Indian creek, utah After my time in Las Vegas, I drove to the desert of Utah, near Moab. Indian Creek is the land of splitter cracks, beautiful perfect cracks in striking red sandstone cliffs. The climbs there are tough, just a few pitches a day and I was pretty beat. Because of the difficulty, the vibe at Indian Creek is pretty chill, climbers don't start until 10 or 11 am, and by sunset everyone is in camp around a fire. There's also no phone service, so you connect with your friends via paper notes on a message board. There's a faith that it'll work out, and it totally does! I loved climbing there for 3 days and am thankful that I finally got to experience the magic of the creek. Here are some photos and captions... Yosemite Valley, California After the creek I drove to the motherland, Yosemite National Park. It was an incredible trip! I did lots of free climbing as well as aid climbing. Free climbing is what I normally do, using hands and feet to progress up a wall, while placing gear along the way in case I fall. With aid climbing, you use the gear to progress up the wall, by clipping ladders to the gear and climbing up them to place more gear. Aid climbing feels to me like a means to an end, a way to get up big walls. A way to get to the top when the free climbing is too hard. I'm not as inspired by the movement as I am by the places this technique can take me. On this trip to the valley, we used aid climbing to do our first few overnight trips on a wall. I did 3 free climbing missions and 2 aid climbing missions. It was awesome to climb with two close friends, Max and Borna, and to be challenged at our level. Since I have never done an overnight on a wall, this trip was a big progression for me, for all of us. More in pics and captions below... Starting prep for the big mish!! We planned to climb The Prow of Washington Column, a 1,100ft big wall with the aid difficulty grading of C2+. This wall would make a nice progression towards some day an El Cap mission or such and such (dare I say my dreams out loud). We spent half a day organizing gear and packing, as pictured here. We spent the afternoon hiking the heavy gear (cams, ropes, and water) up to the base of the climb. The next day we would leave camp for good and begin our climb. Finally got to live out my life dream of sleeping in the portaledge! A few folks have asked me if I was scared in that sleeping situation, and the answer is that I was not afraid of falling down. I was afraid of people above me dropping things on us. Which did happen. We also got peed on. Apparently that's part of big wall climbing and now I know that. One other comic tidbit is that we slept 3 people in a 2 person portaledge. I will never do that again, and I will also laugh whenever I remember our cozy nights. Jetting off... That's a wrap on my climbing season this fall in the US! It was an awesome one! I progressed a lot in a number of different ways. I grew as a guide in Las Vegas, I grew as a crack climber in Indian Creek, and I grew as an aid/ big wall climber in Yosemite. I feel myself expanding and actualizing. I am thankful to the climbing journey for all of its lessons, challenges, and triumphs.
Next up I fly to Argentina for 3 months. Woof. I will work a 25 day phase of an Outward Bound semester course with Daniel (!!), then we will have a month and a half off down there to travel and climb. Then he will leave and Max will arrive, and I'll work one more 25 day semester phase. International travel, big backcountry experiences, double long course season. It is going to be a huge winter! Stay tuned... |
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