Aaron's Status

6:12 pm

Okay, so Quincy Quarries (“the Qs,” or “QQ”) is pretty wild. You can look it up, there are lots of photos online. I had dropped by there previously to take some photos so I knew what it was like as a place, but had never climbed there.

But climbing there is pretty cool, the walls are basically granite that is left over from what used to be a quarry (perhaps obviously enough) and they’re just straight hewn with fun roofs and jags and whatnot. I’d say it’s as interesting a spot as Ross Rocks.

I sent “M Weave” (5.6), “Wanderlust” (5.7), “Hang Left” (5.8), and “Layback Corner” (5.8), and then we set this weird slab that was in the book we brought but is for some reason not on Mountain Project called “M Corner” (5.5).

M Weave was simple and I flashed it. Wanderlust was trickier but I also flashed it. Hang Left took me two tries but I would say it was not terribly challenging. “Layback Corner” has a really tough start, but the wife and another of our friends worked on it and found a nice beta that looked promising.

On my attempt… I flashed it.

The 5.5 that was only in the book was super crazy, definitely felt way harder than 5.5. It was probably graded 40 years ago before the wall was eroded and then covered in shiny graffiti. Still flashed it though!

6:41 am

Recovery

There hasn’t been a day since June that I haven’t noticed how my lower back feels, or had some discomfort even if minor. I am still hopeful that that day will come, but I’m also grateful to be able to do things.

I felt about 85% for most of yesterday, but we went on a light bike ride in the afternoon and that felt fine, maybe even helped me feel better. Waking up this morning, though, it’s back to pinching on one side and I just hope that doing some PT work in a minute is going to ease that (as it typically does).

Climbing and driving

Today we’re going to go to Quincy Quarries Reservation, which is called “QQ” or “the Qs” in the climbing community. It’s a public park and a lot of people go there just to walk or picnic or drink (illegally) or whatever. It’s a bit of an iconic climbing location in Boston because of its vertically hewn walls and the huge amount of graffiti across them all.

Then tomorrow we have the kid’s climbing class at 10:30, then straight from there I think we’re driving down to the Connecticut coast to meet up with the wife’s family and stay overnight. Monday is Indigenous Peoples’ day so we all have no work or school.

Then on Tuesday we’ll go do our regular family climb in the evening, and me and our other friend are going to hang back and have our first lead climbing class from 6-8. The wife has already done the first part also, so now we’ll be able to practice together on Sundays.

Fingers crossed that all of this goes off without a hitch.