Trevor's Climbing Blog: Week 1

I don't even know where to begin. It has been such a crazy week. Me, Miles and Dave Yousling left Washington last Monday and drove 500 some miles into Idaho. It was pretty uneventful. Spent most of my time trying to wrap my brain about what were about to do. The next day we were planning on driving to City of Rocks in Idaho to do some climbing for a day or two. Unfortunately, it took a lot longer than anticipated because we blew the tread off one of our duallies. After trying to fix the tire ourselves and realizing that our jack will not lift the RV high enough we called Good Sam Club, the equivilant of AAA for RVs. Some guys showed up after an hour and told us that we didn't have the right spare tire. Of course. So, we end up driving along the freeway for a few miles until we got to the nearest town. The guy who owned the repair shop that we went to was so nice. He gave us a new tire, put it on and fixed one of our belts for $75. Once the tire was fixed we were back on our way. We arived at city of rocks sometime later that night just before it got dark. That place is beautiful. There are granite spires everywhere.

The next day we got on a few different climbs. Unfortunately, we didn't have a guidebook so we were just wandering around in the snow looking for routes that looked cool. Our first climb was a crack on Elephant rock. The second was this cool looking slab that went up this arete. I for one am not a huge fan of slabs, but I was in the mood to get scared, and boy did I get what I wanted. I have no idea what this thing was rated, but the huge fall potential combined with tenous climbing scared the poop out of me. When we finished this climb we decided that we were over wandering around in the snow and decided to take off for Joes Valley In Utah that night.

We arrived at Joes Valley midday and starting climbing right away. I absolutely loved the climbing. I don't want to say for sure that it is my favorite bouldering destination, but it might be. We got on a handful of V3s, V4s, and V5s over the next couple of days.

Towards the end of our second day at Joes we decided to check out Triassic. It involved driving for half an hour on a washboard gravel road, which had me convinced that our RV was actually go to shake apart and end up in a bunch of pieces in the middle of the road. Lucky for us it didn't and it took us all the way to the closed gate that blocked us from the area. We were disappointed to say the least. Now we were out in the desert with our big stupid RV and it was going to be dark in half and hour and we had to come up with a new plan. Since we were planning on heading to Maple Canyon the next day we decided to just take off and head there right away.

The drive was uneventful for the first hour and half until we all smelled something burning. We pulled over right away and saw smoke billowing from what we thought was the engine. Turns out our brakes had overheated heading down the pass. It provided the perfect oportunity to take a break and make some dininer, so that's what we did. Chili with onions and peppers. After letting the brakes cool down for an hour we finished the drive.

Our first day in Maple we spent as a rest day. It started with a hike and then went pretty much as I expected it to. Eat, read, nap, read, journal, fire, eat and sleep. A perfect rest day if you ask me.

Today we got on a couple routes in Maple. The first was a 5.13a that we watched some people working on the day before. I have never done a climb of this grade or even worked one, but I figured why not. Turns out I was able to do all of the moves. I was just stoked to be able to work my way up the thing. After Miles and Dave gave the thing a go we headed in to Box Canyon to do some climbs in there. Miles led a 5.10d right at the base of the Canyon. After he finished, it started to snow and then it started to snow harder. I quickly ran up it and cleaned our gear and we got the heck out of there.

Now we are sitting in a coffee shop in Provo, Utah and are on our way to visit a family friend of Miles tomarrow and then drop Dave off at the airport in Salt Lake. After that our plan is to head for the Moab area to meet up with some more friends and climb at Indian Creek. Stay tuned, more to come soon.

Saying good bye to the parents