Vegas Con't

It's been a while, and a busy few weeks, since the last blog post. I guess 'busy' for us means climbing all day, every day, and not venturing into town to get internet. We are super sore now though and a few rest days are definitely in order.

Ever since Valentine's Day we've been camping at Red Rocks, where climbing on sandstone has been a new and exciting experience. The possibility of alternating between sport climbing days and easier multi-pitch trad days has lead to an awesome 10 days stay. After a few days of checking out the climbing our friends Meaghan and Nic flew down to meet us. We were both really excited to have some other people around, after about 6 weeks on the road with no one else to talk to but each other. The weather was nice and sunny every day, so warm in fact that we even seeked some shade.

The last couple weeks can be better described through pictures, since there's only so much to write about when you're climbing every day.

Getting on to Fear and Loathing

Last climb of the day, Fear and Loathing

Pitch 2 on Dreaming of Wild Turkeys (10 pitches, 10a)

Climbing over the bulge on Dream of Wild Turkeys

Onsight on Steep Thrills (12a), Nic

A different angle on Steep Thrills, Ryan

On Sunny and Steep (11d), Mani's proudest onsight

Vegas, Nevada

Jacks Canyon has been our favourite sport climbing area so far. It reminds one of being in Thailand, powerful, over hanging climbing on limestone pockets. The rock is a lot grippier, however, and there are some super nice facey climbs as well. In any case, 5 full days of climbing resulted in getting super confident and strong again. Ryan climbed the highest concentration of 12s in that time, and I got my confidence back leading 11's. All in all we had a great week, with some really hot days in the canyon.

After running out of food and water we left Jacks for Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff basically redeemed Arizona for me, it is the coolest place with lots of coffee shops, outdoor stores, and restaurants all in a downtown core. It was also wintery there, lying at an elevation of 7000ft it snowed on us there. There is lots of climbing around Flagstaff but it was too cold for us, so we moved on to somewhere even colder...the Grand Canyon.

We spent 2 nights in the Grand Canyon, making full use of the free, and heated, shuttle bus service all around the rim. We did hike down into the canyon a ways but didn't see the river. For that all we had to do was drive for 15 min and look over the rim in the right place. We thought that was pretty funny, oh well at least we got some exercise. The second night we got snowed in with a few inches of snow. It was time to leave the Grand Canyon and check it off the list.

Getting out of the cold we headed for Vegas. The Hoover Dam was next on our list of rest days/touristy things-to-do. It was incredibly busy there, but definitely worth to check out. We drove over it to find free parking on the other side, avoiding the $7 tourist trap parkade. In the old(er) days the highway used to go right over top of the dam, however due mostly to safety reasons they have built a bridge to avoid the dam. It was only completed in 2004, although it has been in the making since the 60s.

Vegas lured us in, we checked into a hotel and were grateful for a bed and shower after over a month of sleeping in the van. Hotels are relatively cheap here although food and beer has been pretty expensive. We've discovered slot machines and 2 for 1 (still expensive) martinis. Vegas is definitely a different scene, as Jacks Canyon reminded us of Thailand for the climbing, Vegas reminds us of Bangkok, only more 1st world. It is also easy to get turned around in the never ending slot machines and stores, nothing is like a circle in a mall, you walk one way and get completely turned around. We've covered a lot of ground just walking around all day. A little break in the hotel now and then we'll be off again for more Vegas time. I'm looking forward to the camping life again though.

Jacks Canyon, AZ

We had about enough Cochise time after a week of trying to figure out what the completely out of date guidebook was trying to tell us. Plus the routes were all soooo sandbagged (graded easier than they actually are). So we'd get up something, barely, and then figure out the grade was something in the 10 range. After a while we figured it out, everything should be bumbed up a couple grades, AT LEAST, to be somewhat correct. Anyways we did meet some nice horsey people from Peachland. They pulled in their motorhome, with a horse trailer, on a pretty rough 20km gravel/washed out road. We thought that was pretty funny, apparently the trail riding in that park is amazing. So one night we got invited for a beer (into the warm motorhome!) and they wanted to know everything about climbing. We would spend the day climbing right beside/above their campsite and they were pretty intrigued.

Now we're staying in another National Forest, camping on the rim of Jacks Canyon. The climbing here is great, limestone pockets and steep, short routes. Just what we needed after a demoralizing times in Cochise. The canyon is in the middle of nowhere though and at about 6500 ft it gets pretty cold again at night. The closest town is Winslow, a really rough, run-down town with a giant state prison. In fact the prison is the first thing we saw on the horizon as we drove in from our campsite! Good thing we are at least 20 miles away from that.

Not many people seem to climb here in Arizona. No one else is camping at Jacks and so yesterday we were also the only ones climbing. It's pretty sweet having a place to yourself I guess. I didn't mind coming in to town today though, a bit of civilization feels good, even if it's a derilict Route 66 town.

Cochise Stronghold, Arizona

Joshua Tree turned out to be pretty awesome. I must say I really warmed up to the place. I even lead a 5.5 pitch on gear, after about a week of Ryan dragging me up the wall I got really good at taking cams out, not so much placing them myself. So I just started getting confident at leading cracks when we decided we had about enough of the constant wind. Also Ryan got pretty confident on gear so we seeked out some harder lines. Ryan's highlight was redpointing a 5.11c crack. Bouldery (V4) start with 5.9 finish. So right up his alley. We also had a cheering crowd of three guys who thought Ryan was just amazing. We tried telling them people climb much harder trad lines than that one but they were still impressed nonetheless. So we left JT on a high note and headed for Arizona.

Driving on what I am now calling the "Canadian Highway" (I-8) towards Yuma I almost jumped out the window when I saw the first Canadian license plate. Turns out this was no spectacular event, as most of the cars headed towards Yuma are Canadian! The novelty and excitement wore off after a while. So we blasted through Yuma and made it to Tucson for one night, staying in the Santa Catalina National Forest. The cacti in Arizona are pretty funny, they look like they're fingering the world. Which down here is somewhat appropriate. We've gotten stopped three times now by the Border Patrol. (We also saw a never ending stretch of wall delineating the US-Mexico border). We can't believe they set these control points up, even on the major highways! Basically every highway heading North from the border they'll have a checkpoint. I have yet to see a woman working that job. They always ask if you're American citizen or not. We said no we're Canadian and a fat guy barks, "Where are your visas?" Ahmmm duh! We are Canadian! Ryan had to repeat that one a couple times, "We are Canadian we do not need visas." Anyways I could rant for a while about this border patrol business, we're just getting used to it now.

For the last few nights we've been camping in Cochise Stronghold. Lured by the supposedly amazing climbing we had to make some safety decisions. Most of the routes here are long multi-pitch trad routes, slinging chickenheads for anchors, etc. Since we haven't really aquired this aspect of climbing and didn't wanna risk getting on a wall we couldn't get off of, we've kept it to just doing the bottom pitches. Climbed the hardest chimney-type-wedge-your-whole-leg-in 5.8 yesterday. Tomorrow we will leave for Tombstone and a place called Isle of You. There's sport climbing there which is a bit more up our alley. The days are beautiful down here though, climbing in a t-shirt every day is pretty nice.

Ryan Campground in JT, taken from Headstone. Can you spot the minivan?

Headstone SW Arete, goes at 5.7 but felt pretty hard to me...This was taken a few days after we climbed it.

Cactus overlooking Tuscon, AZ

Since internet, including good coffee shops, are few and far between in Arizona we will probably be off the radar again for a week or so. Our plans are to head up to Winslow after Isle of You to climb at Jacks Canyon. Then onwards, hopefully thru Grand Canyon way, into Utah and towards Vegas.