Blog

Moablandia!

• June 2011
• Climb Training

It’s true that the Moab desert is a land of extremes. It’s also true that after 16 years of calling it home I love this land more than ever.

As soon as May arrives, the Moab locals are in a state of near panic that summer is about to strike–except for the river rafters and the odd ones who “like it hot.” (Clearly not climbers.) Even in April, it’s time to put long, sandstone cracks out of your mind. And the hordes of visiting friends/climbing partners suddenly disappear, leaving the approximately 8 local climbers feeling somewhat abandoned.

In keeping with the extreme nature of the desert, the start of hot weather means it’s time for the most opposite style of climbing possible: Mill Creek crimpmania!

Up in the cooler altitude of the LaSal Mountains, there is a small canyon full of the crimpiest (and often nerviest, due to the odd custom of bolting routes with built-in ground fall potential) sport climbing you could imagine. Though there aren’t a lot of routes, and though they’re nothing like friendly, they’re beautiful, burly, and they’ll give you hella strong fingers, if you can survive the pain and mental duress. So for the handful of local climbers here, May means goodbye splitter cracks, hello credit card edges 🙂

This May, my best friend Lisa Hathaway and I mounted a mission, to force our schedules into alignment for maximum climbing at Mill Creek and training on her wall (Lisa’s wall is inside and has a swamp cooler).

This is cruxier than it sounds, since Lisa’s job is to hike up and down canyons all night making owl noises, and I have rarely been spotted in an upright position past dark. The cruxiness is only increased by my general reluctance to abuse my fingers on things that are not finger cracks, which somewhat conflicts with Lisa’s insatiable quest for the tiniest crimp edges she can find…. However, this season, I decided it would all be different! I became as enthusiastic about Mill Creek as Lisa (only mostly because it’s the best possible crag on the planet for a small, energetic puppy, namely my new little res dog, Cajun), and I embraced it with open arms and closed knuckles 🙂

Showing an impressive degree of commitment, which required a couple of “alpine starts” (i.e., before 10 a.m) from Lisa and one really demanding night climbing session (starting at 5 pm!) from me, we stuck to a solid schedule for the last two months, and climbed much more than we could have hoped for!

So despite a few 100+ degrees here in the desert, much plastic pulling has been done, and a whole heck of a lot of crimping at Mill Creek, which gets my vote for the crimpiest climbing on the planet (have I mentioned, it’s crimpy?).

I’m off to Europe in a few days to savor some limestone and fly off big cliffs. And though I’ve made sure to provide Lisa with a substitute partner (Jorge Visser) and a substitute human for the puppy (Jorge) and I’m escaping the hottest month of the year in this very hot place, it’s really not easy to leave….

(thanks to Elly Stewart, Keith Ladzinski, Jorge Visser and Jimmy Chin for photos)