I love it when a plan comes together

It was more than a year in the making. Countless hours spent planning, researching locations, on the phone with tourism police. Ropes and quickdraws shipped from the states. Shoes brought down by visiting friends. All well worth the satisfaction of seeing a plan come to fruition.












































So as you've probably gathered, last weekend my buddies Dylan, Brad and I headed up to the cliffs above San Salvador to chill out for a while and challenge ourselves with a little sport climbing.

Over the past year and a half, nearly every time we've met up, the conversation has seemed to drift back to the same topic - a climbing excursion, specifically to an outcropping of massive rock faces and cliffs just outside of San Salvador given the not-so-welcoming name of La Puerta del Diablo, or The Devil's Gate.

Puerta del Diablo is a well-established climbing destination in Central America with a solid collection of pre-bolted surfaces and routes and, as we found out later, a decent climbing community who trek up from the capital each weekend to put those hours on the climbing wall at the national stadium to good use.

A comically large brick of cold cuts, some veggies and pita bread, and a few bags of salty junkfood to avoid cramps. Just like the pros eat. Throw in some tunes and that's not a bad picnic.

I should mention the night before at the hotel, we may have gotten a little too excited to be back in our climbing gear. I think that rare combination of rum and ultra-gummy rubber just automatically leads to antics. Ah, antics. Who doesn't love 'em?

And now back to the day of the climb with an overhead shot of la Puerta del Diablo. You could spend days here and not climb the same route twice.

As we packed up the gear, that calm from exerting a few thousand calories started to set in. While my forearms started to seize up, my mind seemed to open up. If you've ever exerted yourself to the point of complete and utter exhaustion, chances are you know what I'm talking about.

We were all pretty stoked from the experience and will definitely be back, so look for more climbing posts in the weeks to come.