Zion National Park & Snow Canyon (St George), UT
November 27-29, 2008
I visited my friends Dow and Stacy for American Thanksgiving. On
Wednesday night, I flew into Vegas, which was totally soaked and it
was raining pretty hard. I was a bit bummed, since rain means no
rock climbing (especially on sandstone), but I was still looking
forward to go check out St
George, UT, where Dow and Stacy live. Since my flight
arrived late, I had scored an awesome deal at the Red Rock hotel
and enjoyed the luxury there before taking a shuttle to St George on
Thursday morning. I hadn't really eaten much since the night before,
which was really good because Stacy had prepared a mind-blowing
Thanksgiving meal: needless to say, we all ate too much. I decided
to take a nap at 8pm, the nap turned into a full sleep. :)
The next morning was still wet and cloudy, but we drove to
Zion
National Park, intending to hike, but we still brought
our climbing gear along "just in case". It was a good thing too,
because the weather quickly improved, and we found some excellent
dry cracks to climb! Climbing on sandstone after raining is frowned
upon due to the risk of breaking holds, but jamcracks are pretty
safe from that perspective, and there were many other people with
the same idea. We climbed Cave Route (5.7), some
5.9+, then Squeeze
Play (5.10) and Fathedral
(5.10+) which tired us out sufficiently. We drove back, stopping to
take some sunset shots... Zion is beautiful.
The following day we went to Bluff
Street cracks where we climbed some very high quality
cracks. Then we went for coffee and to the gear store in town,
after which we picked up Stacy and went to Snow
Canyon, where we climbed the first pitch of "Living on
the Edge" and then "Atomic Indian". Good times!! The next day, the
plan was Epinephrine.
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My fancy hotel for Wednesday night that I got for a steal online |
Fancy-shmancy! |
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Yes, I want to go there! |
Big room.. |
Dow and Stacy's living room |
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Dow and Stacy's backyard: literally |
Not a bad backyard, eh? Sunrise. |
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St George streets |
Entering Zion: less-than-stellar weather |
Entering Zion |
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Weather didn't stop us from climbing some nice cracks: this is Cave Route (5.7) |
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Climbing here was breath-taking |
climbed Squeeze Play (5.10a): perfect hands to slightly awkward wide section/double cracks |
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Squeeze Play (5.10a) |
Looking up Fathedral, 5.10+ which we climbed too: fingers to 5" wide section to perfect hands |
Streak Wall |
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Sunset in Zion |
Sunset in Zion |
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The following day, we started at Bluff Street cracks right in St George: Wide Boy (5.10), and 2 more absolutely stellar 5.10 cracks |
Bluff Street crag |
On the right side of the arch is the route "Living on the Edge": 5.10a first pitch |
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Snow Canyon is a beautiful place! |
Dow belaying me as I start 'Living on the Edge', photo by Stacy |
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Me living on the edge; photo by Stacy |
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rappelling, photo by Stacy |
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Living on the Edge is right in the middle and actually goes to the top of the wall |
Atomic Indian (5.11a) is the beautiful splitter |
Looking up at Atomic Indian: it's overhanging and intimidating |
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The start of Atomic Indian is a perfect (for me) hand crack, photo by Stacy |
Enjoying the perfect jams, photo by Stacy |
Having a blast on Atomic Indian, photo by Stacy |
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Now the going gets thinner and harder |
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Only a couple of moves from the anchors; photo by Stacy |
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And success! |
Wow, what a beauty |
Dow on Atomic Indian |
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Dow and Stacy's is one of the first houses after the park |
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Charisma and Frisco's home |
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Tiny horse: never knew such things existed! |
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