The Enchantments aka (we're getting hitched!)

Wow it's been a crazy month since our last post. We went to the City of Rocks for climbing and then all heck broke loose with traveling. This post is a recount of our trip over the last week of August. We went to Oregon to visit Cassie's parent's and her grandmother. Had a fantastic time with them for a few days. Went to the coast for a beautiful day walking down the beach and trying to check out some tidepools.  Had clam chowder which is becoming a tradition when we visit Oregon. Went to Tulley and Frank's  ( friends of Cassie's from college) wedding. While we were in Oregon I asked Cassie's parents for permission to marry their daughter! They said yes and we were all quite excited, but I asked them to keep it a secret for a few days until I asked her on our upcoming backpacking trip to the Enchantments in Washington state. 

So a few days later we left and headed to Washington. We went climbing for a couple of days in 

Leavenworth but the weather was uncooperative between the wind and the rain so we only did a few routes. Most noteworthy was a fun 5.9 handcrack that we didn't finish but placed gear on and intentionally took lead falls onto cams since that kind of thing scares us. We need to get over our fear and that's the only way to do it. 

On Friday we headed into the Echantments with our friend Paul (who organized the trip) and his friend Elaina. It was a beautiful hike uphill for 10.5 miles and over 5000 ft of elevation gain. Needless to say we were all tired by the time we arrived at our first campsite. It was totally worth the hike though because we saw exquisite mountain lakes and scenic vistas that we all agreed were some of the best we've ever seen.

Saturday (Cassie's birthday) we moved camp further in and took an afternoon nap. When we had recovered from the hike we decided to take a short walk to look around. I seized the opportunity and grabbed the ring which was in a box inside of a dog bootie. Paul Cassie and I hiked to a 

nearby lake and as we single filed down to the lake I turned around and gave Paul the Shhhhh sign and showed him the box. Being the astute character

 that he is Paul stay back and gave me my chance to pretend to tie my shoe. I then told Cassie how much she meant to me and asked her to marry me. She said yes and we both were really excited and moved by the moment. I took a few pictures to capture the moment and Paul got one or two of Cassie and I as well. Now I'll let Cassie talk about the proposal and finish out describing our trip.

That's pretty much the story, I was completely surprised even though we had been talking about it for a while now. It was a beautiful place and a beautiful moment. Matt and his sister did a great job of picking out a ring I really like. Amazing since I'm not a big fan of rings typically. I was also quite surprised and impressed that Matt asked my parents and they showed no signs of anything being up the 3 days we spent with them.

One thing Matt did't mention about the trip was the goats. 

Where we were camping is high alpine, close to tree line. There are very little minerals for the goats and it's a popular hiking area, so the goats have learned that they can get minerals from people's pee. They warn you a head of time that the goats do this and to pee on rocks so they 

don't tear up the vegetation. At our first campsite, we quickly had a family of goats hanging out with us. We thought they were all cute until Matt left the group to try to hang our food. The goats quickly surrounded him and he tried to climb a tree to get away. We quickly learned they meant no harm, they just thought he was going to pee and were quite excited about that. Every time one person left the group, they knew it meant something good and you'd hear the sound of hooves trotting after you. This is a little unnerving as you're trying to stand or squat to do your thing having wild animals with sharp horns that close to you. In the morning, the goats would be licking the rocks all around camp and everyone could point out the places they had gone in the night.

The enchantments is one of the most beautiful places I know, this was my third trip. I was excited to spend my birthday there, and show Matt one of my favorite places. It now is an even more special and memorable place for me.

The City substitutes Vedauwoo

Well we were all set to hop in the car and head to Wyoming to see how we fare at the off-width capitol of the world, but at the last minute we got the call that it was canceled. Apparently 46 and raining doesn't make for very good climbing. Oh well, since we had the car totally packed we checked the weather in the City (the city of rocks that is). It was 85 and sunny without a cloud in the sky for the forecast all weekend. So before you can say granite we were on the road to Idaho. The City is one of the coolest areas we've ever climbed. It's not built for the sporty climbers (which we typically are) but is rather an area that climbs well with traditional protection such as nuts, and cams. We haven't climbed a lot of trad or granite so we were both excited to get more experience. We've agreed to just do easy climbs until we're more confident and precise with gear.


The City was only 50% full when we got there so finding a campsite was easy. We camped up by "The Finger" which, if you happen to go there, is a place you should check out if you like solitude. Not a single person was camped in either of the 4 sites so we had a few square miles to ourselves. Mojo got to run and play so he was happy as well. Since we had the Mojo we opted to just do climbs that we can rappel off of (severely limiting our options) because last time we climbed at the City he guarded the base of a multi-pitch we were doing and we felt pretty awful that other climbers couldn't get on it. So this time we just did a few easy climbs and hiked around to get to know the area better.

All in all we had a great weekend with fun easy climbs and great meals.

I guess we'll just have to reschedule our off-width experience for some other time.

Cedar City part deux

Last weekend we headed back to Cedar City for more climbing. Our previous trip were super stoked on the volcanic tuff climbing. We enjoyed the routes a lot, and we left with some climbs we still wanted to complete. So, this most weekend we headed back to finish up our projects and makes some cool sends. This time we went with our friend Paul, Mojo and a dog named Aeschylus (pronounced eskalas). We had a weekend of perfect weather at 11,000 feet. It only rained a tiny bit and the climbing was nice and cool. We warmed up on Saturday with some climbs to get us ready for Sunday since Aeschylus kept us up most of the night Friday while camping. You can't really blame the dog though, who wants to sleep when there's so much nature to sniff and pee on? Saturday night we cooked over a campfire and burned basically everything except the corn. Maybe I need some more practice cooking campfire food.


On Sunday we awoke after a good night's sleep to perfect temps. Climbing quickly ensued and everyone sent something they were stoked about. Paul onsighted his first 10a. It's a fun climb called "Willie the Pimp". Cassie redpointed her first 11a named "Pumping out of Gas" and I got my first 11c called Howard Hughes.

Check out these fun pics


For the next week I'll (matthew) be in Ohio visiting family. After that we head to Vedauwoo to get our bums kicked on some offwidths! So check back soon for more fun pics. Also, as always, there are more pics of the trip on our Flickr account.