Rappelling, Raspberries & Rashes

A few weekends ago Alex & I were treated to a private lesson with our friend Brian Gaas on the art of rappelling. Brian is currently the ropes coordinator for the NJ Search and Rescue Team and the guy to know if you want to learn anything about ropes and rappelling. We took Brian up to Inwood Park, which lies at the very tip of Manhattan on the Hudson River, where we had heard of a few climbing spots. As we tromped through the shrubbery in search of a good rock, we had the pleasure of encountering an abundance of raspberries bushes. A good portion of the day was spent collecting berries and consuming them, although we did eventually do some rappelling. After learning some cool new knots and setting up our anchor we took turns rappelling. At the bottom, Brian showed us how to use a prusik to pull ourselves back up the rope and do it all over again.

Alex is giving a fine demonstration of the use of a prusik in the photos above. While Brian is rappelling in the following photo.

You may be wondering why “rashes” was included in this posts title, I’ll explain. As mentioned above there was a lot tromping through the bushes that went on throughout the day, as well as some clearing away of the brush to allow room to anchor to a tree. Unfortunately, unknown to all three of us, we were actually surrounded by poison ivy. In fact, it was later discovered once poison ivy was identified by studying the Internet, it was nearly as abundant as all those lovely raspberries bushes. The next few weeks were rather painful and uncomfortable, but after a course of prednisone and plenty of oatmeal bathes, I only have a few scars left to prove the poison ivy was ever there. Alex & I have become experts at identifying the nasty stuff if anyone has any doubts about what is or isn’t poison ivy.