I recently had the privilege of leading my dad up Osiris (5.7) on The Book of Lumpy Ridge fame.  It was a very good day and an important one for me.  He hasn’t been on rock in nineteen years except for the day I started climbing when he took me to some short little 4th class slab and showed me how to tie in and belay.  It was pretty amazing to have him following and talking about my gear placements, praising many and chuckling at others, and generally bantering about climbing for a few hours.  

In the day he was a Camp 4 dirtbag climbing El Cap classics and taking our family all over the west: when we weren’t in Yosemite we had stints living in a tent in Joshua Tree, Tahquitz, and Stoney Point, with stops in Zion, Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Moab, and we based primarily out of Telluride (lifts and pre-ice park Ouray in winter, Ophir Wall in summer) and Dolores until we moved to Denver.  Despite all of the climbing he did in my first ten years growing up, I hated heights and we weren’t encouraged to pick up climbing at all.  It wasn’t until late in 2010 that I decided to do that and now here we are.

Anyway, it was a happy day :-)

Photos © Ryan Day Thompson, 2012