I may not climb 5.11

But at least I wasn't hit by a tree.
Seriously.
Check out what happened to my frinds Mike and Rob on Sunday:

Mike and I were scoping out the line of Sea of Holes,
and were just about ready to start when we heard that
aweful noise of scraping from up on high. We looked up
and saw something...

Whoa, that looks like a huge duffel bag, no wait, it
is a canoe, no... HOLY SHIT! THAT'S A TREE FALLING
DOWN!!!

I screamed out rock, as it looked like it was heading
straight for the party on Slabs Direct. The leader
somehow managed to move to the left just in time for
this tree to slide by on her right. Somehow, it
managed to miss her and her ropes. Her belayer,
however, was not so lucky...

She got hit, almost full on. One of the scariest
things I have ever seen. It just so happened that
AdminAl from neclimbs.com was on a route just to their
left with 2 clients. He shouted to us to call 911, and
Mike H ran over to the hotel to do just that. The
leader was sort of stuck in a bad place, as she had
clipped the bolt on SD, but was about 15 feet above
it, and about 30 feet above the anchor. She could not
go up or down really...

When Mike got back, we simul climbed up to the belay
just under them, I am not sure if it is the belay for
slabs direct or not, but anyway, in this time, Al had
actually traversed over, and had managed to coax the
leader back to the belay. Around this time, MRS showed
up, and watched as the scene above them unfolded. It
was really interesting being the relay between Al and
the injured belayer, and the MRS people. I was in the
middle. Anyway, Al tied them together, and stated
lowering them to the toilet bowl station. I traversed
over to the toilet bowl from where I was, so that I
could receive them, and lower them down to the launch
pad. About this time, just to make things interesting,
it started POURING rain. I set up the belay, which
left Mike H about 50 feet to my right, and slightly
down from me. I put the two women on belay, and
lowered them down to the waiting MRS personnel at the
Launch Pad. Al went back to his 2 teenage clients, and
I brought Mike over on a now soaking wet, super
sketchy traverse to the toilet bowl. He made it fine,
and we rapped to the ground, and Al came down ok with
his clients spidered onto himself. Scary day! The
whole thing took about 2 hours to complete, which
included giving the gear to Joe Cote and his wife, who
happened to know the injured party, and who just
happened to walk up to the cliff as the whole drama
was unfolding.


Uhhh. Yeah, so even though I flailed my way through a couple of not very impressive climbs at Rumney yesterday AND got a $115 speeding ticket on the way there, at least I was not hit by a falling tree.
Thank god.