I woke up ready for a big day of climbing! We were going to the Garden of the Gods. When we got close I realized that the rocks were HUGE. Giant cliffs coming out of the ground, stories high, are practically what they were! We were going to be climbing them today so I was exited! As we headed up to the rocks we met out guide Isaac, he knew the rocks VERY well so he knew were to go and not too. There was this large thumbnail like thing sticking out of the ground that was about 100 feet tall.

The top of the Thumbnail!

That was the first one that we decided to climb. It was a little bit hard for me at first, but I managed to get to the top after a little while of working out handholds. It was an amazing view at the top! I could see Pike’s Peak and many of the other rock formations. I slowly was lowered down by Isaac, our awesome climbing guide. After my dad and brother did it, we headed over to the second climb. The second climb was practically on the side of a cliff, well, it was! That one was hard, the beginning of getting onto it was tricky, but I made it over and started moving up.

Me on a cliff!

There was this one ledge that Isaac called the party ledge. The reason that he called it this was because you were so happy that you were on it that you wanted to celebrate! It was just a small outcropping but it was SO helpful. I FINALLY reached the top and headed down. I watched my brother go up and when he got to the party ledge, he just laid down and STAYED PUT. He didn’t move till a little while later ( he said he was slowly inching his way) and then made it to the top.

My brother on the Party Ledge!

Up high!

After my dad made it, we headed for our FINAL climb. (Final climbs for me at least) I did 2 last ones; they were next to each other. I was climbing next to my brother on one and then when I had got down he was still working on one. I waited for him to get down so I could go up, I went up it faster because my fingers are smaller than his so I could fit mine in the cracks. It was also easer for me because I’m lighter than him.

Final climb

We headed out thanking Isaac for helping us and we headed to find one place in the book. We found the first one EASY,

The first easy one!

but the second one… not so much. The other one was hard because we had to keep re-adjusting ourselves to find it. FINALLY we decided to go up on top of a hill behind us. We could not go STRAIGHT up; one because there were thorns everywhere and second, there were mule deer in the way. So we headed around toward the road and walked up on the side. We came up the ridge and NAILED IT!

FOUND IT!

Original

It was awesome just seeing the place that Thomas Moran sat! (as we had thought.) So we took the photo and headed out because it was starting to drizzle and thunder.  We ran down the trail. On the way out we saw this large rock balancing just about to fall over, so  Elias and I ran over to hold it so the car could pass by. Well, it wasn’t about to fall at all but it was balanced. We climbed it and I ended up falling to my doom…

Falling…

Just kidding! We don’t climb stuff like that without ropes! I just jumped off because it wasn’t that high! We got on this little ledge too witch was cool!

Us on small ledge!

We decided to head out and go to find these mushroom looking rocks. So we headed out to the town of Monument and found a little trail that we decided to take. As we headed down the trail, we found many things that related to it. But we did end up finding one smaller mushroom which we just considered it success, because every were else we didn’t find anything else that was as significant as that.

Found things like mushrooms!

It was getting dark so we headed out back to the car and back to the condo for a nights sleep.