the birm*

So I hopped in the van, drove to Brooklyn, put the sea kayak in the water, paddled east for 20 mins and docked at eagle rock, a huge 80m cavernous rock formation stretching skywards above the water. Adam, Jason and andi were climbing some hard stuff.

I started with a sweet exposed grade 16 (my level) with turquoise estuary, blue sky and sun as a backdrop. We hung out a bit, did a 21 (my first ever outdoors!!!! And maybe even in-doors), had some lunch and abseiled (rappelled) down onto the beak of eagle rock, about 30 or 40 m above the water (hard to say, I was standing on a piece of rock the size of a coin with nothing but air and swinging rope underneath…). Exposure!!!! I belayed adam up the nice grade 16 slab then followed up. Wow, what a nice climb. So much exposure, windy, sunny, grippy rock… as it was a slab at times the only “holds” for my hands were having them flat on the rock (spiderman style!). unreal.

I scrambled back down, got in the kayak and was back at the van 20 min later. Awesome!