I've been making lots of progress at the climbing gym, 'sending (climber slang for 'successfuly ascending' ) new & harder routes every time I go. Most of my recent success is because I finally discovered (I already knew, but never really executed because I didn't really believe it would work for some reason, even though I had seen others do it) how to lock my fingers with my tendons instead of my finger muscles. This 'hangs' my body weight from my fingertips in a way that just crushes them as long as I'm on the hold, but it makes it possible to pull myself up on much smaller holds.

Having numb fingertips makes typing feel really weird.

Oh, well. Going climbing/camping at Foster Falls in TN this weekend. Hopefully I can 'send some nice routes out there as well.

First, though, on Saturday morning I'm going to do Sinking Cove cave with my caving group. It's got 6-7 rappels to a tight squeeze passage and then a water crawl. You may have seen it in the news recently because there was a 30-hour rescue there on Memorial day. A caver fell on the 2nd-to-last rappel and fractured some bones, then had to be hauled back up the way he came.

Any RAFOnauts climb? Boulder? Cave? What cool climbing areas or caves do you have near you?

aero