The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It's spring break time and that means all the college students are out climbing! Elyse came to Utah for a week and a half of action packed climbing. The day she flew into town we took her to Rock Canyon for some evening climbing. The weather was perfect and the broken quartzite was sharp and positive. Over the weekend we headed to Joe's Valley for some sandstone bouldering. We had a decent sized group with us consisting of a new friend Collin, Chris, Peter, Elyse, Cassie, and I. Everyone warmed up on "Small One" before I took the crew down to the riverside boulders to escape the climbing crowd. We've never seen that many people at Joe's before. After conversing with some fellow climbers we found that it was due to the out-of-towners from Colorado and beyond. Regardless, we had a great day of climbing. Cassie came very close to sending a V6 and I sent my second V6 so we were quite happy with it.

The next day Elyse and I went to a piece of art on the great salt lake called the Spiral Jetty. It was cool, but as the water level was quite low there wasn't really any jetty at all. The water was about 100 yards out from the spiral. I also high-centered the honda civic and we had to get a pull out from a couple of nice guys with a decent sized SUV. It was epic since there was a snow storm coming and not really anybody else anywhere nearby for at least 20 miles. Oh well at least it made for good storytelling afterwards.

Cassie headed to the San Juan river for a 5-day float trip of catching disposing of unwanted sport fish which are causing problems for the native species who used to thrive in the rivers.

The following weekend we decided to make a camping trip of climbing at Triassic on Saturday and then heading to Little Wild Horse Canyon.

Climbing at Triassic was sweet. The weather was outstanding and some hard problems were sent. Most of the sending was by our uber-hard sending friend Andrew and not us, but we were certainly happy for him. It's very cool to climb with someone who inspires you to try harder, and Andrew certainly does that. His girlfriend Rachel (sp?) also came for the weekend. She's a hard climber as well and left with a tough V4 project that she is working. We had a beautiful day of climbing which ended on a boulder that has 3 problems on it, each with the same start, and a different finish. The Good a V4 has a pretty scary topout over a bad landing, The Bad a V5 has a crazy throw for a jug, and the Ugly is a very long V6 that has some stout moves with long reaches between holds. Andrew impressed everyone by flashing or onsighting all three problems. I contented myself with trying the V5 and came close to sending, but just didn't have the juice to finish. No worries though, we're heading back to Triassic this coming Sunday since the weather in Provo looks like it will be either Bad, or Ugly :)

Sunday we drove out to Little Wild Horse and were shocked at how windy it was. It was tough just keeping the car in the lane at some points due to crazy gusting the wind was. We ended up getting to the canyon a bit before noon and hiked into the canyon with my famous words of "I'm sure it won't be so windy in the canyon". Much to my disappointment the opposite was true. The soft sand in the canyon was being picked up by strong winds and thrown into our faces like a sandblaster. It was brutal. I didn't know sand could get into that many places on my body. Luckily the scenery made up for the conditions and we had a great time exploring the slot. It was strange to see that even the narrowest parts were actually dry this year. Two years ago (almost exactly) we did the same hike with Cassie's parents and there was water through a decent portion of the slot which required wading through ice cold water to continue the hike. This year there wasn't even a puddle, which was disappointing to Cassie and I. We kind of liked the extra work that the water forces on us. Instead of doing the loop hike we exited the same way we came, one reason was that mojo was with us and I didn't want to have to carry him up and down some of the boulder jams, another was that the wind was making the hiking unpleasant enough that everyone was pretty happy to just call it a day and plan to come back to hike Bell canyon another day when the weather would be more cooperative. On another note I was very happy with the pictures my Canon SLR camera took. It really performed well in the low light conditions and I ended up getting some nice shots. Feel free to check out our flickr page (as always) for lots more pictures that you see here.

Little Wild Horse Pictures
Joes Valley Pictures
Triassic Pictures

St George climbing

Last weekend we headed to St George with the Utah Climbing Club to check out an area known as Soul Asylum. It gets its name from the burnt surroundings. There was a fire in the area a few years ago and the total lack of green vegetation combined with burnt black trees does give the area an strange feeling.



The weather turned out to be quite cold so climbing was a bit brutal. We took Friday off so that we could get even more climbing in, but upon arriving the wind was so cold that our hands were going numb in a few short minutes. This might have been a blessing in disguise though as all the limestone was so sharp that grabbing it might have been painful if we could have felt anything. Most of the bolting there left something to be desired (namely safety) so we opted to just toprope routes instead of leading much. My hand hadn't fully recovered from my lead fall and I was certainly nervous about hurting it more so that didn't help either.

On Saturday we woke up to sub-freezing temperatures. Heading to the cliff we were looking forward to being in the sun and were happy that it's rays helped keep us warm. In the shade however things were really cold. We climbed a couple problems before I tweaked my hand and opted to just belay for the rest of the day. Cassie got on a bunch more routes and was really enjoying the limestone, but the sun was retreating fast and cold temps soon set in again.

The routes in some cases were quite long (100ft+) and definitely gave one a sense of accomplishment upon reaching the top. At the end of the day Cassie tried a 11d but stopped after getting extremely cold. I think she could have finished it if the temperatures had cooperated.

On Sunday we all went into town to a great local place called Jazzy Java and had breakfast. Afterwords we headed to a crag in town called Turtle Wall. The theory was that this wall received lots of sun and with the lower elevation we might not freeze as we had the couple of days before. We weren't disappointed. The weather was fantastic. Hiking to the cliff we were pleasantly cool. By the time we were climbing it was t-shirt weather and we were thrilled to soak up the sun's rays.



Climbing with Chris, Christian, Julie, Sara, and Brett was a lot of fun. The group was in high spirits and very encouraging. Chris completed his first lead outside (a 5.8) and Christian onsighted his first sandstone 12a. I was happy that my hand was feeling a little better and was able to flash an 11a. Mojo enjoyed chasing the lizards. We'll definitely be heading back to that crag. There were a bunch of routes Cassie and I would like to do. A good time was had by all and we celebrated with a trip to the in-and-out for burgers and fries.

Just last night we got about 4 inches of snow here at Sundance, so winter isn't over yet!!!

a month recap

Well it's been a bit since we've posted last. The lack of posts has not been because of lack of stuff that we've been doing. I'll attempt to recap the last 4 weeks to bring everyone up to date.

Cassie went ice climbing with the Utah Climbing Club back in early February and said it was the first time she didn't dislike ice climbing. That's a step up from our -10 degree days of swinging the ice picks in alaska, so it's a good thing. She went down to climb at Maple Canyon which is normally our rock climbing sanctuary as it has tons of good sport routes. In the winter snow falls on top of the canyon and melts down through channels forming low angle to steep waterfall ice. Perfect place for beginners as routes can be toproped.


The next few weekends were spent skiing and enjoying the fresh powder. Each weekend had pretty good conditions so we stuck around here instead of heading to the desert for climbing. Also since there was so much snow even the desert climbing was hit or miss.

My friend Chris and I did go to Ibex one day for bouldering. Cassie didn't come because herfriend Nicole was visiting from out of town so they ended up skiing that weekend.

I spent one day skiing with a new friend from my company's German office. Milos hand't been snowboarding in a while, but he picked it up again quickly and soon was tearing up the runs at Sundance.

Other than that we've just been climbing in the gym and trying to get in shape. Two weeks ago I took a big fall in the gym because I skipped a bolt and pulled slack out at the anchors, then let go (intentionally) to take a fall. I'm trying to get over that falling fear and I thought taking a big (30 foot) fall might do it. Unfortunately the rope ended up coming behind my leg (it wasn't behind my leg when I fell) and caused me to flip upside-down. I grabbed the rope in midair to steady myself which bruised my right hand pretty well. It was swollen for about half a week. Right now it's getting much better. I think a couple more days will probably allow it to fully recover.

Well that's the super short synopsis of the last few weeks.