Tag Archive for 'climbing'

Cold Fusion and Warm Limestone

Published on May 31, 2010 in Trip Reports. 6 Comments Tags: .

Memorial Day in Utah goes a long ways toward easing the pain of triple digit temps here in Ahhhgust.  I can’t remember a Memorial Day with bad weather, but then again my memory is so bad that that’s not saying much. In any case, you can ski, climb, bike, hike, fish or mix & match just about anything this time of year.

Geoff Tabin took a break from saving entire countries from blindness and along with Huckleberry, invited me out for a lap on the Cold Fusion Couloir off of Mt. Timpanogos. Cold Fusion is a beauty of a line off of the NE side of Timp that holds snow well into the Spring.  It’s fun in many regards, but especially cool as you are skiing on a ribbon of snow surrounded by the rocks of American Fork Canyon along with big vista views of the Salt Lake Valley below. Continue reading ‘Cold Fusion and Warm Limestone’

Indian Creek – Photo TR

Published on March 20, 2009 in Trip Reports. 13 Comments Tags: .

Continuing an almost full week of trip reports, I went down to Indian Creek on Wednesday with my long time skiing and climbing buddy, Brad Barlage.  Brad is a sales rep for Black Diamond, which means he has the full-on pimp daddy ride (Ford Van), tons of gear, plenty of dogs and knows The Creek inside and out.  If he ever disappears from society, this would be the first place I’d think of to start looking for him.

Even though they have almost nothing physically in common, once you get the hang of hand/finger jamming, the sensation of climbing a perfect splitter crack is akin to center-punching a virgin field of thigh-deep powder.  Neither one is truly effortless, or always safe, but the purity of the line and movement over beautiful terrain brings the same type of smile to your face.

A dog, a crack and some gear on your back. B-Rad doing the brutal ten-minute approach to one of many walls.

Spring Loaded Camming Devices (SLCD's) made climbing parallel sided cracks like this one much safer, and thus more popular.

FEEL THE POWER! The more cams you own, the more cracks you can climb. Arnie (the Golden Retriever) is actually a fierce guard dog.

Starting up Double Trouble. The clock is ticking...

About halfway up Double Trouble. B-Rad doing a fine job leading.

Pumped to the gills - just what we came for.

With literally 1,000's of cracks to choose from, it is easy to get confused. Fortunately, some of them have "tiles" like this at their base.

Super Crack, aka Super Crack in the Desert, aka Luxury Liner. The first ascent of this crack opened peoples eyes to the possibility of safely climbing smooth, parallel sided cracks and marked the beginning of the sandstone crack climbing boom which continues to this day.

The Incredible Hand Crack. The bulk of this climb is "perfect hands" which is why it is so popular. The white marks on either side of the crack are from climbing traffic.

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Speedy Bowline Tie-in Trick

Published on March 19, 2009 in Tips & Technique. 6 Comments Tags: .

I took a skiing time-out yesterday to go crack climbing at Indian Creek, Utah with Brad Barlage. While we were roping up, Brad showed me this cool little trick for tying a Bowline knot around your harness. 

Bowlines are the King-of-Knots as they strong, simple and easy to untie after they have been loaded.  Because of this, they are the knot of choice for sailing, but for climbing the “easy to untie” part can be problematic if it happens when you don’t want it to.  For this reason, many climbers back them up with a securing overhand knot. 

Bowline connoisseurs might notice that in this demo the tail is outside the legs, instead of inside.  This can be fixed by feeding the tail through the hole in the other direction.

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Grand Teton – Skiing Topo

Published on September 18, 2008 in Trip Reports. 5 Comments Tags: , .

 It took me three attempt to finally ski the Grand Teton, but it was well worth it.  Part of the beauty of skiing this peak is that there is no one particular crux to it, but it is more a sum of all of its parts.  There is some great skiing on it (as well as some crap-skiing), but more than anything it is a grand adventure.  It gets skied quite a bit nowadays (5-10 times per year?), but don’t let that fool you – it is still a burly line with lots of exposed skiing and objective hazards like rock fall, avalanches, ice climbing and possibly some rock climbing.  Ski it at your own considerable risk! 

The Ford/Stettner ski route on The Grand Teton.

View 1.6mb High Res pdf version here.

The most common line is the Ford Couloir to the Stettner Couloir, also known as the Ford/Stettner, or the “Chevy Couloir” as it is near the Ford. One of the main reasons it took me three attempts to finally ski this line is because it is hard to find if you are not familiar with the mountain.  For safety-sake, most ascents start in the dark, which makes it easy to get lost.  I drew this topo from memory a few months after finally skiing the Grand, so take it with a grain of salt.

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Lone Peak Cirque – Rock Climbing

Published on August 18, 2008 in Trip Reports. 5 Comments Tags: , .
Lone Peak Cirque in the Wasatch Mountains is Utah’s version of the Grand Teton.  It is a long approach to get there (5,000′ of uphill on loose dirt), it tops out at around 11,300′ and it has some of the best, cleanest granite in all of the state.  As if the multi-hour approach wasn’t hard enough, over the last three to five years, new housing developments have continually wiped out the trailheads, so just finding a way up there has been a challenge.
Heading into Lone Peak Cirque from the Corner Canyon/Draper City approach.
Heading into Lone Peak Cirque from the Corner Canyon/Draper City approach.

I hadn’t been up there this season, and was completely thrilled to see that not only has the City of Draper opened the Corner Canyon road, they have put up burly fences and outlawed motorized vehicles in the area.  Yippy!  In the past, the entire area had been trashed with illegal roads, campfires and tons of litter.  Now it looks much better, and while they were at it, they even cut in a nice new hiking trail.

We hiked up/back in a day, which is fairly common, although camping overnight in the Cirque is a treat as well.  My partner for the day was Dr. Geoff Tabin who moved to Utah about three years ago. Geoff was the third or forth person to complete all Seven Summits and he runs the Himalayan Cataract Project, as well as squeezing in lots of climbing and skiing.

We ended up doing the Center Thumb Route (five pitches, 5.9) as many of the other classic routes had people on them, and the Center Thumb is a beautiful line.

Geoff collecting gear while following the second pitch.
Geoff collecting gear while following the second pitch.

The weather was perfect and we weren’t in a hurry, so the entire car-to-car trip took about twelve hours. 

The Center Thumb route is directly above Geoff's head. We'll be back!
The Center Thumb route is directly above Geoff’s head. We’ll be back!

Geoff Tabin floating through the crux of the Center Thumb.

The only downside of the entire day was showing up at “The Cotton Bottom” bar and grill fully anticipating a beer & burger…. and finding them closed.  Sigh – Sunday in Utah.  A small price to pay.
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Sunday Photo – Lost Arrow Spire

Published on August 3, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Setting up a Tyrolean Traverse (as pictured below) is often logistically harder than the actual climbing involved to get there. 

In this case, Lost Arrow Spire in Yosemite Valley, Rick Lovelace and I hiked to the valley’s rim, rappelled from the fixed anchors on the right-hand side of the photo down into the notch between the wall and the spire, then climbed the spire while trailing a rope which was still fixed to the anchors.  Once we got to the top of the spire (5.9 A2) we pulled the rope tight, anchored it off, then Rick used rope ascenders to climb back over to the rim while trailing a second rope.  Once he got there, we rerigged the ropes so I could follow and then we could pull the ropes clean.  It is a convoluted process, but well worth it in this case as it puts you in a spectacular location thousands of feet above the valley floor.

The group pictured above did the traverse after us, and just about when this photo was taken I called over to the guy in the middle of the rope and said “Hey, you might try to go easy on your rope – it looks like it is fraying.”  He totally stopped and put his head down for a while until I realized that he didn’t know I was joking, so I called over again “Just kidding!”  to which he called back “Don’t f*ck with me right now.  I’m feeling very fragile.”

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