Long time no blogging friends. I've been up to a lot, buts let's be honest here I just plain old got lazy. The "yosemite trip" ended up being tour de west's climbing areas with stops in yosemite, J-tree, red rocks, and Zion with lots of bad weather to keep things interesting.
In yosemite we found much more inclement weather than anticipated. With our trip goals being center around trips up the captain (which periodically was snow free) we quickly realized shift our destination of choice might be the best course of action. However, we didn't leave empty handed. A 3 day epic on Washington Column's Prow made for good post epic comic relief. An endless sea of beautiful granite punctuated by stunning features, two nights, one broken wall hauler, and the only weather window in two weeks all combined to create a highly recommendable experience to anyone getting into some more serious aid.
With low hearts but open minds we turned our back on our dreams of nights on the captain and headed to the climbing area in the western US which wasn't either wet or buried in snow, J-tree. Warm weather and unimaginable scenery returned the psych and we soldiered on. High points were some crazy slab arête route and the major dihedral course and buggy.
However, the call on the adventure and the need for air below our feet, Tate and I set off the lofty towers of Red Rocks. A wet day of sport climbing lead to better weather and the ambition to get our muscles woopt. A successful almost free ascent of Cloud Tower gave some real feeling of accomplishment to the trip. The crux is not bad and is very much all there. Get psyched and go do this route. If you've been to the creek the final pith is 5.10 and the off width has face holds on the outside of it!
Alas, our search continued for an area which might just might rival the valley. Who were we kidding though...there's no where like the valley. But we did find a pretty good second place contender, Zion. The nearly creek quality cracks which run for miles captured our imaginations and our fingers. We decided to up the ante by attempting the ultra classic Monkey Finger. The first crux pitch worked me and resulted in some french free action. Up next, Tate decided to hang it out there with a 40 footer and a black alien sitting in his lap. The next hand pitches were amazing but the splitter monkey finger crack was just a little too real for us. We attempted the final two pitches of choss but decided to bail after I took a bouncing digger down a chimney. We licked our wounds and got on a newer line called George the Animal Steel. Dirty but fun climbing on great rock should clean up well to become an area classic. We then headed over to the Kolob canyons for some radical sport climbing on one of the most beautiful pieces of rock I've seen in a long time. We had enought of that softy clipping bolts shit and returned to plugging gear by trying touchstone at 5.11 C2. Mother nature had other ideas and after two pitches we bailed in a downpour. We decided we had one last shot at climbing something incredible. Incredible we did indeed find. Shunes Buttress maybe the best route ice ever done. Perfect stone top to bottom with extremely varied climbing in spectacular setting make for a 10 star route. Go Climb This!
More updates to come! Get psyched and get out there! Photos pending a computer...
