Cassie's first V6

Cassie sent her first V6 at St.George a few weekends ago. We put together a video of that climb as well as some others. The climb was called Underwhelmed.


Click here to watch the video.

escaping the cold (almost)

Inside the TeePee Boulder

This weekend we made a trip down to Moe's Valley in St. George Utah. We went there a few times earlier this year so you might remember it from previous blogposts. We decided to make the journey after cold weather kept threatening to keep us from going outside to climb. We left Friday morning and were climbing by early afternoon. The weather was warm indeed and the sun on our faces kept spirits high.

Saturday morning the real work began as we headed into the main bouldering area armed with our newly purchased guidebook created by two local climbers. Many more climbs were documented and we were excited to see how much we could do. Unfortunately the weather quickly went from sunny to total cloud cover and the temps became quite cold. In my opinion that's the best climbing weather, but Cassie's big toe which was staying a constant white begged to differ. I guess climbing with numb toes is kind of difficult.

We quickly set about dispatching some warmups and then headed straight to a really cool roof climb called Underwhelmed. Unfortunately I was being totally lame about taking video or pictures and we don't have any shots of that climb. We will be going back next weekend however so I expect to get some shots for the next blogpost. Cassie came very close to sending that problem and is excited to go back and give it another try.

Cassie getting warmed up and loving the sun.

We  then headed to a cave called the Device Ignitor which has 3 quality lines coming out of it. I tried the left variation and sent just as my strength was leaving me. Cassie tried the middle line and found that she was completely exhausted from trying Underwhelmed so many times. Again my apologies for not having any shots of those climbs. I do have some video though and plan to put together some clips after next weekend. We left after 7 hours of near constant climbing. We could have been a geriatric couple if you just listened to all the moaning and complaining about how sore we were. Cassie's back was in pain from an apparent nerve pinch (totally unrelated to climbing). Her abs were sore from climbing basically horizontal (upside down) for most of the day and her fingers were compltely raw from the rock. I was in similiar shape with forearms that could barely squeeze a tube of toothpaste and some missing skin from the sharp rock. Cassie was in bed and asleep by 8:30 and slept till well after 8am.

We woke up and made french toast and lattes then headed back out to see how much we had recovered during the night. The answer was: not much. We tried a few problems and spent most of the time on the ground groaning about different aches and pains. We decided to head up to a boulder called the Spiders Drum which has some really cool flakes that make deep drumlike sounds when pounded on. Now something you have to understand about rock quality is that pounding on rock and listening for a drumlike sound is a good way to find out the solidness of the formation. Any drumlike sound is a definite bad sign. But we climbed anyway with some misgivings about the quality of the stone because the climb looked SO COOL. Definitely one of the best V3s I've ever tried.

Spider's Drum

The holds on Spiders Drum.

After that we went to a climb called Israil (lots of rock climbing route names are play on words). It's a very stout problem but Cassie and I made good progress on it. We were completely wiped by the time we got close to sending and had to leave to come back to SLC. Hopefully we'll get video and pictures of us sending it next weekend.

So, now back to our dayjobs which we are very excited won't be there for much longer. Sorry about the lengthy post, we just don't have very many pictures so I figured I would fill in the details with words.

winter weekends

Winter has hit the Wasatch a bit early this year with a couple big storms before thanksgiving and it's been snowing like crazy all day today. As much as I love the snow and skiing, I wasn't ready for the abrupt end to the climbing season. Even though conditions may not be ideal for climbing in the wasatch for a little bit, we're still going to try to make the most of our last season of winter bouldering in Utah. Since our last trip to Escalante, we've made a couple trips out to Ibex to crystal peak for some remote and rarely climbed boulders, but beautiful lines and scenery. One weekened we scouted the place out for the climbing club and the next went back with the club. Although only a very few members were brave enough to brave the drive and the cold, it was fun to have a smaller group and there were quality problems for all of us to send and plenty for us to want to come back to as well.

I've made a couple trips to Moab in the last month as well. The first was a visit from my parents. We were originally planning on going out to Escalante with them, but the weather wasn't cooperating so we decided to head to Moab instead. We camped at Fisher Towers, arriving just before an amazing sunset the first night. We hiked around fisher towers, watched people climb ancient art. Which even though we've done it before, still makes me slightly nauseous looking up at it and thinking about how it felt to do it. Amazing, but terrifying!. This trip was just for hiking though, there's a great trial that goes along the base of the titan and other towers, ending at a ridge overlooking the fisher valley. The next day we hiked out to corona arch which is downriver a few miles from Moab. It's a nice short hike along the slick rock to two amazing arches with the added benefit of being outside of the park, so no fees, no crowds and Mojo could join us.

I went back to Moab for a week for my favorite work conference. The desert fishes council. Yes, fish in the desert, that's what I work with and they are some of the craziest and coolest fish and a great group of people from southern Oregon to Texas and Mexico. You have to be a pretty great person to love the suckers and chubs of the world. One of the highlights of the meeting has to be Phil Piester who is one of the founding members of the group, one of the founders of the endangered species act, and has a great story about holding the entire population of Owen's Valley pupfish in his hands in two 5 gallon buckets. These fish are still alive today because of him. Since the world headquarters of DFC is in Bishop, I plan to contact Phil and other fish folk on our travels next year and hope to see some other fish and habitats outside of Utah as a nice diversion from climbing from time to time. We were supposed to end the conference with a day long float down the Colorado on the daily stretch just outside of Moab. Although the day started out nice, partly cloudy is really beautiful in the desert and cast some great light on the towers, the 70% chance of rain and 40 mph wind forecast soon caught up with us leaving my boat in an eddy, pinned by the wind against a rock and the bank, unable to move for about 15 minutes while we all hunkered down facing upstream to avoid the hail pelting our faces. The wind and weather got so bad that 4 of 5 boats didn't make it to the planned take out instead tying the boats up and hiking out to the road and walking the remaining distance to the vehicles. Probably not the trip everyone thought they had signed up for, but memorable non the less.

This weekend, the weather and me getting over a cold tried to keep us from climbing, but Matt convinced me that 34 and mostly sunny at Triassic really was perfect bouldering temps and would be warm enough. I believed him so we headed over yesterday. The day turned out great. I made progress on my nemesis, "some get two fingers", but ran out of skin before I was able to finish it. Matt was on a sending streak, finishing some get two fingers (he got it years ago, but later realized he started it about 3 moves after it was supposed to start). Matt also finished his longstanding nemesis "thud", which is very short and powerful. He also sent a cool crimper problem called "Ronald McDonald and Me" V6 in just a few tries.

So while there hasn't been much blogging lately, we've been busy. Right now we're just trying to finish up our jobs and are so psyched to leave on our trip and next adventure. Unfortunately no pics from either of the moab trips right now. Our computer died and we don't have any good photo sorting/editing software on this one yet. We should be getting something soon and will add some pictures next week or so. You can find more crystal peak pictures here.