Blasting off on the BugWall tomorrow and I have major butterflies in my stomach ! Please forgive the terrible punn. The road to the BugWall has not been easy. A trip like the BugWall is a product of preparation, preparation, and more preparation. Spending 11 – 14 days strapped to the side of a cliff leaves little room for error. Forgot your gloves? Extra headlamp batteries? These small matters can become big headaches or lead to downright dangerous situations in a place where retreat is often more difficult than continuing. Today is my last day to enjoy the feeling of earth beneath my feet for a long long time. Getting to this point I have:
Built a big wall stove
Beefed up my first aid kit
Made some delicious cricket leather
Stopped by the Arizona Insect Festival in Tucson
Drove to Yosemite and slept in the payline for Camp 4
Humped 50 liters of water + 100 lbs of gear to the base of El Capitan
Climbed the first 4 pitches of Mescalito, fixing ropes
Hauled all of my gear, food and water up 1 rope length + found a new friends
Took 2 glorious rest days, hanging out in Yosemite, taking the 1st shower in 6 days!
Now it’s time to enjoy one last beer, the supermoon, and the ground before heading up early tomorrow morning. I am super excited and thoroughly nervous! Thank you all for your support of this project. Time for edible insects to get vertical: the rest of my posts will be bug-fueled, from the side of El Capitan!
Thanks for taking us along on your climb.
Go Meghan! One quick question – the barn swallows that nest in our carport live on an all-bug diet and poop incessantly. How does the bug diet affect how many poop tubes you have to drag up the Big Stone?
Inquiring minds want to know,
Verm
Just the big standard one, but the extra fiber in cricket flour does stave off the usual big wall constipation.