rachelmanija: (Naruto: Start as you mean to go on)
rachelmanija ([personal profile] rachelmanija) wrote 2016-07-16 11:31 pm (UTC)

Man, that sounds fun.

Here's the hill I used to climb about once a week between the ages of seven and twelve, usually by myself by the time I was nine or so.

http://avatarmeherbaba-israel.com/images/gallery/archive/Seclusion%20Hill/Seclusion%20Hill_1994_2.jpg

I couldn't find a good close-up, but see that cliff-ring near the top? It's fairly steep, but has tons of holds. (The actual danger is that many are loose and can come off in your hand or underfoot.) There's a trail that cuts into the cliff. If you follow it, zero scrambling is required. You can also not follow the trail and go straight up; that involved lots of scree and some climbing; some routes were probably do-able but I didn't try them because you'd break your neck if you fell. I stuck with the ones where a fall wouldn't be too serious. In my nine-year-old judgment, plus my Dad pointing out and banning a few.

It also had a lot of geodes, which I learned to find by weighing rocks in my hand and seeing if they weighed less than they should, plus an unusual rock called okenite (locally called punite), which has a recognizable look on the outside, feels impossibly light, and is FURRY if you crack it open. (But you don't want to actually touch the fur, that ruins it; it's incredibly fine crystals. It does feel like fur though.)

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