The Art and Photography of John Borland

Your Bio

In short, my name is John Borland, and I am an adventurer. Included in the pages here are photos of the various places I've been and things that I've seen and experienced. Of course seeing such great sights in person is great, but sharing them with others is the icing on the cake, so take a look around and I do hope you thoroughly enjoy the content.

If you would like to purchase a print of a photo of mine, they're all readily available! Or if you'd like to arrange for something not available here, you can reach me at coldclimb@gmail.com. Thanks for visiting!

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." - Phil. 4:13

Gallery Categories

2003 : 1 gallery with 18 photos

1 gallery with 18 photos

Updated: Jan 15, 2009 4:51pm PST

2004 : 7 galleries with 60 photos

7 galleries with 60 photos

Updated: Dec 24, 2008 10:20pm PST

2005 : 8 galleries with 67 photos

8 galleries with 67 photos

Updated: Dec 24, 2008 10:15pm PST

2006 : 24 galleries with 280 photos

24 galleries with 280 photos

Updated: Dec 24, 2008 9:56pm PST

2007 : 22 galleries with 322 photos

22 galleries with 322 photos

Updated: Jun 11, 2009 2:47pm PST

2008 : 60 galleries with 1298 photos

60 galleries with 1298 photos

Updated: Oct 12, 2009 9:21pm PST

2009 : 60 galleries with 1834 photos

60 galleries with 1834 photos

Updated: Oct 26, 2012 4:22pm PST

2010 : 36 galleries with 1050 photos

36 galleries with 1050 photos

Updated: Dec 24, 2012 7:34am PST

2011 : 22 galleries with 417 photos

22 galleries with 417 photos

Updated: Jan 13, 2013 5:16pm PST

Adventures : 8 galleries with 174 photos

2012 : 29 galleries with 410 photos

29 galleries with 410 photos

Updated: Jan 13, 2013 5:17pm PST

2013 : 8 galleries with 415 photos

8 galleries with 415 photos

Updated: Jun 19, 2013 1:48pm PST

Featured Galleries

101 Places Kelsey Gray Has Been :

101 Places Kelsey Gray Has Been

Between Rocks and Rainclouds :
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Between Rocks and Rainclouds

Ty Morrison-Heath's feet leave the sturdy ground behind and venture out over the turmoil of Reed Creek on the Reed Creek Highline.

Spring came like it always does in 2008, with melting snow gradually revealing the rocks underneath, and the road to Archangel Valley opening up for travel in mid June. The warm weather and glimpses of sun at that point in the year didn't give us any telltale signs of how wet and cold the rest of the season would be, so we climbers were chomping at the bit to get out and scale some dry cliffs. Early season found us climbing near Chickaloon on the Wookie Wall, and later as the snowline receded into the mountains we started heading into Hatchers for the secluded scenery and more remote nature of the routes there.

Plans were made in June for Kelsey Gray, my wife Tracy, and myself to head into Reed Valley in Hatcher Pass and get some climbing done. Kelsey was writing a climbing guidebook for the area and needed to climb as many routes on as many walls as possible during the summer. We drove up Archangel road to the Reed Valley trailhead packed for a couple days of climbing and hiked the three-quarter mile trail to our campsite, and then we hit the rocks.

It takes more than a miserabe drizzle to get Kelsey's spirits down during a day of climbing.

Our goal for the day was to climb the Snowbird Slab and get as much information as we could on every route on the rock. Snowbird Slab sits at the base of a ridge that divides the end of a small low valley and looks down on the scattered and overgrown remains of what was formerly the Snowbird Mine Village, a group of cabins inhabited by miners in the 1930s and 40s. The left side of the rock face is relatively low angle and largely featureless except for a long wavy flake extending nearly the full length of the rock, and the right side drops vertical and makes a few sharp turns around what climbers call the "Cornerstone." The whole section of wall is in the sun most of the summer, and provides for some excellent climbing most any time of the year.

We started our day covering a few of the easy short climbs on the left end of the slab, climbing quickly and unroped up shallowly sloped faces with good holds, and then moved on to one of my favorite routes in the area. Snowflake is a 5.8 that follows the wavy flake up the whole slab with a gap behind a thin surface layer of rock that's just big enough for fingers, but with relatively few footholds to go with the handholds in many places. A climber slips fingers behind the flake and places feet flat against the wall, pulling with their hands and pushing with their feet in a technique called "liebacking," which gives enough friction to securely stay in control and move up the rock.

One factor involved in cimbing a lot of routes in a row is the cluster achieved when rearranging gear a dozen times.

Kelsey led the way up Snowflake, but as he reached the top and put me on belay, our partly cloudy sky with patches of open blue started spitting rain on us. We wanted to get a lot more climbing done this day, but soaking wet rock is enormously difficult to climb due to lack of friction, and on top of that nobody likes being wet and miserable, so we hurriedly started finishing up to head back to the tents before we got soaked. As we rappelled, however, our path led us directly down Thin As Ice, a 5.10b route that goes straight up the slab with no real holds to speak of, only the sharp textured granite to provide friction for ascent. Here we faced one of those choices that should be obvious to anyone of sane mind, but often becomes difficult in light of the morbid sort of enjoyment for suffering many climbers share. We looked furtively to the sky, scoped out the featureless face in front of us, then glanced skyward again. Trying to climb a moderate slab in the rain with friction wiped away by the cascade of water would be an extremely difficult undertaking, and yet that's exactly why it appealed to us. We tied in.

As I started up the climbing was fairly moderate and I slapped wet hands and feet easily against the rock, moving higher on palms and soles smeared over no holds at all. Water trickled around and across my fingers, and if I stopped in one place briefly I could feel my footholds slowly slipping away. Kelsey and I cackled gleefully as the rain picked up and water began forming heavy streams straight down our route. Placing my feet slowly and weighting them gently, I moved steadily from one smear to another, anticipating at any moment a slip that would send me sliding backwards down the slab toward Kelsey. As I got higher the moves had me grunting short high pitched noises of surprise when my feet repeatedly slipped, letting me down a foot or two. Then ten feet below the anchor my upward movement stopped completely.

Kelsey approaches the crux section as water cascades down the wall in ever-growing streams.

It was only a short section, perhaps two or three feet where the slab rounded up into a dead vertical angle and then lowered back into its friendly slope again, but with torrents washing down around me I couldn't seem to get enough friction to get over it. As my footholds oozed away, I tried going up, then left, then right, and remained stumped. Kelsey laughed from below while I whimpered and whined, setting one foot, then the other back onto the placements they had just drifted out of. After a desperately slippery time period, I eventually oozed to the right, standing on nothing at all just where the wall got steep, and wrapped my fingernails over two or three sharp crystals in the granite. From this position I utilized a mighty quavery whine that stretched on for indeterminable seconds in order to move my body higher and gain shaky purchase for a foot above the impasse. With relative security finally obtained I let out a strangled chuckling gasp as I put the difficult crux behind me and slip-slided my way to the anchor.

Kelsey followed me, making strange noises of his own and taking a couple slides at the crux before he got to the top, and then we decided to give up on climbing for the time being and headed back to the tent. Of course that's when the weather cleared up, so we ate lunch and climbed the large "Nugget Boulder" while the rocks dried out, and then we went back and finished up the climbs on Snowbird Slab and the Cornerstone, wrapping up after a total of fourteen routes. A bit of ramen soup for dinner warmed us up, and we curled up in our tents.

Morning woke us with a heavy pounding of rain on our tents, of course, and then the sound of approaching footsteps outside our tent. "Is John Borland here?" someone asked.

The gang gets together to tension the highline in preparation for the day's walks.

"Yeah that's me," I replied, not recognizing the voice. The conversation carried on, and eventually through groggy reasoning on points and subjects discussed, I deduced that I was speaking to Ty Morrison-Heath and Will Laxson, and a soaking wet panting animal that slapped my tent repeatedly with its tail. I emerged from my cozy dryness to find the valley covered in clouds and everything sopping wet. There would be no climbing today unless things cleared up enough for the sun to come out and dry the rocks. Ty and Will were soon joined by Jake Higbie and Sam Lahey. They had all hiked in to say hi to us even though it looked like they wouldn't be climbing on such a dreary day. They did, however, bring their slackline, and we had enough gear to rig the highline over Reed Creek that I had done several years before, so we decided to make something good out of the bad weather and headed up to the small steep-sided section of rapids that makes the gap for the slackline.

Ty takes a dive off the highine with the roaring waters drowning his screams.

Some years ago in a battle of climber ethics, the original bolts we installed to walk this highline were removed by someone else, but the holes themselves still remain and we had hardware enough to rig the line with only one bolt on one side instead of the more desired two. In highlining this certainly isn't optimal, but based on the low height and narrow gap, the forces and danger involved with this line are minimized. We set about rigging and in no time the line was ready to walk.

The walk goes down for Kelsey in the grey cloudbank of a soaking wet Hatcher Pass.

We all had a blast over the next couple hours, with the line seeing walks by first Ty in one direction and then Kelsey and I in both directions. Many attempts were made, and there were several impressive falls from the middle of the line, well out over the rushing cataracts below. As the fun drew to a close, Kelsey, Tracy, and I stuck around for a few more walks while the others took off to get back to anchorage. As we took everything apart and headed back to the tents the rain picked up again, ensuring that nothing would be dry for a few days to come, so we packed up and headed back to civilization, another few days of adventure behind us.

The rest of that summer was miserably rainy, setting records for both precipitation and low temperatures. Not to be denied our climbing time however, we made many more trips to Hatchers in spite of the weather, and many more routes were climbed in downpour conditions with clouds drifting by at arm's reach. As the snow returned to the mountains in the fall and access to our favorite crags in the mountains was cut off, we did what any climber ought to do in such conditions: We filled a car with climbing gear and migrated south to dry rock in far off distant places. But that's another set of adventures entirely!

Thumbs up at the end of a successful day of walking a highline.

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Between Rocks and Rainclouds

Sombreros and Sunshine :

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Sombreros and Sunshine

Kelsey Gray works a route in the evening sun on the Seward Highway.

The summer of 2007 was almost devoid of climbing for me, having spent most of my time on the clock with the Gannette Glacier fire crew. After being released and returning home from a fire in Idaho in early August I finally had time to climb, and with the season closing fast I arranged to head out to the rocks with Kelsey Gray, Richard Harrop, and Shasta Miller. We decided to climb above the Turnagain Arm near Anchorage on a wall called Goat's Head Soup, just off the Seward Highway. The evening progressed, and as the warm sun sank lower over the water we decided we didn't want to stop having fun, so we left the Highway behind and headed to Archangel Valley in Hatcher Pass with our sleeping bags and climbing gear.

The morning broke with a blast of bright sunlight finding its way through the cracks in the cabin walls, and the four of us set out to climb the six pitch "Toto," one of the classic climbs in the area with a rating of 5.10 according to our topo (a hand-drawn map of the route). We had all climbed the first two pitches many times in the past, but none of us had ever set out to do the route in its entirety, so we were looking forward to seeing what was above our high point. Shasta and I started off, leading the way up three pitches of moderately easy terrain to the fourth pitch: a choice between a blank face or an intimidating looking wide crack in a dihedral at the right edge. Our topo was unclear which way was the actual route, so we pondered our options for a few minutes.

Kelsey follows Shasta and I on the third pitch of Toto, with Richard far below at the belay.

A climber typically ascends a crack in a rock not by grabbing holds or features of the rock as in face climbing, but by wedging hands and feet into the crack. An "offwidth" crack is so named because it's just a touch too wide for hands to gain sufficient purchase, but too narrow to be able to fit a torso or body all the way inside. Offwidths are often a difficult puzzle of determining how to wedge whatever body parts fit into the crack in such a manner that one won't slide right out, but will still be able to make upward progress as well. My climbing experience has left me naturally at home on featureless faces and usually panting and straining whenever I enter an offwidth, so I chose to head up the blank looking slab of unknown difficulty. We found out afterwards that the offwidth is indeed the route, and it's not as difficult as it looks, but we made an adventure of climbing this pitch the harder way.

I made a few moderate moves up the face past two bolts, and then found myself delicately switching feet on tiny divots over which I had to "smear" my rubber shoes, and trying to figure out how to advance up the slab without any holds at all. After a few tense minutes without progress, I managed to smear my feet a touch higher and stretch as far as I could to slide my fingertips onto a tiny sloping concavity, which gave me enough purchase to slowly step higher and gain some real holds. I've often been cursed by partners for doing such stretches to get past crux moves, and because of that it's something I thoroughly enjoy doing. I chuckled later as first Shasta, then Kelsey, then Richard asked me how I got through that blank section.

The next pitch presented another difficult challenge both in technical skill and the associated head game. For years I had been eying a beautiful crack that splits a large and unfeatured granite face, and wondering if it was part of Toto or not. From the valley floor it looks like it might be perfect hand jams the full length of it, and it almost is. It turned out the crack was slightly off route, so I climbed to a ledge at its base to see what it was like. My hands slipped into the bottom and jammed beautifully, and looking up I could see the crack only widened slightly from there, so I grinned and started climbing.

Straining to stay on the rock, Shasta approaches the top of the offwidth pitch.

About fifteen feet off the ledge, I placed a #3 Camalot and climbed past it, struggling slightly as the crack widened out. A few feet further on I realized that I had grossly misjudged the width of the crack from below, and the rest of it was ever-widening offwidth some forty feet to the top. I tried backing down, but with a cam in the crack under my feet and no way to get a secure hold, I judged that going up would be easier and therefore safer, so I set my eyes upward. My #3 Camalot was the largest piece on my rack and as the crack widened there was no way I would get anything smaller placed for protection, so as I gained ground over my one and only piece of pro I knew that falling was no longer an option. Gasping and grating, I inched slowly higher.

Then ten feet from the top the sharp corner of the crack began to round off, leaving me with less and less to grip and delaying my already tediously slow upward progress. I knew a fall from here would send me flying perhaps sixty feet, well past the ledge where Shasta stood wide-eyed belaying me. Gritting my teeth, I stared hard at the top of the offwidth and a small hold that would end this miserably insecure predicament, and focused on my climbing. I discovered that although I couldn't efficiently gain ground move by move, I could in fact wedge a part of my hip and thigh solidly enough to move my shoulder and upper arm upward by scant millimeters, and then grunt and strain to hang from a wedged shoulder and one hand on the rounded lip while I re-situated my leg slightly higher. This move repeated itself until the tiny savior hold at the end was just out of reach, at which point I stretched my trademark long arm and reached it anyway. A couple more moves pulled me over the lip where I lay gasping, and turned around to moan a warning back to the others:

"This is not the way to go," I grunted.

As Richard approaches the route's summit, Kelsey's face reflects the joy we're all sharing.

They came anyway, following me up on toprope and making many of the same noises I had. Richard, who had left his shirt behind in the hot sun at the base of the cliff, reached the belay with his shoulder and half his back rubbed raw and seeping blood. He grinned through the pain, happy to have made it to the top. Shasta gave it a mighty effort having never had any experiences with offwidth crack before, and positively shone with her trademark smile after reaching the belay. The sense of accomplishment achieved by completing something so immensely difficult is a feeling that sticks with you, unforgettable and never fading with time.

The last pitch passed under us without trouble and we spent a few minutes collecting and sorting our gear while soaking in the enormous view offered by the summit block of the route, a sombrero shaped feature which sits prominently on the point of a ridge with empty space falling away into nothingness in three of the four directions. Our play then done for the day, we downclimbed the back side of the ridge and made our way back to the car with a short detour to retrieve Richard's shirt and cover his rock-burned skin.

In the months that followed the temperatures dropped and climbing season ended, sealing off Archangel Valley with several feet of snow. Skin grew back and scars healed up, but the memories of a challenging climb and great times with good friends still carry on, timeless and bold forever.

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Sombreros and Sunshine

The Big Wall :

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The Big Wall

Kelsey and I grin happily at the camera in the shade atop the fourth pitch of Touchstone Wall.

Zion National Park, Utah, is well known for the unmatched scenery provided by the sandstone walls and mountains surrounding a narrow seven-mile canyon. For climbers, it is a massive playground offering several lifetimes worth of routes of all difficulties and styles. Due to the immensity of the cliffs here, many of the climbing routes in Zion classify as "Big Wall" routes, meaning they may take more than a day to complete and therefore require a higher commitment level. During the cooler months the enormous sandstone walls sport climbers from around the world, either pushing for summits in a day or stretching their climbing time out and spending as many days as they like secluded in their portaledges high above the valley floor.

Kelsey Gray and I reached Zion a month after setting out on a climbing road trip around the states, in June of 2006. We had visited several of the top destinations in two countries already, and the walls that towered above our shuttle bus as it slowly wound its way into the canyon had us excitedly maneuvering for a better view, twisting our necks uncomfortably to look straight up out the windows. We didn't know just what to climb first, so we headed to the ranger station and investigated the well maintained guidebook for climbing in the park.

Neither Kelsey or I had ever climbed a big wall before. We didn't have gear for staying overnight on the wall, and our technical climbing skill could only be described as moderate, so our options were slimmed down considerably. Eventually we decided we'd try our hand at Touchstone Wall, a nine-pitch Grade III route rated 5.9 A2 that directly ascends the Cerberus Gedarme, a cornerstone feature at the inside of a wide U-shaped bend in the canyon across from the famous Angel's Landing trail. Grade III implies that the route will probably take a full day or more to climb, and the 5.9 rating told us that the difficulty was well within our capabilities if we aid climbed the most technical sections at a simple A2.

An optimistic smile lights Kelsey's face at the hanging belay atop the second pitch as I start out on the third.

We got a late start at 9:30 in the morning after the sun was already high in the sky. The first four pitches were supposed to be aid climbed, according to our topo, and I took the lead and started off. For the first pitch I clipped my etriers - a simple lightweight nylon ladder - to pitons driven into the blank rock and moved from piece to piece, carrying my gear with me and clipping the rope to a piton behind me every so often to protect against falls. It wasn't long before I found myself hanging from the anchor above and belaying Kelsey up. Temperatures began warming into the nineties and we took sips from our water bottles, rationing the precious fluid against the duration of the climb.

The second pitch got interesting quickly. We had read previously that we would find some pitons and a fixed RURP, or "very small piton" placed in a tiny crack at a key move through a roof. I never saw the RURP, so figuring it has been removed or come out on its own, I simply used my patented escape maneuver for tricky climbing situations and stretched my long arms past the blank crack to reach another piton further on. From there the difficulty eased, and using our aid gear exclusively we moved up another three pitches.

The fifth pitch, according to our topo, was where we would switch from aid techniques to free climbing, or using our hands and feet rather than gear placements to ascend the rock. We paused here on a small ledge and shared a single sandwich between us. It was the only food we had brought, figuring we could go hungry for a few hours to save the weight and hassle of carrying more. Thinking we were making good time, I asked Kelsey for a chronometer reading, and we were both somewhat surprised to find out that it was already two o'clock in the afternoon. We had taken much longer on the aid climbing than anticipated, but the free climbing above would pass much more quickly.

A shaded belay ledge offers Kelsey a brief respite from the heat and work.

Swallowing the last tasty bites of my sandwich half, I then visited my water bottle for a swig, and was faced with more bad news. Of the five liters of water we had brought up the wall with us, we had already consumed all but a few swallows! Even thinking we were rationing it and drinking small swallows with careful restraint, we had guzzled the stuff, and now with five more pitches above us and daytime temperatures reaching for 100, we had no more left for the climbing ahead.

We spent a few minutes pondering our predicament. Hundreds of feet below us on the lone road in the canyon, shuttle buses pulled over to give the other visitors a good view of the two of us perched on our tiny ledge. Arms reached from the narrow windows and waved, and cameras flashed. We waved back, and then, turning our backs to the ground once more, we continued upward.

Starting out the fifth pitch, it took me no time at all to realize that I wasn't up for the job of climbing it. A smooth and rounded crack was my only feature, and though I could lock my fingers nicely in its depths, my toes would just barely penetrate at all and promptly slid back out again in a shower of sand as I weighted them. Within minutes I realized I wouldn't have the strength to finish the route like this, but thoughts of descent at this point were stubbornly blocked from my mind. Having come this far, we certainly couldn't give up without giving it all that we had. Gasping and groping for solid footholds, I finally admitted my failing strength and abandoned the pride of a free ascent in favor of just getting to the top however I could manage.

Kelsey approaches the belay atop pitch five showing the weariness he is starting to feel.

Choosing two prime sized cams off my rack, I slipped the slings around each of my wrists and plugged them into the crack. My organic muscles relaxed as the metal lobes of my new mechanical hands easily grabbed and held solid, and then leapfrogging the placements and stopping occasionally to place and clip other pieces for protection, I followed the remarkably unchanging crack until I reached the anchor. I grinned widely at this cheated solution to my problems, and then even more widely as Kelsey started up the pitch. Being the leader I had all the gear with me, so Kelsey couldn't resort to the same methods I had, and his fingers and feet are massively larger than my own, presenting him with manifold more problems than myself. I sat chuckling at the belay while Kelsey's voice rose from the cliffside below, questioning the nobility of a climbing partner who would take all the handholds with him and leave none for his second.

The climbing got technically easier on the higher pitches, but our exhaustion grew on a disproportionate scale, making it more and more difficult to maintain upward progress the higher we got. Dehydration symptoms set in after a few hours more, and Kelsey's forearms began cramping as he belayed. Glancing down from most of the way up the seventh pitch, I was greeted by the sight of him stretched out full length on the spacious belay ledge, hands behind his head as he relaxed and watched me climb and let his autolocking belay device do all the work. I didn't blame him any, I had just placed a cam and clipped myself into it to rest mid-pitch.

This spacious belay ledge gives Kelsey a few minutes to recover his strength.

Eventually we reached the huge shoulder of the ridge at the top of the eighth pitch. Above us was one more pitch of 5.7 climbing, but neither of us was too certain that we could manage it in our current state, with our worn out muscles cramping and weakened by the day's abuse. Looking at each other though, we knew without speaking that we could not climb this route ALMOST to the top, so once more I took off and dragged my way up this last easy obstacle to our success. The sun was dropping low in the sky by this time, and the cooler temps of the evening eased the strain enough for us to somehow pull those final moves and find ourselves at the top of our first big wall route.

We took our exhausted seats on the summit with the glow of the sun showing past the horizon. The glory of the moment was somewhat lost in our extreme fatigue, so without many words we took a single summit photo and set about finding out how to get ourselves down. We had finished the route, it's true, but we were still almost a thousand feet off the ground and we had to safely descend before we could relax our tired bodies. Choosing to face the known factors of descending the route itself to the unknown of the typical separate descent route taken from this wall we packed our gear, and as the daylight faded entirely we followed the dim light of our headlamps out into the empty space.

Spirits are high as we relax beaten, burnt, and bloody at the summit, but energy is distinctly lacking.

Rappelling nine hundred feet of empty air should be a gripping experience, but in the pitch black of night it was impossible to get the full effect. Our vision was limited solely to a small circle of the wall in front of us and the dim twinkling of the stars above, and all else was complete blackness, erasing the effect of the dizzying heights we knew were beneath us. This lack of exposure was interesting enough to be noted even through the dimmed perceptions of my tired mind. Soon, however, it became simply monotonous as yard after yard of sandstone passed in front of our eyes, disappearing above even as more appeared below. We soon lost count of the rappels and had only a vague idea how far we had come, and how far we had yet to go.

Even now, with the climbing done with and the whole experience so close to completion, we found our bodies taxed to their limit. Neither of us had had a bite to eat or drop of water since midday, and we couldn't take much more. After each pitch, we stood side by side and pulled the ropes down after us using our combined strengths, timing our heaves on the line exactly so we would waste no effort in trying vainly to pull alone. Kelsey's hand repeatedly cramped into a solid claw, and he beat it against the rock to unlock the screaming muscles and allow him to grab the rope again. Several times we were forced to simply stop for a few moments to recover enough for just a couple more pulls. Somewhere in the darkness high above us, the knot tying our two ropes together occasionally hung up momentarily on some invisible obstruction, jerking our movement to a stop and sending us moaning into heaps of misery on our ledge.

At long last we rappelled past the branches of the friendly tree at the start of the route, indicating the ground was just moments away. Our relief was palpable as we both landed our feet on the boulders at the base of the cliff, and a glance at Kelsey's watch marked the time at 9:00pm, eleven and a half hours after we started our ascent. We moved slowly collecting our gear together before we gathered the last of our strength for one final pull of the ropes. Each of us coiled a line in the darkness, and as we trudged wearily back to the awning where the shuttle would pick us up we showed little of the excited happiness we each felt inside. Our success marked our introduction to the world of big wall climbing, and perhaps it is an indicator of some twisted deformity in the climber psyche that we loved every minute of it, and looked forward to gaining more experience on other walls around the world in the future.

Morning greets us in our campsite at Mosquito Cove, near the park.

On the shuttle we related the day's experiences to the curious tourists, some of whom had watched us on our ascent many hours earlier. One gentleman secured an eternal place of affection in our hearts by handing us a bottle of water, and the driver of the shuttle made an unscheduled stop at a drinking fountain for our benefit as well. After a bite to eat at our rig, we found our camp for the night and threw out our sleeping bags in the bare dirt under the stars, each of us acknowledging that we had never pushed our limits so far in our lives, and agreeing that the adventure was truly a momentous one for us. We slept well.

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