January 2013

After moving back to Utah in December I got a bit depressed with the cold weather and the lack of climbing, so we decided to make a trip down to St. George for New Years.  We headed down to St. George on New Years Eve and arrived in time to get a couple of climbs in at Chuckawalla Wall before it got dark.  We did Dirtbag (5.10a), Solace (5.10a), and Popular Demand (5.10c).  I got both of the two 5.10a's clean, but had to hang on the last bolt of Popular Demand because I couldn't figure out the tricky moves to get to the chains.

The next day I wanted to check out some of the limestone areas around St. George since I've climbed in St. George about a million times, but have never sampled the limestone there.  Since it was a cold morning we just drove around to a bunch of the limestone areas, then once it warmed up a bit we decided to do a route on the Black and Tan wall.  It was kind of windy, and most of the wall was in the shade, so we decided to try one of the routes on the lower angled left side of the wall since it was in the sun.  The route we ended up doing was a very easy 5.5 or 5.6, but it was fun and gave me a taste of how good the limestone in the area is.  Because of the cold wind we decided to head back to St. George to see if we could find a more wind free area to climb.

Unknown 5.6 at Black and Tan

We decided to just head to Snow Canyon and climb on the Circus Wall since it is in full sun and generally isn't too windy.  On Circus Wall we climbed the first pitch of the Barbarian (5.6), then got on the first pitch of Roar of the Greasepaint (5.10a).  I think that Roar of the Greasepaint may be my new favorite 5.10a.  It was just awesome technical edges the whole way without any distinct crux.  I thought it was awesome.  After those two routes the sun was setting, so we packed up and headed home.

Roar of the Greasepaint - 5.10a

The Barbarian - 5.6

A few weeks later we decided to meet up with Bennett and Gwynne at Red Rock for a couple of days to do a bit more warm weather climbing.  We arrived at Red Rock on January 21st and decided to head to the Yin and Yang cliff.  Neither Bennett or Gwynne had ever climbed a pure crack climb before so I figured that Atman (5.10a) would be a good first crack (plus I'd wanted to try out Yin and Yang for a while).  Atman was quite fun as usual and I cruised it without any problem, Bennet and Gwynne both had a difficult time, but that's to be expected for a first crack climb.  As we were climbing Atman there was another party climbing Yin and Yang (5.11a).  They ended up getting a cam stuck on it, so I offered to clean it for them if they gave me a TR on the route.  I was a little bit intimidated about leading it, but I shouldn't have been.  I did it cleanly on TR without any problem, and was able to retrieve their stuck cam as well.

Atman - 5.10a

Bennett Starting out

Gwynne Topping Out

Yin and Yang - 5.11a

After Yin and Yang, we decided to check out Sunny and Steep crag since we were close by and I've never been there.  We hiked over to it, and ran up Sport Chimney (5.8) before it started getting dark and we had to hike back to the car.

The next day we decided to just stay close to the car since Sunny and Steep was quite a hike with the kids, so we just headed to the black corridor for some convenient sport climbing.  At the black corridor we climbed the Cell (5.9), L2 (5.9), Crude Boys (Supposedly 5.10d, more like 5.10a), and Nightmare on Crude Street (5.10d).  I was able to get all of them cleanly, with The Cell being the only route that I didn't onsight since I'd climbed it before.

The Cell - 5.9

After those four routes we had to head home for work, and that concludes our climbing for January, actually, we didn't do any outdoor climbing in February, so March will be my next post.