Paklenica

Today was a great day! We woke up early, drove 2 hours and then arrived in Paklenica. There, we found a good spot to climb and got set up. We did 4 routes, with a break in between for lunch and I lead climbed 3 of them. In the morning, climbers were just starting to arrive, but by the afternoon there were lots of tour groups, hikers and other climbers.
We did some pretty easy routes, but the rock was really polished in most places because so many people climb there, which made the routes a little harder. The rock was also really sharp in some places where it was the only thing to grab and it really hurt.
My mom even tried climbing, and despite her fear of heights, she made it around 20m up the wall. The only issue was when she tried to belay with a gri-gri which she had never used before while my dad climbed. She couldn’t lower him, so he had to clip himself into the top bolt with a personal harness while I took over the belaying and lowered him.

It also wasn’t too hot. We were surrounded on both sides by rocks, so they blocked out most of the sun and in the morning we were actually cold. Because of this, we were able to climb for longer than we usually would. When the sun came out in the afternoon, the tour groups started to arrive. They would crowd around me while I belayed and some people would stand a few inches away from me taking pictures of what I was doing which was very distracting.
The climbing atmosphere here was similar to the one in Skaha near Kelowna when we went there.

When we were done climbing, we went to a cafe called Dinko’s and then went to a grocery to get snacks for the ride home. We drove 2 hours to get home, and then had dinner.

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