For the first leg, Damon was the leader. Somebody anchored us, and we all grabbed our section of rope and hoisted up. Quite an effort, I must say.

Andy wore his Santa Claus hat. Most everything else besides the gardening rake was in my backpack. When they took up the slack rope, Andy cried out, "AAAaaaa! I knew I shouldn't have threaded it through my intestines!"

The first leg went rather slow, considering how easy it was. I was somewhere in the middle of the party. ...

We took our first break at a ledge around a tree on the right hand side, and we waited for the others to make it. Actually, we'd not just climbed to the tree. We'd made it across on a rope strung from one point to the tree, because we'd come straight up to the point, and there was a huge cavernous gap between ourselves and the ledge. Soon, though, everyone had forded it, and we rested and sang cheery songs before taking off once again upwards.

This time, someone else led the way, probably Don. No. It was Trotsky. We made him toss the grappling Spam towards the next ledge, but he kept missing. So we got Damon to do it instead. He had better luck. Or was it Paul? Well, one of them did it, and we headed up again.

Already, we'd had some misfortune. Dave had lost his shoe, but I caught it on the way down and then dropped it again, and Jake ended up catching it this time. Lucky for him, eh? But we couldn't return it until the next ledge.

This was when Trotsky started having problems. He got tangled up in the rope, and Paul had to climb back down and help him out. We almost lost both of them; they were hanging onto each other and the rope by very flimsy grips. But, when Don went down and steadied them both, they managed to pull themselves back up. Ahhh! Close one, eh?

At this point, someone looked up at Ian and noticed that he was standing upright, watching the goings on. We pointed out that the gravity was going to pull him downwards to certain death, and he plunged, luckily catching a rope on the way down.

We made the second ledge, and I acted as anchor point for the next one, up to a small tree. More troubles with Paul, but he straightened them out before strangling in the rope, and we made the next checkpoint.

Thus, we established Base Camp A, under a severe overhang too difficult to comprehend without a preliminary rest. We took another break.