every other orange

Sorry it has been so long- I thought I would share the picture from our campsite last weekend. I had a wonderful time climbing castleton again... but the hike down did not go incredibly well. The sun set as we were rapelling down and it was already pretty dark when we started down the trail. Had it been light outside I would not have been to comfortable hiking down the loose rock at the top, but seeing as I could not see the little trail and my feet were beginning to fade out of sight... I was scared. The trail was lost almost immediately and I used the slipping and almost gaining control method to find my way out of the loose rocks. Thankfully we did find that trail and neither of us flew off of the side. By that time it had become completely dark, neither of us had thought to bring headlamps and the moon was only a sliver. Seeing as we could not even see our feet, keeping on the trail was incredibly difficult...and ofcourse, we lost it. We were not without hope though because we could see the lights of houses off in the distance and knew which general direction to go. After about an hour of plodding on that way, we got to a point where we could no longer see the lights of the houses or castleton. This is ofcourse where I fell and twisted my ankle...several times. Just when prospects were beginning to look bleak, we were both starving and exhausted, we ran into a barbed wire fence. It may not sound that great to you, but seeing as it was easily lifted, we took it as a sign that we were leaving castle valley, soon to be back to our tent. And as it turns out about 20 minutes later we walked up onto the road. We still had a 20 minute hike back to the tent, but we had made it to the road...we were on something that was not easily lost and would definatly lead us to where we needed to go. The rest of the night went well, we both slept like logs and woke up far to sore to climb...especially to climb something that had an approach. Oh, and to add insult to injury, we got a flat tire on the way home :)

All in all, it was a great trip and I will never again go climbing without my headlamp!