Bouldering on the Mt. Healy Overlook Trail

Well the day started out beautiful and with about 45 minutes of work left it looked like we were in for some rain. It looked like everywhere around us was getting a bit, which unfortunately dashed my hopes of doing a little bouldering at the rock I had seen on the Mt. Healy Overlook Trail. However, after dinner and checking out some shoe protectant at the gear store near work the weather had improved too much. I had to at least try to get some climbing done!
On the trail out I saw a family of spruce grouse (Dendragapus canadenis). There were about 7 young birds and an adult. The adult would fan out its tail feathers whenever this little tree squirrel would come over near them. It was pretty cool, because the squirrel's presence allowed me to get pretty close to check them out.

I headed out around 8:45pm and got to the rock around 9:30pm. I climbed for around an hour and between knocking the dust off of my skills I also knocked a good bit of dust and dirt off of the rock. The rock wasn’t the cleanest, but it was awesome getting to work and roughing up the hands a little bit. The rock was really slopey with many jagged little edges to the most positive handholds. The best part was that the rock topped out to a smooth, flat top. No handholds, mostly had to trust the feet and balance as well as possible.
Another thing happened tonight, the mosquitoes amassed their forces and mounted their attack. They were out pretty thick. This was definitely the first time since I have been out here that I really needed bug spray. Of course, I forgot the stuff at my room, so I did a lot of slapping and swatting.
Overall it was a good night. It was good getting a little climbing done and I saw two cool things; the grouse family and a collection of bones from something killed a while back. One thing about tonight can be assured, the wild flowers next year up at that rock will grow strong and tall from soil fertilized with the corpses of a million dead mosquitoes!

L'chaim!