Sunday, September 1, 2013

A Slice of Indian Creek's Humble Pie

Embraced with the long weekend Chesy and I figured we could sneak away from work/med school related material for at least a day and head down to Indian Creek, or the creek as the locals say. We departed early on Saturday morning to hopefully greener pastures and sunny skies. Unfortunately, sandstone is known for two things; crushing the souls of helpless hang-doggers like myself (I’ll get to this point later) and being unclimbable when wet. Well the unclimbable part is always a hassle as the Utah state forecast ranges from “30% to 40% chance of thunderstorms” from about……June to September.

Needless to say, we had a good run of bad luck and pulled into an empty but sunny Supercrack Parking Lot. After speaking to some other climbers from Arizona we learned that it indeed did rain the night prior (even some flash flooding) causing a great deal of apprehension to proceed with our original plan (I guess that 30 was more like 100).





Given the circumstances we began the go thorugh the motions check the soil (just a little wet), flip over rocks (a little wet) feel the inside of the crack (not too wet) but is it worth it? Long story short…we waited.........


 A semi-unclimbable Generic Crack

And bouldered

V1? 
V3?

"Man this bouldering is awesome" said no one ever (actually if the creek boulders were anywhere else they'd be world class.)

Finally, after about 4 hours of pissing around we observed a number of individuals climbing and spoke to some who gave us the ok. Just the sort of pack following mentality we needed.

We had joked in the car that we were gonna warm up on Scarface (5.11-)...well as it turned out given the remaining daylight we did just that and I was humbled completely, hangdogging on almost every possible cam...it's a solid C1. 

 Don't worry I'm not that good...I took about 50 cams out when I got lowered

 Chesy on TR

 The universal sign for rock and roll




Obstructing a great view with common douchebaggery

Before we knew it we'd run out of daylight and water and it was to camp for the night.


Before we left on Sunday we headed up to the Optimater Wall...and ended up walking a green C4 about 12 inches into the crack (don't ask me how...but it's free to a good home).

Merica!!!

Chesy on Casey's Route? 5.11-

We'll be back to the humbling again before we know it (actually it happens daily).


The end