First Ascents in Indian Creek

Looking out at the Bridger Jack Towers in Indian Creek.

After kicking off the unemployment season and easing my knee back into play mode with a 3 day and 90 mile mountain bike trip along the White Rim Road in Canyonlands I returned to Indian Creek. The trip was so spectacular, as a group of 17 we experienced every form of precipitation while riding, pedaled along hundred+ foot drop offs, ogled desert wildflowers beyond count and remained well hydrated via the beer coolers on the support trucks!

New anchors and another opporunity to teach/talk bolting.

'The Creek' is certainly one of my favorite places in the world to climb as well as to simply exist or rather exist simply. The lack of cell service and amenities beyond the recent additions of pit toilets breaks down life in to a few simple daily tasks: rise, drink coffee, eat, climb, eat/drink beer, climb, make dinner, talk about climbing around the fire, sleep. Indian Creek is known for it's sincle rope length parallel sided cracks, splitters, and thousands of them at that. The cracks are typically free of much loose rock and with numbers like that visitors and locals can go a life time without repeating a route. I have had the opportunity in recent seasons to give back to the climbing community by reequiping routes with newer and better hardware that will hopefully prevent or mitigate anchor failures on the more popular routes. However, that being said, there are many new routes to be established, lifetimes worth in fact. This is a hobby, or rather a passion that I discovered with my former climbing mentor Skyeler years ago. This season while I have spent less time that I typically do in the desert, I've had the blessing of balancing working on hard (for me) established climbs, reequiping other routes as well as establishing new climbs. With the help of a couple of really psyched friends we have established one new splitter and have eyes on a couple others, stay tuned as hopefully some of the photos will be pretty rad (I'm practicing my cliff hangers!)

In the mean time feast your eyes on some biking, desert tower climbing and flower photos!

Snow in April in the desert?! Day 1 of the bike trip was postponed.

Getting ready for another day of climbing!

The drive out to Moab turned out to be pretty amazing!

In between squalls on the real day one of riding.

Last day of biking along the White Rim.

A nice and shady last campsite after a fairly warm day of riding.

This rather outdated anchor needed a bit o' lovin'.

Pizzam! Cactus flowers at a new cliff!

Ms. Pearce magicked up this gem of a name haha.

Working hard on new route names!

A little pigmy rattler(?) on the way to Sister Superior

Proper spotting technique while soloing the first pitch.

And the rope toss!

Ooooh a barrel cactus! Back to the car for some lunch!

Sam's Winter misadventures - Playing in the Fryingpan

I understand that many of these entries are written in coloradbro dialect, expect lots of dudes, gnar, pow, schralp, sick, nasty and many other alien terms. I'll try and link definitions when possible via urban dictionary, be warned that some content on that site may not be appropriate for all ages but may provide some laughs. 

Part of the B/C experience

After massive amounts of food on Christmas with only a quick resort skin to burn some off I was desperate for some pow to slay and shred, so I did the only thing I knew and called up the homies. My buddy Luke was down for some schralpage and after finding out that plan A, Marble, was super unstable and less accessible with a closed gate and potential crowds we turned our attention elsewhere. Plan B the moderate and always safe Williams Peak lacked sufficient coverage to effectively schralp. We quickly moved on to Plan C, a new zone up they Frying Pan, outside of the nearby town of Basalt, after reading on the interwebz that there was some skiing to be had, potentially without the crowds we committed to a tentative scouting mission.

New skis and bindings, psyched!

A couple miles into the low angle skin I came to the conclusion that back country skiing is just a bunch of dudes walking around, peeing and talking about skiing in the middle of nowhere. After much of this, a more than reasonable amount of bush wacking and all of the above, I got to click in and scored a 2000'+ descent of stable 2'-3' deep powder in glades and aspens. A quick...well not so quick 2ish mile skate and pole, more poling and griping than skating, back to the car concluded our 4 hour car-to-car adventure. 

Gear used included:

Ortovox 3+

Ortovox 240 aluminium probe

Black Diamond Evac 7 Shovel

Wailer 112 skis

G3 Ions

Scarpa Maestrales

Icebreaker base layers

CWX compression tights

Fits socks

Buff

Osprey Kode 42 Pack

Neat snow formation, kinda faceted, very lacey and I think
there's a specific name for this formation. Help anyone? 

Oh cool, snow!

Old slide, neature!

Some portion of Luke's butt and the 2000'+ of elevation gain we experienced.

Indian Creek, Rifle and the Black Canyon...sounds like an Enormocast episode

Since I last updated I have moved on from the Creek after spending about six weeks (read not enough time) there after getting snowed out and having work commitments in Carbondale.

Before I left

As I left (looking up canyon)

Also as I left (looking down canyon)

Basically my last few weeks at the Creek I ticked fewer than anticipated climbs off of my to-do list as a result of establishing and finishing more new routes. The most recent and greatest of which was the Battle of Wits that I did with Dan Hughes, (which still needs a little work) but the pitch by pitch break down goes something like this: P1: ledgy climbing to a bit of 5.11-R which takes to to an alright belay stance. P2: Climb past some protection bolts and a slightly expanding flake into a flare and pull on fingers through a roof to a gently overhanging off fingers and .75 splitter (5.12). P3: Do a V4/5 boulder problem off the belay to gain a tips crack to easy and varied climbing to the belay ledge(5.12).P4: The best finger crack I have ever done, go through a few crack changes up a slightly overhanging headwall that ends in some thank god stemming and chimneying that leads to the rim(5.12). This thing is bomb.com

When not climbing my friend Jack and I honed in our hatchet throwing skillz. Note the mulch at the base of the post.

Hatchet throwing highlights included a five rotation throw that was maybe 30-40ft back. and Cutting the underwear in half and pinning them to the post.

Since I've set up camp in Glenwood I have been feasting on humble pie while sport climbing with Kevin, Liesel, my uncle Mike, Taryn and a few other folks. Basically, sport climbing vs. trad climbing(what I normally do) is climbing routes with bolts, used for protection and usually safer than placing gear as you go. Most people climb harder while sport climbing than trad climbing, but not this guy so I'm working hard to improve and balance out the two. I've been climbing so far just at a local crag called the Puoux and in Rifle Mountain Park where I've climbed up to 5.11+.

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to meeting my friend J in the Black to do some longer routes and do a little adventuring. Hopefully this works out better than the last Black trip I tried, could be dicey as we got some snow last night but I'm optimistic.

Waking up at CMC to Mt. Sopris after a delightful nights rest.