May 21

It's been almost a week since we last updated you, so here is what has happened so far:

May 15th

Last we left off we were heading out of Mesa Verde and off to the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is, wait for it, huge. We got into the park grounds and saw the first of it and that was a massive gouge in the earth. After hiking up a watch tower, which was built to look old and purposefully made shoddily to look authentic, we got a rather bland view from their scratched up windows. So with a couple of good sights from outside we headed in further into the park where the so called main attraction is.

What I said about the Grand Canyon being huge is that it is also very, very long. We drove for half an hour at 50mph to the second view point, 25miles for the quick ones out there. There you got to see just how big the canyon is. To truly scan the horizon you have to move your head at a snails pace for 180º. Every inch of your vision passes over miles and miles of varied terrain. If you were to hold out your arm and put up one finger you would cover an entire canyon inside the Grand Canyon. There are mountainous rocks that jut up from the floor to plateaus that may have never seen a footstep except for the birds which fly by. A very huge canyon that was a welcome sight after miles of flat country.

From the Grand Canyon it was off to Zion National park, which makes up the middle step of the so called Grand Stair Case. In the Grand Stair Case the Grand Canyon is the bottom step, Zion the middle and Bryce Canyon is the top.

May 16

We came in to Zion at about 10pm on the 15th. The drive in was a windy switch back and it was in a canyon that was so black that left a lot to the imagination. Damn these flies. I'm writing right now from the shade of a tarp in Joshua tree, a few days later, and a fly just landed on my leg, leaning forward to smack it I inadvertently closed the laptop lid and lost some work when it shut down. Damn those flies.

So back to the part where we're driving into Zion. Pitch black, no view, 1.1 miles long tunnel with no lights bored through the mountain. Fun drive but not exactly anything scenic since it was pitch black. The campsite was great, right next to a river, shaded tree, not too bad. Except for that there was an ants nest under the tree and caterpillars in the tree. We woke up the next morning with no less than 30 cocooning caterpillars stuck on our tent. We picked off what we could and then headed out to climb.

We had some issues climbing in Zion. First off, you can't drive to the climbing sites. You need to take the shuttles. This we didn't find out until we drove most of the way up the trail heads to a sign that said we needed a permit to pass. Frustrated we drove back and asked the guide, who never mentioned this about getting a permit. My advice to future climbers of Zion, lie and tell them you are staying out past 10pm and they will sell you a pass for $5 per person. Driving to the sites is so much easier. Instead we lugged our gear on the shuttle and had tourist ogle all the gear until you explain everything's purpose and then point to the highest thing you can see and say you have to run because you have to climb that. We got to our first climb and the trail was less than maintained. The leaves there hurt like hell and stuck to you. I got my first lead climb in there and the finish was something like crawling on your hands and knees through barbed wire. I set up a top rope there and we bummed around that spot for a while.

After hiking back out and getting lunch we went to another location and had to turn back before the wall because of the lack of time before sunset. The hike in was exhausting and treacherous. The heat in these places is obscene. I'm writing this a few days out and in the shade here it's 102ºF according to the thermometer here. In the sun or in the truck it was reading 140ºF. That kind of heat really dampers your will to hike through bramble to a climb that's going to kick the crap out of you. The ratings in Zion are based on 5.10 being something that nobody can climb. An important note to those who feel comfortable climbing 5.8's. We left early and dropped off our gear to go do some hikes. Seeing it all in the sun was a lot more impressive than the night. We got a good couple of miles of hiking in and then called it quits. The next day was Bryce Canyon and it was just a hiking day, but with the heat the way it was, I needed rest.

May 17

Brie writing now :) A few other notes about Zion. The trail we hiked that evening was probably the highlight of the canyon. It was the Emerald Pools trail, and we saw three pools that flow down into each other. The first pool, the Lower Pool, was the biggest, and perhaps the most spectacular. It's in a big rounded cove, and the water cascades down from about 30-40 feet above you. Then you hike up another half mile of stairs to get to the Middle Pool, which is what feeds the Lower Pool. It was fairly small and flat, but fun to scramble through because you can easily hop around from stone to stone. After that it's another third of a mile, up a steep and sandy rock staircase to the Upper Pool, which was very secluded and cave-like. It was a very serene place, with some pretty boulders and cool water. We stayed for a few minutes for some good pictures, and then decided to start the hike down. Luckily, we made it back town to the bottom just as the sun was setting, and right in time to hop on a shuttle. On our shuttle ride back to the car, we saw a very strange Zion phenomenon – native turkeys that roost overnight at the tops of trees. It is a very unreal sight to see a bird as fat and clunky as a turkey at the top of a 20 foot tree!

We left in the morning for the drive to Bryce which was a whole 2 hours in length. It was nice to get there after the heat at Zion, because the temperatures were reasonable – probably 60 F at the campground and 75 F in the full sun in the Canyon itself. Bryce was amazing yet frustrating – all theses really neat hoodoo rock formations, and yet total ban from climbing them! You could see Nick twitching every time he saw a new one. We did what they claim is the best 3 mile hike in the world, and no doubt the first half is fantastic, through the Queens Garden of the Canyon. The second half, the Navajo trail, it pretty dull to start, but ends with a steep set of switch backs through some great personable rock formations. I loved the rocks at Bryce because they seems to tell such a story. Some looked like fortresses, some like soldiers (one looked exactly like a sock puppet!), all were really knobby and full of character. We got back to the campgound in time to make some dinner, play a little banjo and fiddle, and make Nick some birthday smores!

May 18th

Unfortunately, leaving Bryce was less pleasant. We were woken up in the middle of the night to a very loud rainstorm that continued into the morning. The drive from Bryce to Las Vegas actually got a bit sketchy, as we went through another snow-filled mountain pass. So far on this trip we have seen our share of weather: everything from scorching unbearable heat to pleasant sun to snow to hail to wind to rain. We haven't seen thunder yet, but we still have a week to go!

Las Vegas was definitely a strange place. Nick and I have both been to Disneyland when we were younger. And in Salt Lake City, we were definitely in Disneyland for Mormons. Las Vegas is another kind of Disneyland, but for heathens and consumers. Giant malls riddled the strip, encased in somewhat garish and absurd buildings with huge ads built onto the side of them. The water consumption of that town alone must be the reason for the world water crisis. As nice as the misters on the restaurant patios were, they did make you feel a little guilty. At the same time, buying ridiculous cocktails that you drink while site-seeing definitely kicks ass. And drinking while shopping is probably the height of entertainment. All in all, I would totally return to Vegas, because for all of the ridiculousness, coupling a night of revelry with the good climbing we experienced the next day in Red Rock Canyon definitely sounds like an amazing getaway.

May 19

We decided Vegas was the place to sleep in a bit, but we forgot to set the air conditioning in our hotel room, so we ended up waking up at 9:00 anyways. We got checked out fairly quickly and headed to Red Rock Canyon for some good climbing. We knew we only had time to do one face, so we chose what according to our book was the one most likely to have routes we could practice lead climbing on.

Here's a fun fact about sandstone. It's really really weak. I mean, can sometimes break off in your hand kind of weak. Very disconcerting when you are climbing. This hasn't happened to us, but apparently it happened to someone on the wall we had decided to climb on. Our guide book was printed in 2008, and since then, the face we were climbing had a 10 foot diameter chunk off the bottom slide off. This made the climbs a bit more difficult than we had anticipated, so we just decided to top-rope. Nick did well, but I struggled a bit. The climbing on this trip has definitely been a bit frustrating for me, but it has motivated me to start training a bit harder, and I've seen how far and in what directions I would like to take my climbing.

By 3:00 it got way too hot to keep climbing, so we hiked back to the truck. We've started looking at this trip as a bit of a scouting mission for future climbing trips. Red Rocks is certainly on the list. We've also realized the ideal number of people for a climbing expedition is 4 – mostly because hauling the gear out to the site you're climbing at is a pain in the butt for two people scrambling up hills and sometimes-dodgy terrain! One to carry the rope, one to carry the rack, one to carry the water, and one to carry the other 20 lbs of random equipment. It's made hiking to the routes more tiring than climbing them sometimes (no need to worry though, as we speak Nick is devising various methods to either dehydrate or gassify the water needed for 4 people to make it lighter)!

We drove from Red Rocks to Joshua Tree – getting a little lost in the massiveness that is Joshua Tree National Park. By massiveness, I mean we drove 12 miles between campgrounds (of which there were around 6) on the main thoroughfare through the park, only to discover that we were on a different road into the park – right in between the ends of the main thoroughfare! Just enough time for Nick to set up the tent while I made dinner, and then go to bed!

May 20

We woke up at 7:30 to a 30 C tent, unable to possibly sleep any longer. Since we hadn't gotten breakfast-groceries the day before, we went into town for eggs at the Country Diner in the town of Joshua Tree. The towns near the park are an interesting mix of fundamental Christians, white trash, gangstas, senior-spillover from Palm Springs, government spooks, old hippies, and your typical So-Cal pin-up style punks. It's actually kind of a neat place.

The park of Joshua Tree is also home to the most interesting critters we've seen so far. Nick saw a roadrunner, and we've seen some bats, some swifts, some jackrabbits, hummingbirds, and gambler quail. We also saw what we think was a diamondback rattlesnake, which Nick got closer to than I was comfortable with (which means closer than 50 yards!). When he first saw it at the top of our climbing route, he jumped and did the splits, and then stomped his feet to try and scare it away. Our favourite critter, no doubt, has been what we call the “push-up lizard”, named so because when it sees you, it furiously does about 20 push-ups, we think to show off how strong it is and how much easier it could climb the route than we could. No seriously, it does push-ups. I want one, except Ger would totally eat it.

We spent the morning climbing – until to got too hot to climb again. By too hot, I mean way too hot. Our car was reading at 150 F, and the air in the shade was 102 F. Then Nick rigged up a tarp to make some shade at our campsite, which was very very nice. We relaxed for a few hours and then decided to go and find some of the other sites around the park to climb in – particularly ones that might have offered some shade! Luckily, we found one, not in any of our books so the rating and name is a mystery, that Nick was able to lead, I was able to get up, and both of us were able to downclimb. A confidence-boosting climb for sure, which is much needed after some of the more humbling rocks we've faced on this trip!

After climbing, we were pretty hungry, so we headed back to the campground, picking up some firewood on the way. We successfully started a one-match-no-paper fire (my Uncle Mark would be proud), and cooked our dinner on that for a change. Then we made some Jiffy Pop, and roasted a few marshmallows and went to bed.

May 21

Today, we have packed up our campsite, and are headed for who knows where. After some of the frustrating climbing, and since we don't have reservations for the next 2 nights, we are going to just drive north with the ideal of finding a place with some good moderate-level climbing and a lake nearby for swimming. Wish us luck!