When is my teleporter going to be fixed?

Driving driving driving.

I'm heading to Gold Wall with Nunley on Friday, a yet-to-be-determined partner on Sunday, and maybe Shannon on Tuesday.  I'm very excited to climb there, since it's been too wet to climb there for a few months now.  I'm just not excited to drive.  Bllerrraaarrgghhh...

It's also valley season, but all I want to do is sport climb.  I'm looking forward to the summer crags, like Shuteye Ridge, Donner and Tuolumne.  It's been a while since I jumped on a project. I think I'd like to do:

1. Warp Factor
2. Cannibals
3. Bronco
4. Star Walls Crack
5. Electric Africa
6. Penguin Lust
7. Transmogrifier

I want to make it to:
1. Shuteye Ridge
2. Column of the Giants

Donner is so convenient for me.  I'm feeling a lot fitter this year than last year, so I think projecting would be fun.  The problem is finding someone to go to the various crags with. Most of the people I know get zeroed in on a project and only want to climb one or two climbs, so if their projects don't line up with mine I'm shit out of luck. I wish I could get a dog, and then teach that dog to belay me, and give me beta and finish routes when I get scared.  Know a good breeder?

"chick power" scientifically supported

Men do dumber shit when in the presence of an attractive woman.

Battle wounds

No trip would be complete without photos of the damage done:

My hands actually aren't that bad this time. I've been taping the backs of my hands, so they look great!

Camp life, Moab life

Yesterday in the creek was insane. I met up with Brad and Katie early in the morning at Scarface (someone referred to me as "the girl with the huge pack charging up the hill", which made me psyched). It was very cold and very crowded.  We did 3 pitches and then bailed to Blue Gramma, thinking it would be warmer and that there would be more open climbs. After chatting about life and happiness in the van, we wandered up to Blue Gramma and got a couple more pitches in. I cheesed out on a 5.11 purple/green cam splitter (I'm tired), but then I crushed a 5.9 big blues/ tight #4s crack. YEEEssssss.  I ended up getting in 6 pitches, even if they were all short (by creek standards).

I've calculated that in the last 8 days I've taken 2 rest days.  That's a lot of climbing, especially for me.  Not to mention charging up the hill with a huge pack.  I think my legs are more tired than anything else.

But I wanted to hang out with Brad and Katie, and it was a lot of fun. Their dogs are super cool. One of them always gets all sad and stressed when Katie is lowering off a climb. It's pretty cute.

I'm trying to decide if I'll stick around and climb with this guy Josh who seems to be more excited about climbing adventurous stuff (stuff in Castleton, Lower Mill Creek, some other random stuff). Or I could go to Joe's and meet up with Jake and the Idaho crew (Crase and some bay area folks are there as well). Or I could just go home and snuggle into my delicious bed and save up for a longer trip in the fall...I really want to go to the red.  I really want to clip a shitload of bolts.

Part of my IC buzzkill is that Joe took off, and without a solid goal-oriented partner I end up being like "meh" at the creek.  I think if I bouldered I'd get my mojo back, because when I boulder I never worry about running out of gear. It's sick.

I figured today would be a good day to rest, since I've stayed the last two nights in Moab and I'm already here this morning (yesterday I did the day-trip commute). I ran into a friend from last year who's letting me crash on her couch, which is rad! Plus it's effing hectic down there with Colorado spring breakers.  Has anyone else noticed that people from Boulder say they are from the "front range" now?  Like they are ashamed to be from Boulder?  Wtf?

Tomorrow I'm undecided, though I left a note with Josh that I might be down to climb.  I'm waiting for divine inspiration to help me decide what to do.  I think at this point though, I'll probably go bouldering. The Idaho crew are so much fun to hang out with, and they have Joe's on lockdown.  It's a good opportunity to go there with those guys.

And now I leave you with some camp life photos from Creek Pasture:

Check out the black smoke billowing out of Dave's yellow van. It was going to break down that day at Pistol Whipped, but he made it to Moab, found a part and fixed it up.  I think divorce is imminent, however.

Toprope princess

I'm going to go through the climbing days one by one, since I just finished day 4 on yesterday.  I'm tired.

Monday we went to Broken Tooth.  I toproped all day and it was rad.  First Polygrip, and was psyched i hadn't led it...the layback section is super pumpy.  Then again I wasn't warmed up.  The rock was still a bit damp from the rain/snow on Sunday, but it warmed up nicely and turned out to be a lovely day. Then I ran a lap on Rock Lobster, since some friends had a rope on it.  Joe wanted to check out this new route by Chris Kalous (Mushrooms with Hefner) with a .5 splitter on top of a 5.10 chimney/squeeze pitch.  The 5.10 pitch wasn't that bad, but there was a reachy face move that I pulled through. Then I just belayed Joe and we rapped off.

Next up was Heat Searcher. I know I'm crazy, but I think that the first pitch is harder than the 11+ splitter second pitch. Pitch 1 is sandy and loose and awkward, and pitch 2 is an amazing red cam splitter that is slightly overhanging.

I'm annoyed because I got this back goby from dragging my right shoulder up the dihedral on polygrip.  Lame. It's sticking to all of my shirts and it hurts.

The next day we went up to Sacred Cow and Joe OSed Sacred Cow and Twin Cam. I got the TR flash on Sacred Cow, Joe gave me some shit about not leading it, but that didn't really sway me. My gear leading skills are pretty abysmal right now. I don't like to climb above my gear and I bump cams so much that I pump myself out. I don't think I could hang with the scared-man technique for 160 feet.  But the route is beautiful and maybe I'll go back up there some day when I can rally like, 20 red cams.  The first half takes more varied gear though...like greens and purples.

After that I TRed half of Twin Cam but bailed when it became apparent that the size/my technique/the heat was destroying my skin.  Not worth it.

Wednesday we went up to Pistol Whipped, and I did the Coyne Crack Simulator, which was fun. Belayed Joe on Sig Saur, but didn't want to follow because it was hot and again, I'm trying to preserve my fingers.  Plus it just looked painful. Then I got on Spaghetti Western which had erroneous gear beta in the Bloom guide. it calls for mostly gold cams but the last third of the climb takes smaller gear.  I ended up TRing it after that, and was psyched I hadn't finished the lead.

Thursday was Six Star Crack. I would have liked to be more well-rested for it, because the second pitch splitter is really beautiful. The guide makes it seem like it's more red cams and big greens, but really it was purples to a loooong section of greens and then it pinched back down to purples.  It looks like a longer, steeper version of Slice and Dice but without the rests. I pulled through the purple section and was able to climb quite a bit of the green section in the middle with the thin-hands-in-front-of-the-face-genie-pose-with-the-feet technique, but I was tired and it was pretty damn hot and I ended up not finishing the pitch. I have a feeling however, that it will make Slice and Dice feel super easy.

I'm so happy to be resting for a couple of days.  We'd decided to do 4 on because of the poor forecast for today, but so far it's not too bad...it's raining, so it's good that we're not climbing, but it's not the mega-storm that was predicted.  I'm happy for that.

Brad and Katie are coming tomorrow to climb Sat/Sun, and I might meet up with them...Joe wants a belay on Switzerland, and a trip-capper with an offwidth.  I'm not sure what I want to do. Mostly just toprope more, and maybe redpoint Slice and Dice.  I'm still undecided about whether or not I'll stick around next week (the weather looks amazing) or I'll bail to Joe's, or just go home and save up vacation time for a longer trip in the fall.  A guy from Boulder is looking for a partner next week, and he's hooked in with some mutual friends, so if I stayed I'd probably climb with him.

I'm not feeling the try-hard and overcome-fear feeling right now (not that I ever am, really, but even less so since I got sick 2 years ago).  Maybe I'm bored with IC, or maybe I just need to climb a bunch of easier shit, or redpoint things like Spaghetti Western which I have gear beta for now. Regardless, it's been fun, and I've gotten to do a lot of climbing, and I've run into some friends from last year, which is always nice.

Oh I forgot to write about how my car got stuck in the pit of despair, aka the far side of Creek Pasture. The whole campsite just turned to muck...serious muck.  Sunday night Joe dropped me at my car and I went forward and then backed up and got my back left tire stuck about halfway down in mud. We had to dig it out in the morning.  I was a little sad that the AWD didn't get me out of the mire, but the mud was pretty damn bad...think of the consistency of wet concrete....and I have road tires.

No photos of climbing.  I'm so bored with climbing photos. I'm trying to take more photos of camping life and friends though.  I'll try harder!

Basin and Range

As I was driving across the Great Basin, and pretty much every time I drive across Nevada and western Utah, I think about all of the times I've driven those roads before. These roads are kind of like old friends...it's nice to catch up with them.  Like driving through Fallon, NV reminds me of hanging out with a Nevada Dept of Wildlife guy who was showing me Dixie Valley and Big and Little Soda Lakes, where some of the tui chubs I study live.  The Dixie valley populations are in a US Navy electronic warfare range.

The military bought the property from ranchers so there would be no complaints. Dixie valley is weird because there a ton of springs.  It's always a cool thing to see groundwater springs in the desert. It makes this valley lush and green,

somewhat like the Owens Valley in the fish slough area.

I remember driving home from the tui chub trip and stopping in Reno to see Pete, who'd lost his foot a few months earlier. We were both in better shape by then.

I like the shoe tree on Highway 50 east of Fallon.  How long have the shoes been up there?  I wonder if there are any pairs of climbing shoes suspended from the cottonwood.  It also strikes me as odd that the cottonwoods adjacent to the shoe tree have no shoes on them.  People are weird. The link says it's a lone cottonwood, but it's not.

Or Austin, NV, where James and I stopped to eat cherry chocolate chip cookies on the way to Rifle.  Austin has its own wikipedia page, and according to the wiki folks, it is a living ghost town.  I drove through Austin heading west to Santa Cruz to start college there back in 2000 after a few months in SE Utah on a Sierra Institute course. There were a lot of cyclists biking the loneliest highway. I thought they were crazy. A week later would be 9/11 and my sister would die.

In Ely, James and I spent the night in a hotel room on the way back from Rifle, about a week after optimistically eating cookies in Austin. I think James cooked dinner on my stove that we brought up to the room. From there we headed to Tuolumne where I took a nap before driving home to Davis. I was so drained.

Austin is a bit more progressive-seeming than the next town east, which is Eureka. I stopped to get gas here on this trip.  Eureka also has a wiki page.

From Ely to Delta, I remember camping in Ibex a few years before.

and walking across the playa

 to something that seemed much closer than it really was - some mining structure. This time I skipped Delta and Ibex and turned south on 487 and then 21 just east of Great Basin national park and flew to Milford:


View Larger Map

to meet up with I 15 in Beaver. I hoped I wouldn't get a flat tire in this area - there's not much around.

Every time I drive towards Delta past Ibex I think about Stanley's story about his girlfriend, and I wonder where it happened.

Now when I drive from Fallon to Ely, I notice areas like Big Smoky Valley, and Newark Valley, where I also have tui chubs. I look up and down the valleys and I don't see any water.  Where the hell are the fish?  Where is the water?  10000+ years ago these valleys were Lake Lahontan or Lake Bonneville. I'm driving through the bottom of an ancient lake.  Hard to imagine.

Basin and range lends itself to vast expanses of salty playa, the kind of space where rednecks like to do donuts and families like to take stones and write messages to passersby. There's also a surprising amount of biodiversity, mostly because of the recession of the pluvial lakes that left populations in isolation.

On the way back from Moab a few years ago, when I could barely walk and my hand wouldn't work, I stopped at a hotel south of Salt Lake City.  Showering was nearly impossible, and burned all the gobies on my hands. I remember that pretty vividly. I remember stopping in Fernley at a supermarket to stagger to the deli and order a sandwich. I sat in my car in the parking lot and I wasn't sure how much further I could make it. I made it to Reno to return Pete's rack see him and Lydia when he'd just had his amputation. His parents were visiting. A few months later I'd go check out the tui chubs with the NDOW people. I could walk like a normal person again, but life was NOT normal. I'd gotten to sleep at a hotel/casino in Yerington the night before.  Random.

At some point I want to check out Great Basin national park, and maybe head up into those roads that seem to lead nowhere to look for water and fish.  Or stop at all of those random historical markers that seem to be so common on lonely desert roads. In writing this blog I discovered this wiki page on Route 50 in Nevada.  Now I know a little more about what I'm missing when I'm flying by in a quest for some other rock, in some other place.

I usually drive these roads alone, but I've driven with a boyfriend and driven with a friend.  It's a totally different experience when you drive alone. You get to have quality time with Basin and Range, and you get it all to yourself.

I vacation in Moab so my Swedish car can play in the snow.

So I'm here after some navigational errors (I drove through South Lake Tahoe following 50 rather than going over 80 and then getting on to 50...and then I drove through Milford rather than Delta...which might have been the same time but I have no idea.)  Poor decision-making on my part.

There was quite a bit of snow in Nevada, which didn't bode well for Utah.  Sure enough, there's quite a bit of snow here. Fortunately, however, yesterday was gorgeous so we went to Battle of the Bulge and I warmed up on Three Strikes You're Out, and then Joe put a rope on Air Swedin.  I TRed Swedin Ringle once, then TRed it clean, then tried to lead it.  Leading that thing is way harder than toproping it (shocking, I know).  Whatever. I hate it when the crux of a route is clipping the chains. This does not a classic make. I made it pretty high, but given that I haven't led on gear in almost a year, I'm pretty happy with it overall.

Joe TRed Air Swedin twice and then fired it.  Super impressive. I was kind of hoping for some killer sports action, but apparently Joe never falls when I belay him...except on the Free Blast... but we've all blocked that out of our collective memories. I like that Joe gets scared and puts in a lot of gear and doesn't make me feel stupid for being gripped and putting in a lot of gear. It's refreshing.

By the afternoon some weather was rolling in, but I'd heard that Crack Attack is amazing and rad and a must-do, so we wandered over there. Unfortunately a party of 3 was on it, and the weather was coming.  By the time they were done it looked like rain was imminent, so they offered to leave their rope up.  I even had them clean the anchors in case the sky cut loose while I was on the route.  It was good timing, because it started raining right when I got down.

Dinner was clearly going to be a problem, but after backing up our tailgates, hanging a tarp, and then ultimately abandoning any thoughts of cooking outside, I cooked TJs mac and cheese on my jet boil for us in the volvo.  So cozy!

It poured all night long, and then it dumped snow.  The above photo was taken this morning, as were these:

not ideal climbing weather, but super pretty nonetheless.

Joe has a thing for pink. I hope to get a photo of him in his pink tights with yellow lightning bolts...