Rosa Point

29 February 2004

By: Wolf Leverich

Leaders: Wolf and Karen Leverich
Meeting at 5:45a on 29 February, a hearty company made up of Mark Allen, Dave Cannon, Doris Duval, Susan Ellsworth, Joanne Griego, Suzy Hermann, Bob McEwan, and leaders Karen and Wolf Leverich set out to hike Rosa Point.

Among us we had at least three people running on no sleep, one nasty cold, and one recovering from a bug. Three of us had missed the summit on a prior hike, and one of us had missed the summit twice and was beginning to feel seriously jinxed.

We did the ascent at the patented Karen-and-Wolf-energy-conserving- pace, and all nine hikers reached the summit at 1:15p. As usual, Wolf hectored everyone into posing for summit pictures, which are all on display at:

http://www.mtpinos.com/

You can see the happy trio who bagged the peak this time at:

http://www.mtpinos.com/pictures/125CANON.web/IMG_2571.jpeg

and the whole climbing team at:

http://www.mtpinos.com/pictures/125CANON.web/IMG_2572.jpeg

On the summit, Dave observed that we couldn't have our annual reunion hike for another 4 years. Suzy just smiled a lot. Various and sundry of us wandered around looking for a bit of personal privacy on the basically exposed summit plateau.

All day, the cholla was leaping in a way I'd never seen before, and the tweezers and the long-nosed pliers were in great demand. Susan, wearing tights, seemed impervious to the noxious succulent and left me wondering if folks would start feeling uncomfortable about my gender identity if I left my usual technical pants at home next time and did Rosa Point in Spandex.

Coming down, I lagged doing my usual ankle-aware pace and Mark hung back to keep me company. We briefly considered taking the scree slide down into PV wash and surprising everyone by being down first, but we both had water cached at the ridge turn-off so we ambled on.

Hiking out, I put on my usual show by leading PV wash by moonlight and then crossing the desert precisely to the cars by dead reckoning (though Dave was tracking us on GPS). That makes it 3 for 3 for me in hitting the cars coming off Rosa in the dark, which surely means my dumb luck is about to run out and the next time we lead the peak I'm gonna miss by two miles.

Future participants, you've been warned.

Lessons learned:

• Tough hombres like Dave Cannon can do a hike like Rosa when they're so sick their ears are plugged.
• Folks like Mark, Susan, and Bob can bring off the climb without sleep. Maybe they were practicing for the next Villager-and-Rabbit-as-a-dayhike adventure.
• Eating a big Chinese dinner the night before a hike can be truly devastating.
• Cholla sucks.

BTW, there's a nice picture of Big Rabbit at:

http://www.mtpinos.com/pictures/125CANON.web/IMG_2576.jpeg

Karen and I will be leading it and Villager in a unusual three-day outing later this month.

Cheers, Wolf.