouldn’t get stuck, and then running our way through the underbrush to try to get down before it got too dark. Did I mention the rappel that was 60 meters with our 57ish meter rope? Always fun to have the rope slip out of your belay device and have to hang on like mad to one end so that you’re not stuck there with the rope dangling a few feet above your reach.

Sigh. I don’t like drama and climbing. I like nice, simple climbs that go as planned. Like the last one we did in Bavella, Punta di a Vacca, which was beautiful and had a nice path down from the summit. I loved that climb.

We’re home now for two weeks and then we will start out on more climbing adventures in the beginning of November. Everything is getting washed and put away.

Foro might get a bath, too, but let’s keep that between us. He’s not big on baths. But he is a bit schmutzy after two months working as a watch-cow for the car.