Mustaches, Mohawks and Muttonchops in Moab

aka Southwest Shutdown

3/13  Josh, Guy, Keith and I head out for our scouting week.  23.5 hours of travel from Ithaca to Moab.  Joy.

3/14  Rain all day.  We check out Medieval Chamber canyon.  Because we don't have two vehicles to run shuttle, Josh and I turn around at the first rappel.  We meet Guy and Keith at the end of the trail.

3/15  We cram four rental bikes into the back of our minivan and head to the Slickrock Trail.  It is a blast... even if I have to walk my bike half the time.  On this trail, we meet a contender for the Worst Parent In The World award.  Above a steep drop very close to the trailhead, a teenage girl (on a walmart bike with no suspension) says, "I don't want to do this without a helmet."  Her Dad replies, "Get down here now.  You're embarrassing me."  What.  An.  Asshole.

Obviously, "you're embarrassing me" becomes our catch phrase for the remainder of the trip.

Finishing the Slickrock Trail, we load our bikes and drive to Klondike Bluffs at the west access to Arches NP.  Here we bike a very muddy road and some very muddy trails.  Not fun, but we need to scout... Slickrock Trail is a bit too technical for us to safely take our students.  Besides, they might embarrass us.

3/16  Clear skies and dry rock.  We head to Wall Street on Potash Road.  We climb 30 Seconds Over Potash (stiff 5.8), Lucy In The Sky With Potash (5.10a), Nervous in Suburbia (5.10b, sport), Steel Your Face (5.10a sport slab), and a few other climbs.  We also head down the road to see petroglyphs and dinosaur prints.

3/17 Castleton and Ancient Art in a day!  That's two of the 50 Classics in North America.  Big day!  It goes something like this:

• 5:00am  Wake
• 5:35am  Hiking
• 6:30am  At the base of Castleton
• 7:30am  Guy and I start Kor-Ingalls (5.9+) on Castleton just as the sun hits the rock.  On p1, I lead the miserable 5.8 squeeze chimney at the bottom.  This can apparently be avoided by moving right.  The 5.4 chimney above is trivial.  Guy struggles through the tough cracks on p2.  Then I have the terror of leading p3.  Basically, I stop about 15' above the last bolt and wait for a toprope from Josh and Keith (who are climbing North Chimney).  I'm not proud, but I'm not injured either.  That is hard climbing... apparently some people go all the way back into the chimney to get protection (which makes sense).  Guy leads the final pitch to the summit.
• noon  The four of us rappel back to the base of Castleton.  Here I pass Porscha without realizing it until I see Beau tied to a rock near our packs.  I'm better at recognizing dogs than people.
• 2:15pm  Back to the car, driving to Fisher Towers.
• 3:00pm  At the base of Ancient Art.  We hang out for an hour while a much slower party struggles with p2.  Finally we bust up the climb.  I lead 1&3, Guy leads 2.  The four of us tag team ropes up the corkscrew and back down for efficiency.
• 7:30pm  Done rappelling Ancient Art.
• 8:15pm  Back at the parking lot for dinner before driving to Indian Creek.
• 11:30pm  We set our tents near the trailhead for Way Rambo and quickly fall asleep.  A long day!

3/18  Climbing at Way Rambo.  I don't remember what everyone climbed.  Guy and I start the day on Rochambeau (5.9) and we finish the day getting shut down on Unnamed #12 (5.10).  It is a fun climb, but the guidebook doesn't mention the #6 you need at the top.

Get to see Jeanine, Joe, Vijay, Gerry, Adrian and a bunch of other ex-Cornellians who are climbing there too.  That night (after changing clothes following my mud puddle flop) we go to Bridger Jack to hang out with all of them plus Aramy who is also climbing at Indian Creek.

3/19  Torrential rain all night.  We drive back to Moab through rain and snow.  We get tent sites for the class, hang out at the library, and enjoy a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner.  I have the best veggie fajitas I've ever eaten.  We drive back to SLC and spend the night in a hotel.  Where we get to shower!

3/20  Grocery shopping, student retrieval, and back to Moab.

3/21  Students are eager to climb and everyone is up early (much to Josh's delight).  We head to Wall Street and get tons of climbing.  Again, I don't record what everyone climbs.  I start the day with a fall above the first bolt (drilled piton, actually) on Nervous in Suburbia.  Shay catches me before I hit the ground.  My first time ever falling on a student's belay.

3/22  We take the class to Way Rambo.  I climb Rochambeau, Blue Sun (awesome hand crack), and Way Nutter (offwidth).  We teach lots of lessons -- mock leading, anchor cleaning, gear placement, anchor building.  Also, I run into Morri who is climbing strong as always.  He spends some time getting worked on Way Rambo.

3/23  Cayoneering day.  Back to Medieval Chamber.  Just after we drop into the neck deep pool of water, our beautiful day turns overcast and windy.  Everyone is cold, but we enjoy the two big rappels and warm up rapidly while hiking out.  We finish the day with some bouldering at Big Bend.

3/24  Off to Donnelly Canyon.  Melissa, Colin, Roger and I spend the morning working on multipitch skills and trad lead/follow skills on The Naked and the Dead (p1, 5.8).  Everyone gets a go at Generic Crack.  After lunch, we cross the canyon to Supercrack Buttress.  I lead Twin Cracks (5.9, actually four cracks) which I really like because of the variety of climbing it offers.  Shay gets his first trad lead on this climb, and a bunch of other people get to climb it while waiting their turn on Supercrack.  Apparently we run into Steph Davis who is guiding at the cliff today.  This is very exciting for those in our group who have memorized five years worth of Climbing Magazine's Hot Flashes.

3/25  Melissa and I climb Ancient Art while everyone else goes mountain biking.  We have a leisurely day.  Melissa even leads some of pitch three.  We have already coiled our ropes before another party shows up at the base of the climb (though it seems that at least five parties will climb it today).  I set my hammock at the trailhead and we chill for four hours waiting for our ride back to camp.

3/26  Rain all night.  And some snow.  We take the class on a lovely hike through Arches National Park, then give everyone a few hours to walk around Moab.

3/27  Pack the two vans and drive back to SLC (with a stop at the Provo In 'N Out Burger for milkshakes).  We all get showers at our motel, then out to a decent Mexican restaurant for dinner.  Back to the hotel for some hot tub time.  Tammy and Bruce arrive around 10pm.

3/28  COE class is off to the airport to fly home.  I've still got another week of travel.  Tammy, Bruce and I drive to Zion National Park.  We have a room in a really nice motel by the park entrance.  Showers every night after climbing?  I could get used to climbing with Tammy!

3/29  We drive around the park, looking for some fishing for Bruce.  Around noon we head to the base of Moonlight Buttress (5.9, C1, V).  We cross the cold Virgin River and make our way to the base of the buttress.  I lead an approach pitch to the start of p1.  Going directly from the base of the buttress like I did is annoying and chossy.  Better to just walk left to the start of the climb.  Oh well.  Then I actually lead p1 which goes free at 5.8 (with a tough move at the end).  Tammy starts p2, but can't make a reach.  She lowers back to the belay and I finish the pitch.  This pitch is easy to free climb.  Most of the pitch is 5.8 with one 5.10+ move in the middle.  I end up freeing the crux by accident as I step out of my etriers.  Tammy leads p3 which is a fun bolt ladder.  Now at the rocker block, we fix two ropes and rappel 400' back to the ground.

We find tons of booty.  A locking biner, a nut, rain pants, gloves, stuff sack, socks, and haul bag parts.  Most has been dropped by parties above.  There is one party high up on the climb, hauling a bag.  As we walk off, we meet another party who just finished the climb after three days on the wall (they also hauled a bag).  We return a bunch of the booty gear which turns out to be stuff they dropped.

3/30  Awake at 5am for Moonlight!  We do the cold stream crossing in the dark and find our fixed ropes.  400' of jugging later we are on the rocker block.  I lead p4 which is an awesome pitch!  180' of 5.12+ finger locks.  I'm "climbing" the route with my feet in the etriers, but my fingers in the crack.  This allows me to top step just about every placement.  It is a fun fun pitch, but takes a long time even with the top stepping.  Tammy is spent after jugging the pitch, so I get p5 as well.  Not quite as much fun.  The flaring chimney which starts the pitch is miserable and is fairly tricky to aid/free/french free.  After the chimney, it is 100' of a shallow, right facing corner.  This isn't hard, but it is slow going because I'm only in balance when my left foot is in the etrier.  I reach the ledge at the top of p5 and wait for Tammy to jug up.  By the time she arrives it is nearly 3pm and we have concerns about finishing the climb with enough daylight.  And Tammy is pretty tired of aid climbing at this point.  Choosing to be conservative, we rappel all the way to the ground (four double rope rappels) and cross the dang stream one last time.

3/31  Rest day.  Cold and windy with rain turning to snow.  I only leave the motel room to buy some bananas and grapefruit.  Hey Emily, did I tell you about the organic grapefruit I got for $0.29 each in Zion?

4/1  The second anniversary of Alex Honnold's bold free solo of Moonlight Buttress.  We hike the Angel's Landing trail to Scout Lookout.  This is a two mile paved path up a gentle but sustained incline.  From the lookout, we take the West Rim trail to the top of Moonlight Buttress.  Here I fix a rope and rappel the top two pitches to make sure we are in the right place.  Jugging back up, we stash the ropes at the top of the climb.  Hiking back, we make a quick run up the final half mile of the Angel's Landing trail.  This would have bits of class III scrambling had the park service not chopped steps in the sandstone and installed massive chains to help the hikers along.  For climbers this trail is easy walking, but for all the tourists making a conga line to the summit, the exposure and scrambling are very exciting.  Their talk turns to "mountain climbing" and I learn the Sir Edmund Hillary died on Everest and his body is still perfectly preserved there.  I did not know that.

4/2  Awake at 6am and hiking up Angel's Landing by 6:45am (Bruce drops us at the trailhead before the mandatory shuttles are running at 7am).  Tammy and I quickly hike to the top of Moonlight Buttress.  From here, two double rope rappels gets us down to our high point from three days earlier.  Tammy starts leading p6 around 8:30am and the sun hits us soon after.  I lead p7, Tammy leads p8, and I finish the climb leading p9.  We reach the summit around 3pm (with two more booty nuts).  A total of 18 hours of climbing time over three days.  Add another dozen hours of rappelling, jugging and hiking along the way, and we feel like we have earned a milkshake.  I'm not going to claim that rappelling in to the final pitches is good style, but we did climb the entirety of Moonlight Buttress.

Two more parties are far below us on the climb when we finish.  One is aiding and hauling a bag, the other is free climbing the route.  So if someone tells you that Moonlight Buttress is solely in the domain of free climbers and to keep your dirty etriers off their climb... my experience is that most of the parties on the route are still aiding it.  Oh, BTW, the only reason it goes as a free climb at 5.12+ is because of all those nice finger locks in piton scars.  Just saying.

So if you want to climb Moonlight Buttress, here is my beta:

• Supertopo is accurate, as you would expect.  Bring some sandals for the river crossing and a hand towel to dry your feet after.  The water was never above our knees, but your mileage may vary.  Scout during daylight for the best crossing.  Apparently it changes often.
• Obviously, if you can free the climb, do that and climb it in a day.  If you think you might be able to free the climb, give it a try.  The gear is great and you can always french free a move or three.
• I'm not sure why we saw three parties hauling on the route.  I guess training for bigger walls.  Hauling would be pretty easy except for p5, though we were happy not to be hauling.  If I were to do it again, I'd bring three ropes and fix all the way to the top of p4 on day one.  Then finish the climb on day two.  With two ropes, it is still possible to be successful with our strategy of fixing to the top of p3 on day one.  We just needed to move a bit faster on day two.  You need two ropes to rappel the route.  Rappelling p5 is tricky because the route overhangs enough that it is hard to reach the p4 belay.  Simulrappel so one partner can swing the other to the bolts.
• Beta for each pitch:
  • p1 Walk way left to the start of the pitch.  Don't forget to protect the second after the hard move.  Reach up and left to get some gear before moving right.
  • p2 Free or french free this pitch.  No need to aid.  If you can free climb 5.8 you can get up this pitch (and if you can't free 5.8, you shouldn't be on Moonlight).
  • p3 Fun bolt ladder.
  • p4 Fun long pitch.  Top step every move and try to make steady progress.
  • p5 Miserable.  Make your partner lead this.  Of course, it leaves you stuck at the hanging belay.  This is the only pitch which takes cams bigger than #3, so make the second carry any big cams for all the other pitches.
  • p6 Fun and short
  • p7 Fun
  • p8 Fun and short
  • p9 Free this pitch!  Even if you have to aid a move or two, you don't want to aid this whole pitch.  Put your climbing shoes on before you start (which is a hassle at the hanging belay, but do it anyhow) and lighten your load as much as possible.
• Note that you either get to lead the annoying pitches (p5 and p9) or you have to belay from a hanging belay.  Nobody has fun on these pitches.
• The rack I would bring: 1 blue alien, 2 green aliens, 2 yellow aliens, 7 red aliens and/or #0.5 camalots, 4 #0.75 camalots, 2 #1 camalots, 2 #2 camalots, 1 #3 camalot, 1 #5 camalot, 10 draws, 1 set of nuts (medium and large only).  You might have to back clean a few pieces, but this rack will get you up the climb.

4/3  Having climbed Moonlight, we leave Zion.  We take a windshield tour of Bryce National Park (at 9000' there is still tons of snow on the trails).  Then we drive back to SLC.  We have dinner with Rebecca and Murtaza who live in Salt Lake now.  Haven't seen them for years!

4/4  Fly home to Ithaca.  And since I complain about the airlines in most of my trip reports, it is only fair to say that my travels both to and from SLC were smooth and uneventful this trip.