McCrea Lake Hike By: Alex

Last year we found a cool place to go hiking called McCrea Lake near Muskoka, so 2 weeks ago we decided to back there again. I remember seeing a big cliff on the edge of the lake and though that it would be cool to go do some free climbing there, since we just got into rock climbing about 3 weeks ago. We each packed up our bags with some hotdogs, water, a knife,flint, a machete, our harnesses, some carabiners, and 20$ rope from Home Depot (because we can't afford the good stuff right now).
During one section of the hike we had to cross a small lake and luckily we found an abandoned canoe, which saved us a lot of time. After about 2 hours of hiking we finally got to the spot, started a fire and ate some hotdogs which tasted freakin' awesome. I then got my Home Depot rope and tied it off the anchor points on the top of the cliff and Bart went to the bottom to test it out and see if it could support a persons weight, it did, so we went for it. The cliff was a pretty crazy climb and had a part in the beginning that you had to jump for, which would swing us into a bunch of trees if we missed the grab.
After about an hour and a half of climbing the cliff and destroying our fingers until they bled, I looked up while Bart was about halfway up and saw that our rope was so worn out that there were only a few white fibres holding it together. We weren't going to risk it so we packed up and headed home, but when we got back to the car we still had the urge to climb.
We found some 50ft cliffs on the side of the road and decided to do some solo climbing. During one climb I actually thought that I was done for because I was stuck with no way to go up and no way to go down, a 40ft drop down onto pointy rocks and a 100ft valley on my left which was the only direction climb up in. I decided to screw it and climb to the left for a bit, over the valley, and luckily I made it up without shitting my pants.
We climbed until it got dark and then headed home, reflecting on our near death experiences during the whole drive back. Now were hooked on climbing.

                                      Alex (left)  and Bart (right)