Tuesday, April 15, 2008

After a week of wading through thesis editing, I was ready for a break. On Thursday night, the relief came when six people, 2 dogs, the makings for many burritos and lots of beer, wine and tequila piled into 2 vehicles and made the pilgrimage to crack mecca aka Indian Creek for the weekend. After a full winter of sweaty ski gloves, my hands weren't in their usual leathery, calloused, scar tissued state and they took a major beating. I thought about posting a photo of them... but that would just be gross. You can take my word for it when I say that after 2 full days of sandstone splitter climbing, me and my hands were ready for a change of pace. Luckily for me, I wasn't the only one in our crew feeling this way, so on Sunday morning we drove into Moab, fueled up on coffee and pastries at the Red Rock Bakery, then headed up into the La Sal Mountains for some multipitch mixed sport and gear climbing at Lower Mill Creek. Luckily for us, my husband Evan used to be a Moab local and established a few of the routes in the area, so he knew his way around. All the routes require rappelling to the start, so not knowing what you are getting into would have been intimidating. Spring had only just arrived; snow still coated the shady side of the canyon, but we were in the sun and loving the juniper infused breeze as we climbed crimps thankfully interspersed with amazing patina jugs. After the first three days of climbing for the season, my body was battered and my mind was sharp; time to tackle the home stretch of the thesis.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great website pictures and the adventures you go on are impressive. Your drive to Moab reminded me of a road trip I did in May 2004 with my wife, sister-in-law and brother-in-law. We drove the 3500km distance from Ottawa, Ontario to Moab in a little over 36hours with 4 mountain bikes, all our gear, tons of food and beer all crammed into a Hyundai Elantra. We pretty much survived the trip down mainly on coffee and 10 lbs of trail mix.

It was an amazing mountain biking trip on the slick rock and –being the only climbers- my wife and I were able to do a great deal of bouldering as well. We have said we will be back and would like to do a few more south west states at the same time. We are off to Europe this year but will be back to that area of the US in the next couple years I hope as we loved Moab.