Ann leaves today to start her new job in Santa Fe on Wednesday. I’ll have plenty of things to keep me busy: selling Moby Jane, fixing up the camper and cargo trailer, and taking steps toward my dream of true mobile work with a heavy dose of outdoor time. I’ll be here on my own until July. I hope I don’t unravel too much by then!
We make it back to Dad’s house just in time to prepare for a concert. Gabriela Montero will play the 3rd Rachmaninoff piano concerto, and before it even starts we’re trying hard not compare her unfairly to “Olga“. As it turns out, she has a bit of a rocky night! She gets out of time with the orchestra, and seems to struggle. At one point Ann notices some confused looks in the orchestra, and Maron Alsop flipping through pages of the score. I wonder if they didn’t all get through it by the seat of their pants. That said, the drama of the performance actually served to focus my attention on the drama of the composition. This piece of music grabs me like few others I’ve experienced, even in a difficult performance. Any musician who can make it through the whole sweet tempest has my admiration.
The Canyonlands Needles Outpost is not to be missed. Get your solar-powered, off-the-grid milkshakes and hot showers here. Scramble on the rocks by your campsite. Have a cold microbrew. But I probably am wasting my pixels, because every time I try to tell someone how great Tracey and Gary are, they already know!
For our last day we decide to try a few more routes at Potash Road. The most exciting part of the day comes just after parking. We’re between the river and the road, and as I’m leaving the camper, T-Rex darts out. I panic, yell at Ann to grab him, she panics, dives, skins her knee, and T-Rex moves easily to safety in the bushes, surely wondering what our problem is. He’s perfectly traffic savvy, and waits until all is clear to come out again. After that we get to a few climbs in the wonderfully hot sun:
Seibernetics 5.8 - Another pretty dihedral, but boils down to slab climbing, a bit sparsely protected. The anchors make a perfect toprope for the 5.10 slab face away from the corner. The friction on this rock is amazing.
Top 40 5.8 - A group from the University of Wyoming has a toprope on this, but they let us use it. I’m just as happy not to have to lead it - the liebacks are beautiful, but the bottom half would involve strenuous, blind gear placements.
Lacto Mangulation 5.10b - A sport climb with a section of thin dihedral. I’m happy I brought one cam to add to the 4 bolts, and come down with a big smile.
We decide it’s worth ten bucks to spend our last night in the park at Willow Flat Campground inside the park. It’s a small, pleasant campground within walking distance of the mind-blowing Green River Overlook. At dawn I wander down there and just catch this moonset before setting up the camera for a time lapse:
Finding a campsite in the Island in the Sky district is not like the Needles. It’s BLM land outside the park, but camping is prohibited on almost every BLM road. We find one without the NO CAMPING signs, the west end of the Gemini Bridges road. One possible reason becomes apparent later - semi trucks go by late into the night carrying parts for what looks like an oil well. Perhaps they aren’t allowed to prohibit camping on “multiple use” roads like this. Luckily the trucks stop around 10 pm, and it is a gorgeous place.
In the morning we make our way to the Syncline Loop trail, which makes a look around Upheaval Dome. I picture a trail that follows the crater rim around the dome, but it actually runs in the canyons that drain around the crater. We continue to learn, however, that no two canyons are alike. There are holes high in the canyon walls here, a trickling waterfall at least a hundred feet high, and fields of six-foot-high grass in canyon bottoms. Slides:
Today we leave the Needles district, get a Moab climbing guidebook, and decide to check out Potash Road. It’s the perfect place to find a little gentle introduction to climbing on Navajo sandstone. After a fun, warm exploration we continue to the Island in the Sky district to spend the night. Slides:
Our routes:
She-la The Peeler 5.9 - We scramble up a gully and put a toprope on this slab route. It’s been a while since we climbed slab! There’s a direct start I couldn’t quite do.
Slab Route 5.7 - Ann leads this well-bolted climb left of She-la. Not bad for her first outing of the year!
30 Seconds Over Potash 5.8 - a very fun dihedral route, good for getting my trad head back. All sorts of moves on this one.
We sleep under the stars, and I wake up in time to get pictures of the world coming back into view:
We talk to some climbers today, and I discover to my great embarrassment that this is Indian Creek (a world famous climbing area). I had read some weird descriptions of Indian Creek, got confused about the location, and proceeded to make fools of us by walking up to a group of climbers and asking very ignorant questions. Sigh.
While it is exciting to be here at Indian Creek, we are in no way prepared to climb here. We have no guidebook, and not nearly enough gear. Ann decides to take a rest day, while I hike to Druid Arch. Slides:
During the night a thunderstorm rolls in and shakes the world. In the morning, there’s a layer of snow covering half of it. The red rocks poke through. Dad and Sarah head out, and we start hiking up Horse Canyon road. It turns out to be a river today, not a road. So we hike up Big Springs Canyon instead, and we’re not sorry. Slides:
Big Springs - Squaw Canyon Loop at EveryTrail
The snow is nearly gone by evening, and the air is pleasant. We find a perfect flat rock on some BLM land, and I set up a camera to catch the fading light:
It’s cold and windy, and we feel a little tired, so we embark on a shorter hike today. This trail is fun though because it keeps you on the canyon rims, without descending into them. It feels at times like we are ants crawling on top of a giant petrified mushroom patch. Slides:
All recorded:
