Holy Fucking Black-flies, Batman!

It was a beautiful day, so I took the afternoon off to go rock climbing. I was heading out with trad gear, and another trad climber, so we went to Bald Face. Bloody long and annoying approach -- probably 1.5-2 hours of approach involving a bunch of bushwhacking. (And, some overshoots and misses.)

While hiking, the bugs didn't seem so bad, but as soon as we stopped at the bottom of the cliff they were just swarming. And they didn't let up the whole time we were climbing. I'd sometimes swat my hands together in the swarm and get 2 or 3 at one blow. Ugh. And, mostly, black flies, with the occasional mosquito. Oh, and they sneered at Deep Woods Off. Either that, or they were so dense that the repellent just didn't have enough juice to help.

We did it as a 3-pitch climb, each of them about 30m (100'). I followed, but that was ok. I was still looking at his placements and thinking about alternatives, and stuff like that.

Rappelled back down, except had to walk off the last 5m or so cause we ran out of rope. Luckily there was a ledge there that we could walk off. (Ok, we knew we'd reach the ledge, but didn't know if we'd reach the ground. As I expected, we didn't reach the ground.)

The hike out wasn't as slow -- not nearly as much route finding. Still longish, though.

Now, now I'm tired.