I wake at 4am. I leave the comfert of my down sleeping bag and the back seat of my large American car. As I venture outside I realise that it is cold. When I turn on the ignition I find it's 36 F. I know that water freezes at 32 F, so it must be a few degrees above freezing. Note to Anni - bring warm sleeping bag. It's dark but I decide to get on the road regardless.
As the sun comes up I realise that I've been driving through magnificent scenary and been completely unaware of it. Everywhere I look there is rock, it's the most variable rock I've ever seen. The colours vary from subtle hues of yellow to brilliant reds. In places it's worn smooth to a rounded finish and cleaved by flaring cracks. In others it's clearly layered and fragmented, the debris of the weaker layers lays discarded at the base. Elsewhere it resembles improbable walls of sand or mud, mocking Newton as they somehow stay vertical. I doubt they'll be there when I go back. All of these individual vistas are overshadowed by the enormity. There simply is more rock than I've ever seen.
I stopped at every view point on the way. I was desperate to know about what factors carved these landforms. For many years I've been privaledged to climb with a geologist, and have learned about how the formations that we are climbing have been formed. I'm sure these are fluvial but I wanted Gwilym to tell me more, the timescale or the volume of water are incomprehendable. Could this be the result of melt water from an Ice Age? Was Utah ever covered with ice? In the absence of Gwilym I had to resort to the information boards. But instead of conveying this, they talk about a man jumping a ravine on a horse. I'm looking at some of the most impressive features that I've seen carved by natural forces I can't imagine and they tell me about a bloody man on a horse. Everyone is the same. It's nonsense. I wonder if this is because we are in a very religious state, could it be that this information is somehow contary to the idea that God created this. I don't understand the why. When we create something, we use tools. Surely, the rivers and the ice which are shaping the landscape could be still be the tools of a diety. However, this is the country where Darwin is banned in many schools. Can religion deny people access to geological as well as evolutionary sciences? The thought scared me and I only resolved myself by thinking that people just aren't interested.
After buying the local climbing store out of Aliens for Nora and Erik, I head to a local roadside crag. It's hot, really too hot to climb. I meet Chris and Justin who are calling it a day, but they offer to belay me on something. They suggest a route in the campsite (I suspect due to the proximity of their bagels), but I'm keen to climb and accept. I don't know the name or the grade. It looked easy enough. The rock was the sandiest rock I've climbed. I learned pretty fast to climb with my mouth shut, every foothold needs the loose sand to be swept off, every hand jam sent a stream of loose sand down on me. As I climb I get dirtier, it was hot, I was sweating and the sand stuck to me. I was unsure of the friction, it felt like all the holds were covered with ballbearings, I was unsure of the jams as I felt like I was climbing a vertical but cracked sandpit. "Welcome to Utah", they laughed. I think I'd been sandbagged quite literally. I complete the route, and although it wasn't hard, I feel I delt with an alien climbing situation fairly well.
In the evening I met Mark and Mark. They are both guides and hardcore climbers. I watched them climb some heinous test pieces. The hardest at 5.12d follows a narrow overhanging arete which you can only hold by slapping either side. I climbed a 5.10 (Nervous in Suburbia) beside on a top rope. It felt good and I felt really solid, and luckily so did the route!
In the process of being sandbagged
