Maple Canyon Climbing

Ogden Nights
Utah Adventure 2007 started Wednesday night as we headed down to Ogden, UT for our sleep over before heading out to Maple Canyon on Thursday. We arrived in Ogden pretty late; much later due to my misdirection (I was too stubborn to call Motel 6 for directions). After we ended up at the WRONG Motel 6, we called the number and found out the hotel was exits away. As we backtracked to the correct exit, the craziest thing happened! The hotel exit number mentioned in the message DID NOT EXIST!! So, I gave another stab at which exit we should take and was correct... WHEW!

The hotel was kind of freaky, but at least we had a good place to rest our weary bones before the next day's trek. I was sad the next morning when I found out there wasn't a dryer in the room - yes, I have become very spoiled when I travel for work :-) Called the front desk and found out they did have a hotel, but someone took it with them. So sad... had to start the dirty hair days a bit early. That was the start of me becoming a nappy-haired ho for the weekend!!

We stopped at Denny's before heading out and saw something that could only be found in Utah (refer to picture). What is this LDS? And why would the drinks need to be friendly for them? Hmmmmmm...


Maple Canyon Drive
On the way to Maple Canyon, we got to drive through Salt Lake City. Talk about a dreary town, filled with smog and impaling posts at practically every square mile! I was so disappointed to see how far the houses are creeping up the beautiful hillsides and how much of the natural resources are being consumed by heavy machinery digging into the mountainsides. Oh well, what should I have expected?!?!

We finally hit the exit for Maple Canyon and we were sooooo close! Fountain Green is the town that guards Maple Canyon and we got to pass many a sheep farm and turkey farms! At that point, I just wanted to plunk down, buy a ranch, get some sheep and goats and stay there!! But we travelled on...

Maple Canyon Arrival
When we arrived at the canyon entrance, our jaws dropped in amazement at how awesome the canyon walls were! The heights and cobble stoned appearance was like nothing we had ever seen! We drove on and picked out a campsite before grabbing our climbing gear and hitting the planned routes! We headed out to The Schoolroom wall and the beau set out climbing the first climb of the day! When he got down, I was told that I would need to clean the route as I climbed up... something I hadn't done since Smith Rock last May! Wowza time sure flies by fast!

I had a rough time getting started since I hadn't been hitting the climbing gym or the cliffs like a good climbing girl should do. I made it to the top just fine and cleaned the route like a rusty pro... hooray! We ended up climbing the rest of the 4 routes on that wall: Crunchy Bug 5.7, Massengale the Moose 5.8, Grease Bunny 5.7, Drowning Baby Fish 5.7, Chocolate Doobie 5.7. My favorite route was the last one on the wall: Chocolate Doobie 5.7. I was dead tired by that time, huffing like a fat chick running for the last twinkie, but I made it. Nothing like grabbing some great jugs and trying to make it over a small overhang when your arms and legs are pure jelly :-)

Of course the beau had to do 2 more climbs: Redemption of Madonna 5.9- and The Big Kahuna 5.10b (named after the HUGE rock in the climb). As long as I was anchored in to the tree, it was all good! The beau ended up seeing the most amazing rock formation - check it out!

After we ended the climbs, we headed out on our bikes to a hike in Box Canyon. Um yeah... let's just say we got a little confused on WHERE exactly the canyon was, so we did a pre-hike before the actual canyon. When we made it to the REAL Box Canyon, we had another jaw drop moment... such amazing walls!! I ended up making out a silhouette of King Kooba as we made our way through the canyon. At one point, we saw some ice that was spilling over a canyon wall lip. The hike was worth it, but the uphill ride back to our campsite left me VERY breathless and schweaty - the elevation there was a lot higher than what we were used to :-)

We ended up being the only people who were camping in the canyon and the star-filled skies were beautiful. The hobo dinner cooked over the fire accompanied by good beer topped off a VERY adventurous day.