Sometimes you bail off of something and never know if you made the right choice. Sometimes you bail and learn soon after that you definitely made the right choice. And other times (like today) you tuck tail and run and then find out that you were being an idiot. Ben and I came up to Hellgate to do Hell Raiser, a super fun five pitch 5.11. Well, we made it to the top of the third pitch, past the hardest climbing, and then hung out at the hanging belay in light rain for about 40 minutes trying to decide what to do. There was just a pitch of super fun looking 10b above and then some 5.8 above that. Clearly we were capable of doing the rest of the climbing. However, both Ben and I have had some seriously close encounters with lighting and get a little spooked when it comes to electrical storms in high, exposed places. Anyway, to make a long story short (OK, too late), we started rappelling after the rain picked up. When we reached the ground, the clouds moved on and we were under bluebird skies. Aahhhh! It was now hot as hell, so we moved up canyon to Albion Basin where we did a couple shady routes and ran into Eli on the way down while he was on his way up to get in his ski-every-month turns on Gunsite. If he makes it until October, it will be two years straight. Good on ya mate!
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