Pitch and a Half

Since all my climbing time has been spent training lately, and I’ve been sick as crap on top of that, I haven’t been getting too much time on the rock. But today, Jen and I got in a couple quick pitches in BCC after sleeping in and before the torrential rain started.

More Moab

Once again, it was time to head south. Jen and I went down with bikes and climbing gear. We got to use half of that stuff. On Saturday, we joined several friends and rode the down from Kokopell and out Porcupine Rim, which is perhaps the best trail in the state. Good times were had by all, as usual, except for the penny-size blister on Jen’s hand. On Sunday we decided to do the North Chimney on Castleton Tower, but things didn’t quite work out. After banding out the hike, we found constant 40mph wind at the notch with gusts in the 5os. Not to mention the two groups still waiting at the base to start. Not being equipped for anything else in the area (except the Kor/Ingalls route and I’m not climbing that POS again) and not wanting to make long rappels in super-strong wind, we decided to just hike down the sand blaster and drink beer instead.

Lazy

After getting shut down twice due to weather on our previous desert trips, Jen and I decided not to chance it again and bailed on “30% chance” of rain in Moab for pretty much the same in SLC. Predicting shitty weather, we treated ourselves to a particularly nasty workout on Friday afternoon, and basically sat on the couch and watched hockey all day on Saturday. Today, we finally got off our asses and drove into LCC for a few easy pitches before the rain rolled in.

Swell

Jen and I are stoked on the desert, but a little sick of driving five hours to get shut down by rain, so we opted for the Swell. While grabbing dinner at Groggs on the way down, we ran into Rick and Jess, and turned our group into a foursome (well, five if you count Chaco). Day one was at a unnamed wall with unnamed routes of unknown grades, and it was super fun. Lots of sendage and Jen learned how to jumar. On day two Jen and I did the Lightbulb and then we went over to the Scenic Byway area where I got to clean up my roadside project from last year. All in all, it was a pretty damn good weekend.

Dirt, Rock, Sleet

Jen and I decided to take a three-day weekend and head to Zion for a bit of biking and a ton of climbing. Things didn’t go exactly as expected, but they were still pretty good. On Saturday we met up with a few of Jen’s friends and rode Little Creek Mesa, which was incredibly fun. Not a lot of up or down, just tons of rolling terrain with plenty of chances to play around. On Sunday we headed into the park for something long and moderate. Settling on Right Toilet Crack (which climbs better than it sounds), we thugged our way through a couple pitches of wideness, including a super fun squeeze chimney with a roof exit, before coming to an overhanging squeeze / offwidth section that was way bigger than our largest piece. I didn’t want to risk falling onto the belay and Jen didn’t want anything to do with it either way, so we turned around. Despite the constant gray skies and drizzling weather, nothing cut loose, so we drove over the Kung Fu Theatre to finish off the day. The next morning, however, the storm was in full force. We broke down camp as fast as we could and drove home in sideways snow and sleet. Our bikes were not happy.

Warmth

Since winter seems to have given us the middle finger, we decided it was time to switch to desert mode for a while. Nothing spectacular, just a couple days of sandstone cracks and a serious ass kicking on something way over my head, but that’s pretty standard for the first desert day of the year. It was really nice to be warm for a change, but I miss winter already.

Index Page

This is as close to a cover as I’ve manged to get yet. The index page in this month’s Gripped shows Alex Meyer getting squeezed to death in the wide start of Silent Partner at the City of Rocks. Thanks for wearing bright colors dude.

Train Your Weaknesses

Jesse and I both suck at aid climbing. We can do it, but we prefer to just do something else. We also have never aid climbed in the winter. So today, since I happened to be in Denver, we got went down to Boulder Canyon and did a couple pitches of air in full winter kits. Neither one of us are really good at it, but we can both do it, so we found out what we need to find out and are now done with that experiment.

More Creek

Back to the Creek yet again, but with a pretty large crew this time. We put in a lot of effort to avoid being “those guys” and I think we did pretty well. The weather for the weekend was great, and everyone got in some good pitches. I didn’t do a ton of climbing, but I did send some stuff that had previously kicked my ass. Most of the crew went home on Sunday night, but Jess and I hung out for another day. Unfortunately, we woke up to a layer of snow, and only the crew from California claimed that the sandstone was dry enough to climb on. We went to Moab, where it was pouring rain, and then we drove to the Swell, where it was seriously cold, but dry. Two pitches and two beers later, we were back on the road and headed home.

First Fall Creekend

The weather was complete shit in Salt Lake City this weekend, or so I heard. I wouldn’t know because I was climbing Indian Creek splitters under a bluebird sky. Suckers! My goal for the weekend was to send either Johnny Cat or Puma, my two nemesis routes on the Cat wall. I whipped off the very top of Johnny Cat for something like the 7th time, but I did finally manage to finish Puma. Andy and Jesse tried King Cat and found it to be just as hard as they expected, and Ashley and Jen both got some great routes done and got a little more dialed on crack technique. All in all, this weekend kicked some serious ass.