Rock Climbing Luang Prabang
I awoke to the sound of thunderous rain and rain water splashing onto my head underneath the window early this morning. This is supposed to be the height of the dry season, yet it has rained the past two days with this being the fiercest yet. As my window had screening on the inside, I couldn’t close the outer shutters, so I merely closed the curtains and drifted back to sleep, wondering how we would climb on wet rock.
I met up with Kylie and our guide at the office at 9am today and confirmed with the staff that climbing was a go. Off we went for the short boat ride to our slice of rock face on the Mekong. We were the only ones going so it was a rather comfortable ride out on a clean boat chartered by the company, Green Discovery. Our guide was a young Laos man by the name of Yai who spoke fairly good English and was very good with giving directions.
On the rock face he went over the basics as I requested and climbed up lead climbed to place our top rope. Then it was our turn up the fairly easy first climb. Twice on that and we moved up to a higher point from the same base. This was a bit more technical and I would not have made it up easily if Yai didn’t know every nook and cranny of the rock face and told me where to place each and every extremity. The top here put us within a foot of a be hive with dozens of bees coming out of a narrow spout that looked artificial to me. But they were “friendly bees” and I didn’t get stung.
Next we moved the route just to the right a little for a little which made it easier to get 3/4 of the way up, but then you had to deal with the rock bulge at the top. I made this route twice and almost didn’t the second time as my arms started shaking and giving out on me. It was fun, but the view from there wasn’t that spectacular, with Luang Prabang in the distance and motorized wooden boats puttering by on the Mekong below.
