I've always enjoyed rock climbing. I remember going with Mom and Dad to the climbing gym when I was little. More recently, Dad has taken us to the a gym in Centennial, and I had a great time. So when the opportunity came up to go climbing in Buena Vista last December, I jumped at the chance to get out on real rock. The first day was tough, and the second day was just as hard, but I loved every second of it. I only made it up two routes that weekend, a 5.7 and a 5.9 (more on how climbs are rated
here) in a borrowed pair of shoes and harness.
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| My first outdoor climb, a 5.7 |
For Christmas that year, I got some shoes, a harness, and some other gear (thanks Santa). I had the bug. Other than the occasional hour or two at the bouldering wall on campus, I wasn't able to do any more climbing until this summer, after work and on the weekends. After classes started, the climbing slowed down again, but we have still been taking every chance we get to hit the crag. After some super awesome night climbing a few weeks ago, we all agreed that we should take a whole weekend and go somewhere awesome. We kicked a few places around, but kept coming back to Moab. It's a little bit of a drive, but we were convinced it would be worth it.
We left on Friday night, just as it was starting to snow. It was slow going at first, but once we hit I-70, conditions cleared up and we settled in for the long haul. We pulled into our campsite around 12:30 Saturday morning, set up camp, and went to bed. Day came gloomy and overcast, but we made the best of it, quickly getting a couple routes set up. It took a while to get used to climbing on the sandstone, instead of the granite that's so common in the Rocky Mountains. We spent Saturday doing fairly easy climbs, so I got to practice lead climbing with my new quickdraws.
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| At the top of a 5.7 lead. |
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| Looking across the Colorado River. |
The sun stayed behind the clouds all day long, only peeking out as we drove off to get dinner.
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| One glimpse before sunset. |
For dinner, we went to the Moab Brewery for a delicious root beer and well-earned hamburger. After some errands, we settled down around the campfire and enjoyed the night. Sunday came beautiful and blue, promising a perfect day for climbing.
After breakfast, we hit the crag again, this time to try out some harder climbs. One of the first we did was an awesome chimney. I haven't done much chimney or crack climbing yet, so I had a great time playing on it and learning some new techniques.
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| Shimmy up! Photo-Kyle Morman |
Next we hit a 5.10b crack, the highest rated climb I have completed so far.
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| Smiling at the top. |
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| Looking down, thanks for the belay, Kyle! |
It was such a nice day that I just had to do one of the climbs shirtless, for the benefit of all the lady rock climbers.
On our last climb, we noticed the guy on the route next to us was climbing barefoot. This seemed like such a great idea that we found a nice easy 5.3 slab to try it out on.
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| My first barefoot lead. |
Finished climbing, we headed back into town for dinner. A lot of the restaurants were closed for Sunday, and after a long search we ended up at the Moab Grill. After a hot day of climbing, we were all in the mood for milkshakes. Our waitress said that they didn't have any on the menu, but that she could probably whip some up for us. Soon she came back out to tell us that they were out of vanilla ice cream, would huckleberry be OK? We all though that sounded delicious, and let me tell you, it was. That was one of the best meals I have ever had, hands down. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, corn, garlic toast, chicken-noodle soup, and a huckleberry milkshake. Heavenly. Full of delicious dinner, we set off back to good old Leadville.
