Administrative details of little interest

The flights are bought, the travel insurance has been paid and the hire car reserved. Tony will fly to and from Salt Lake City on the 26^th of September and the 27^th of October. Anni will fly to and from Las Vegas on the 9^th and 22^nd of October. We will have a Cheverolet Aveo (or equivalent car). We've never seen one of these before, but as this is the US we expect that it is roomy and has automatic transmission and air conditioning. Note to Americans - "roomy" by comparison with European cars. I once drove a Chevrolet Kalos. I didn't particularly like it, the transmission was stiff and the control panel too glitzy. In particular it had a digital speedometer which meant, I devoted too much effort trying to drive at exactly 100km/h (i.e. not 99 or 101) and not enough effort to looking at the road.

Cams

In Indian Creek the routes follow perfect splitter cracks. These are often straight perfectly parallel cracks and the only thing that you can protect them with are cams. The rock isn’t as solid as granite and this means that you [allegedly] have to protect them every six feet (1.83m). I also am a bit of a whimp and unless I become braver (unlikely) I need lots of cams. With these perfectly parallel cracks it isn’t impossible that you need up to 10 cams of the same size. Take for example “The incredible Hand Crack” on Supercrack Butress. How could you not want to climb something with that name. The gear list goes 1 #3 camalot, many #2 camalots. The route is 100ft. Supercrack requires a myriad of #3 camalots. By normal standards I have a large collection of cams (pictured above) but this isn’t enough for the non-standard cracks I will encounter in the Creek. Therefore, I am making an appeal to all my friends to lend me some friends/cams etc., particularly in the range of BD 1-3. On my return to Finland I will buy you all a great many beers.

My rack (from smallest to largest) consists of 3/8" (blue) and 1/2" (green) CCH aliens, #0, #0.5, #1, #1.25, #1.5, #1.75 WC friends, #0.75, 2x #1, 2x #2, 2x #3, #4 BD camalots and #6 and #7 RE pulsar cams.

By the way, a cam is actually a Spring Loaded Camming Device and has four (in smaller versions, two or three) rounded cams which are forced apart by a spring. To place them you contract the spring, then release it, putting the cam faces into contact with the rock. It's impossible to believe they will work until you fall onto one, after which you use them relentlessly. A friend is a buddy with a large set of cams who’s willing to lend you some.

About us.

We are a European couple (Anni is Finnish -Tony is British) soon to go on holiday to the United States. We expect that you know this already but if you've found this site via google - there you go. We plan to climb mainly in the Moab and Red Rock regions. Tony is a distinctly mediocre climber despite the fact he has been climbing since 1999. Anni has only been climbing for one year but if you saw her you'd imagine that she'd been climbing for a lot longer. We've chosen this area because we like cracks, and oh my do they have cracks in Utah, and also because neither of us have ever really visited the desert. Tony has had one weekend climbing in the USA on a work trip (Stone Mountain, North Carolina). He thought it was scary which would make us wonder why he wants to do it again. Anni has never climbed int the USA, or climbed sandstone. Another thing to note is that Tony can't work out how to remove the underlined font from his and Anni's blog.