Owl Rock, Arches and Moab

Pre-Arches
After we wrapped up our Horseshoe Canyon hike, we headed on down to the Arches National Park area to find a camping spot for the night. Since it was after 5:00pm on a Saturday night, there was ABSOLUTELY no BLM camping spots. So we continued down the road found a turnoff for Castle Rock and ended up finding an awesome campground that was free; hooray!

We set up camp on and headed out on a hike before getting dinner ready. Before eating the bountiful camp-stove cooked dinner, we toasted the day's adventures and read our climbing book for the next day's big adventure: Owl Rock. As I read the description, I grew more excited and thought it would be hard to sleep. But considering how much we had hiked, my head hit the pillow and I didn't wake up until I heard a dreadful sound: lots of rain and wind. CRAPPY PAPPY! We got back to sleep and crossed our fingers that the rain would stop for our big Sunday climb.

Hooray! Our wish came true and the rain had stopped. Unfortunately, the overcast skies didn't promise that we had seen the end of the day's rain. Solution: pack up quickly and have a quick bite in the car as we drove to our Owl Rock climb in Arches.



While we were packing up camp, the Beau had noticed an interesting artifact peaking from beneath the red sand. Upon closer inspection the artifact was unearthed. We did our best to figure out what it was and what purpose it served, but no luck. So we buried the artifact so it would rest in peace until another curious camper discovered it :-)

Arches Arrival
We arrived at Arches and made our way to Balance Rock and finally Owl Rock. The skies were threatening our ascent, but our will prevailed. The Beau got on his harness, shoes, gathered his awesome climbing rack and got climbing up the crack. It didn't look like such a bad climb, so when he asked if I was ready, I yelled "YES"!

Owl Rock proved to be VERY challenging for me for multiple reasons:
- I haven't been climbing like a good girl
- I had to retrieve all of the pieces that had been placed by the Beau
- I was climbing on Sandstone; a rock I had never climbed before
- I like the whine

I did the best I could to make it up that crack! My body twisted and turned in ways I thought were inconceivable and then I reach a point where I was out of breath and could go no further. I yelled and yelled up to the Beau and he didn't seem to hear me. I told him I wanted down. No answer. I yelled up to him, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP THERE?" His reply, "Waiting for you to climb up." I was ABSOLUTELY flabbergasted!!! He was not going to let me quit and he was telling me "NO"?!?!?! Well, since I had no choice, I bucked up and set to climbing. I was sooooo out of breath when I reached the top, but was very thankful that the Beau didn't let me quit. As I looked out over Arches, I was very happy :-)

The next task was to get down. After a quick rappel refresh, I headed down first and the Beau followed. We were grinning from ear-to-ear at our accomplishment and then the rain began to fall. Talk about PERFECT timing!!

After we gathered our gear, we did the tourist-y things and checked out all of the amazing arches the park had to offer. The Beau ended up falling off the ledge on the way back from the delicate arch, but then he used his mad climbing skills to get back up. Whew :-D

I also got to touch the bottom of another famous arch and that made me feel pretty cool as well. On the way back to the car, the Beau ended up getting attacked by a wet hand monster, but he evaded danger yet again after the wet hand monster evaporated - beware of wet hand monsters!!

After the park, we headed to our hotel in Moab, took a much needed shower, and headed out for some brew and grub. There's nothing like being clean, eating a great dinner and downing a couple of beers. After dinner, we looked out the window and witnessed an amazing downpour; a downpour of rain that we had to walk through to get to the hotel. Soakin' good times. Other than the rain, dinner was a perfect ending to a perfect day.

Horshoe Canyon Hiking

Friday night, we ended up setting up camp on BLM land at the Horseshoe Canyon trail head to the Great Wall. I was REALLY excited for this hike because we were going to be seeing some amazing petroglyphs.

We awoke Saturday morning, had breakfast, got our water ready for the hike and set out on the 6.5 mile hike into Horseshoe Canyon. The trail was awesome and the site, sounds, smells in the canyon were unlike anything I had ever seen before.

The hike took over 4 hours and we ended up seeing about 5 different walls with paintings left by the Anasazi people. Along the way were cute lizards, flowering cacti, and beautiful blue skies.

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.

Utah Adventure 2007

Last weekend, the beau and I set off on a plethora of adventures in Utah. I had previously visited Utah and have spent many hours in the SLC airport waiting for a connection flight, but have never had a chance to check out the natural wonders of Utah.

The extended weekend of adventures was awesome, but since we had to fit everything in it became exhausting at times :-)

Roll Call:
Hotel in Ogden
Climbing and biking in Maple Canyon
Hiking in Horseshoe Canyon to view the Great Wall
Climbing Owl Rock and tons of hiking in Arches National Park
Hotel/Restaurant in Moab
3 amazing nights of camping!!