Friday, April 29, 2011

Indian Creek!

Jess and I and our friend Ryan headed down to Indian Creek, UT last week for some sunshine, beautiful scenery and of course, the most amazing splitters to grace the surface of this glowing blue orb we reside on.  Climbing at the Creek is so amazingly different and humbling from any other climbing out there Jess and I can never resist heading down there for our annual spring trip.  There are plenty of other places we'd like to check out, but the Creek keeps calling.

During our week of climbing, we sampled the goods at Broken Tooth Wall, Second Meat Wall, Battle of the Bulge Buttress, Supercrack Buttress, Pistol Whipped Wall and Scarface Wall.  Highlights for me were Rock Lobster (5.11), Top Sirloin (11-), At Your Cervix (11), Supercrack (10), Incredible Hand Crack (10), Spaghetti Western (11), an attempt on Extra Lean (12-), and onsights of Sig Sauer (12-) and Not That Funny (12-).



Giving Extra Lean a go.
Ryan throwin' the gangsta' lean on Supercrack.



Crankin' on Scarface.

Jess heading up Battle of the Bulge.



Getting shut down on Swedin Ringle.

Jess on just another amazing unnamed climb on the Scarface wall.


Probably the biggest highlight of the trip was getting our broken down van started with a rock.  Yes, you read correctly!  After an awsome day of climbing at the Second Meat Wall, we walked back down to the car by the light of our headlamps.  We were, as always, the last ones out and were really looking forward to some dinner.  I hopped in the van, turned the key and.....nothing.  After some brainstorming, we remembered we'd seen someone camping up the other fork in the road, so Ryan and I trekked over to their site to see if they'd give us a jump.  What we encountered was a group of guys who were single-handedly keeping the Pabst Brewing Company in business and they were more than happy to help us out.  They drove us over to our van, hooked up the cables and.....still nothing.  Shit! 

While we let the battery charge a little longer, I was thinking about how we were going to have to get somewhere where we could call a tow truck to come bail us out.  During this time, the ringleader Scott proclaimed "you're going to get into your car and turn the key and nothing is going to happen.  Then, I'm going to bang on your starter with a rock and you've got a 40% chance of starting the car."  This seemed like complete lunacy to me, but what the hell.  To my absolute amazement, he hit the starter with a nice chunk of wingate sandstone while I turned the key, and VROOM, we started right up!  Good god, I wouldn't have been more amazed if he had turned that piece of rock into solid gold, this may as well have been black magic.  After a night spent in a Moab mechanic's parking lot, we were back out climbing the next afternoon.



Red Vines and PBR = CRAZY DELICIOUS!

It was a sweet trip and I can't wait to get back down to the desert.  It's such a beautiful place to climb and the cracks are endless!  For now, it's back to Montana climbing and snow.  It's tough to come back to crappy weather after climbing in the sun for a week, but we'll make it work.