Sat 8/20 - Our Last Adventure

Today we had tickets to the ranger guided walk of the Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park. We had purchased 5 tickets, since we expected Vince and Joanna to leave later in the afternoon. It wound up being only Lynn, Brad, and myself, so we had 2 extra tickets. It wound up working out well since there was another group at the trail head that had an extra person, so we were able to sell them one of our tickets. The ranger guiding the tour was friendly, and told us that she "hadn't seen anything" since that was apparently against the rules. The walk was interesting, even if a little slower than would have been ideal, but that was to be expected with a largish group of hikers who had probably never hiked through that sort of rocky terrain before.

The Fiery Furnace was definitely an interesting and confusing place. I felt very validated in my contention that we not attempt to hike in this area alone without a map, but Lynn insisted that it wasn't so bad and that we should still try to do Lomatium later in the afternoon. Brad was the swing vote, and agreed that it was a bad idea without a map or route information, and voted to head over to Zero Gravity in the afternoon.

By the time the tour ended, we were starving and wound up stopping at the Eklectic Cafe for lunch. The staff was very friendly and the food delicious (all organic), although the portions were small and the prices rather high. We were all still hungry afterwards, and wound up getting various desserts to fill up. From Moab, it was another 1.5 hours to the Zero Gravity trail head, so we hit the road. The "Good dirt road" leading the trailhead parking lot was not nearly as good as I expected, and there were definitely a few moments that I feared getting stuck in some deep sand, but we made it through. We wound up stopping about a mile short of the actual trail head because the road did become impassible, but we had expected that from the information we had gotten beforehand, so this was not a problem.

I don't think that Lynn was very excited to do this canyon, since he had voted against it and expected it to be too quick and easy. He estimated that it would only take us about and hour and a half to do the entire loop, despite the guidebook indicating that it would take approx 3-4 hours. After hiking to the trail head, we recorded the time to check (OK, make fun of) Lynn's time estimate. It was another 1.2 miles to get to the actual canyon entrance, which was not too long but no fun in the heat. Finally, we reached the down scramble into the canyon and visited the small arches (Tinky and Winky) at the canyon bottom that mark the start of the route.

Almost immediately after we began heading down canyon it became a true slot (only a couple of feet wide) with a large drop to be down climbed. I began to second guess the decision to enter the canyon due to the lateness of the day (4:30pm) and the gray skies. The biggest danger in a slot canyon is flash flooding, which can occur due to rain many miles away. We had checked the radar on the way in, and saw some small scattered showers around, but nothing very heavy. Lynn was not at all concerned and was raring to go, and we decided to continue on.

Of all the canyons that we did on this trip, I feel there can be no doubt that this was the most unique and challenging. Due to his early prediction of this being an incredibly easy canyon, Lynn continues to insist that it was not bad, but I am pretty sure it's just because he doesn't want to admit he was wrong. This canyon required EXTENSIVE use of chimneying high off the canyon floor, downclimbing, swimming and wading, and some upclimbing. Once section in particular Lynn went into first, exclaimed "Oh shit!", and told us to hold off on coming down ourselves. He quickly found a way to climb out of the 9 foot deep hole that he was in, but it was tense for a couple of moments.

The final obstacle was the one I had read about and was most worried about. As one point, the canyon becomes very narrow and drops out from below you, with a chokestone wedged in the canyon serving as a landmark for this obstacle. There are three options here. One is to climb above the stone, chimneying past it and leaving you nearly 30 feet above the canyon floor. You must then continue out until you reach a section where the canyon gets just wide enough to drop through using a rope tied to the stone to swing back into the canyon with. The second option is to get as close to the stone as possible, and make your way under it. At this point, and canyon is just barely wide enough for a skinny person turned sideways to make carefully their way down and squeeze through underneath. The 3rd option is to mess up and attempt to make your way down before getting right up against the stone. Those who come down t0o early are likely to wind up getting wedged in a narrow spot with the feet dangling 10 feet above the canyon floor. Thankfully, we all made it through without incident, although it was awkward and scary. Once you reach the floor of the canyon, still wedged into a tiny space, a long downclimb to a pool below presents itself. It is not particularly difficult, but makes extensive use of wedging your butt against the wall and walking down the other wall with your feet, as it is very steep and exposed. Though we all survived the climb, my pants really did not. Sandstone is a very coarse, gritty type of rock, and very tough on any fabric scraping across it. Brad also messed up his pants, but did not develop the large hole that mine did, much to Lynn's amusement. ("Hey Mike, your ass cheek is hanging out of your pants! Haha!")

Back at the trail head, a check of the clock revealed our total round trip time to be just under 3 hours. Lynn continued to insist that we could have done it quicker, though the only stop we made the entire time was about 15 minutes to check out the arches at the top of the canyon. You have to admire his ability to stick to his guns, no matter what happens! Once again we tackled the dirt road back to the pavement, and the Prius made it through. (Prius Power!) The last adventure of the day was stopping at an Arbys on the way back for a bathroom break and to grab some food. I call it an adventure since I spent the whole time trying (and failing) to keep the hole in my pants covered, much to the amusement of one of the other patrons who got a good laugh out of the whole thing.

Back in Moab, I started packing up while Lynn and Brad drove downtown to hunt for souvenirs. We plan on getting up at 5:00am to drop Brad off at the airport and get started on the 18 hour drive back to Austin, so I was happy to get all packed up and into bed as early as possible.

Fri 8/19 : Entrajo Canyon

Today was planned as a canyoneering day, but we did not start the day with a firm decision in mind as to what canyon we would be going to. We got off to a slow start since George was flying out of the Moab airport, and Brad had to go along in order to pick up his luggage which the airline promised to deliver to the rental house, but never did. Finally, it was time to pick out the days adventure, which turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Lynn had turned against the original plan of going down Zero Gravity canyon, since it had no rappels and he thought that it would be too easy and over too quickly. (An assessment I disagreed with) Instead, he had heard about Lomatium Canyon from one of the clerks in the outdoor outfitters store that we bought some climbing gear from, and decided he wanted to do that. I was very opposed to this idea, because while not technically difficult, that canyon resides within the Fiery Furnace section of Arches national park. This area is usually described as a labyrinth of twisting canyons, and there is no map available. Also, a permit (easily obtained) is required in order to enter that area without a ranger guided tour.

Thankfully, during the Pleides trip we were on yesterday we discussed some of the possible plans with Dave (the guide), which told us that without somebody who knew their way around that area, it would not be a very good idea to go in on our own. While this was exactly what I had been saying for the last couple of days, it seemed to have more impact coming from him. He suggested a couple of other canyons that we could also consider, including Entrajo and Eardley canyons. Entrajo had the advantage of being close by to Moab, but being rather short with only a couple of small rappels and some potholes. Eardley was much further away, required a 3 mile hike from the parking lot to the trail head each way, and was listed as a 7 to 8 hour canyon starting from the trail head.

Naturally, Lynn's vote was to do Eardley, and then Zero gravity since they were right next to one another. I was also opposed to this, since Eardley alone would be a completely full day, and I had no interest in doing such a long hike. We put it to a vote, which Brad abstained from, leaving Vince and Joanna to decide. They were planning on beginning their drive home early the next morning and wanted to pack up tonight, so they decided to go to Entrajo in order to be back on time.

We grabbed some sandwiches at the grocery store and headed to the trail head, where we stopped for lunch before heading up canyon. We had an interesting time finding our way up the canyon, using Vince's and Brad's GPS to attempt to find the waypoints listed in the route guide. After another hike that I can once again describe as a forced death march (Lynn hikes much faster than I do, and never seems to get winded), we found our way into the canyon bottom. We're pretty sure we messed up somewhere since we wound up not quite as far up in the canyon as we were supposed to be, but I don't think we missed much except for possibly some pothole obstacles. The canyon was pretty easy and fun. Due to a lack of recent rain, the water levels in the potholes was low enough that we didn't get very wet, and the rappels were easy and fun. There was a couple of narrow slot sections, so it was a pretty canyon.


Perhaps the most exciting part of the trip was getting the Prius back up the steep, loose gravel road we had parked at the bottom of. We had to get up a bit of momentum and floor it the entire way up so that the traction control did not stop us, but we made it up in a single attempt.

We had considered climbing on Wall street later that evening, but with all the packing going on and our collective exhaustion, we wound up staying in and playing a couple of rounds of Carcasonne, which everybody seemed to enjoy.

Thu 8/18 : Pleides Canyon

Today was Pleiades Canyon, guided by Desert Highlights. While we did not expect there to be any technical obstacles that we could not overcome in that canyon, I didn't want to attempt on it on our own for several reasons. First, the canyon had flowing water in it, and all of the rappels would be off of waterfalls. Secondly, the water in Pleiades is very cold, and we did not have any of the proper gear for staying warm. The guide service provided us with Dry Suits, fleece jackets and vests, neoprene socks and gloves. It's a good thing we had these, because even with all that on, it was STILL pretty cold. I had thought it was a spring fed canyon, hence the cold water. As it turned out, it was fed by melting snow pack from the Lasal Mountains to the east, making it even colder than spring water would have been.

After spending nearly an hour at the guide service office getting all our gear selected and packed, it was about a 45 minute drive into the mountains (elevation approx 8800 feet) on gravel roads. It was nice to leave the sweltering heat of Moab behind for awhile and get some cooler mountain air, although it contributed both to the cold of the canyon and the difficulty of breathing.

A 45 minute hike through a heavily forested area brought us to the entrance of Pleiades, where we got all of our gear on and began hiking down river into the slot canyon. It was a pretty quick walk before we reached our first rappel. There were seven rappels through the canyon, which remained a narrow slot throughout, and constantly echoed with the roar of running water. Mostly we were able to stay on dry ground, except during the rappels when the water was pouring down over our heads. We all had a great time, but were happy to make it to the top of the final rappel where we finally encountered a small patch of sunlight that we could stand in to warm up.

At the bottom of the final rappel we encountered the final and most unique obstacle of the canyon. A large tree had been washed into the canyon, and formed an angled bridge to the canyon exit. The idea was to straddle the log facing upwards, and inch our way backwards over the chasm below. For safety, we all did this simultaneously so that we could grab the person in front of us if they started to slip.

As is almost always the case with canyons, those who go down must now come up. The hike back to the top was not particularly long, but it was very steep and the thin air had me gasping for breath quite quickly. I have lost count of the number of hikes on this trip that I would choose to describe as a forced death march, but this definitely added another to the total.

When we reached the starting point where we had left our lunches, we encountered another group just about to begin their descent of the canyon. They were minimally dressed in short sleeve wetsuits, and were definitely going to freeze their butts off in the canyon. After lunch, another forced death march brought us back to the van for the return trip to Moab.

Since George was leaving first thing Friday morning and had not yet visited arches, we decided to do a quick trip to the vicinity of double arch, which is an extremely impressive area of the park. Not everybody was overly enthusiastic about the trip, but everybody changed their mind and were happy that they had come when we arrived and they saw how impressive the area was.

Afterwards, George said he would treat us all to dinner for serving as his guides during the week. We drove to a few places that were closed, and eventually wound up at the Moab Brewery. I had eaten here in 2007 and was not impressed with whatever I ate that time, but this time around the food was phenomenal. Everybody loved their meals, and finished with some excellent gelato.

Wed 8/17 : Ancient Art & Mill Creek

Brad was supposed to arrive last night, but due to a delayed flight out of Austin was not going to make his connection into Moab. Instead of arriving in Moab at 9:00pm, he would instead be arriving around 11:30 in Grand Junction CO, nearly 2 hours away. We were supposed to be at the climbing trail head at 8:00 in the morning, so we were not too keen on driving over there to pick him up. We spent awhile on the phone last night trying to find him a reasonably priced shuttle, but to no avail. Finally, I had the idea to call the rock climbing guides, as they were going to be driving from Grand Junction in the morning. They were willing to pick him him in Grand Junction without charge, so we found Brad a cheap room at the Motel 6 by the Grand Junction airport.

While Brad did get in successfully and make it to the climb with us, his luggage was not so fortunate. We lent him the needed clothes and supplies so everything worked out well, but it certainly did not sound like a pleasant travel experience. That was quickly out of our minds, though, as Ancient art loomed ahead! Our guides turned out to be quite a bit older than we expected, and I would never have expected them to be the excellent climbers that they were. I can only hope that I am in as good of shape when I get to that age. (Hell, I wish I was in as good of shape today.....) The entire hike to base camp had me huffing and puffing away as walked uphill, and they didn't even appear to be breathing heavy.

We all got geared up as Jim, one of the guides, lead the first pitch. This was a pretty easy pitch, and served as a nice confidence builder. By the time that Lynn, Brad, and me had reached the top of the first pitch, Jim had already lead the 2nd one. It was "the chimney", which is basically a 3 sided slot in the rock which is largely climbed by stemming. Stemming is a maneuver in which one hand & foot is placed on the left side of the slot, the others on the right side, and you just hold yourself using pressure from one wall to the other. It is nothing like the climbing we are used to where you can frequently find excellent hand holds that give you great security. After a long climb through that, we came to a "ceiling", where the rock is directly above our heads and we needed to stem backwards away from the inside of the chimney (Freaky!) in order to get around it. I thought for sure that once I managed to get around that I would be at the end of the pitch, but it just kept going! It was a LONG ways up to the next belay station, and got very tricky in several places. At one point it got so narrow that my Camelback kept wedging into the the rock and getting me hung up. Eventually, I reached the large rock shelf that served as the 2nd belay station, which was a relief. Thankfully, I had a long wait on the ledge while Kris and Brad climbed up the chimney and Lynn ascended the 3rd short pitch. I was probably there a half hour, which was just about the right amount of time to feel ready to move on.

Since the 3rd and final belay station was very small, only one guide and 2 of us could be up there at a time. Lynn and Brad went up the short 3rd pitch so that Brad could film Lynn on the final summit. Ancient art is famous for the final pitch, which is EXTREMELY exposed to a 500 foot drop on all sides, and absolutely terrifying. After the guide set the rope, Lynn was the first to attempt it. Despite being visibly (and audibly) nervous, he managed to climb to the very top and stand up for about 3 seconds. (Later described by him as feeling like an eternity.) Brad likewise climbed to the top and stood up, but clearly was struggling and even slipped at one point during the climb.

Despite the others both going, I decided against it. I was very exhausted from the climb to that point, and just simply had no desire to go any further. That, and I just didn't feel like being any more terrified than I already had been up to that point. We had long enough ropes to rappel all the way to the ground from the 2nd belay station, which gave us a rappel length of over 200 feet. Awesome as it was, it is hard work to rappel from that height simply because the weight of the rope below you acts as a brake, and must be lifted up in order to slide down the rope.

After Ancient Art, we planned to meet up with the others at a swimming hole on Mill Creek. Unfortunately, we did not pay enough attention to the map and wound up in the south fork of the canyon instead of the north fork. It was a very pleasant area, but we were hiking hard to try to find the rest of our group, which we never did. The real disaster came, though, because Brad was wearing flip flops he borrowed from Lynn. (Lost luggage = no good gear) Shortly into the hike, one of them broke. He carried on quite awhile, until the other broke as well, and he could not walk anymore. Lynn lent him his shoes, but quickly decided he could not walk barefoot either. Since it was a long hike to the car, he proposed that one of us run back to the car and fetch some sneakers that were there. I suggested that 2 of us go, one of us slowly and one quickly, so that the faster person could bring the shoes back up canyon and meet the slower person. Lynn stayed behind and rested at the waterfall (Good plan, Lynn!), while I ran back to the car and Brad followed slowly. Well, was SUPPOSED to follow slowly, but wound up walking pretty quickly himself. Once I reached the car and headed back upstream, I ran into him pretty quickly, so he wound up with a really long hike.

I returned to the car and tried to recover from the hike. The rest of the group who had been in the correct fork of the canyon returned, and I told them what had happened. Eventually Lynn and Brad made it back out of the canyon, and we returned to the house to clean up for dinner at Sing Ha Thai. While it was rated as one of the best restaurants in Moab, we all found it pretty mediocre and overpriced.

Tue 8/16: Fun Biking, Crazy Biking

Since we had rented the bikes yesterday, the plan for today was all about biking. Lynn and George had whetted their appetite for something very adventurous, and decided to try their hand at the Slickrock Trail. Vince was tempted to go along, but decided to stick with Joanna since she would be biking today as well. I drove George and Lynn to their trail head around 9:00. Vince came along for the ride, and we spent awhile stopping in various tour offices to get prices on kayak rental and off road rentals for a future date. We then returned to load up our bikes and pick up Joanna. Our plan was to shuttle the bikes back to the Bar M area that we had tried yesterday, and then taken the 7 mile paved bike trail back to Moab. We chose this because it is downhill pretty much the entire way, and therefore suited to our exhausted state of mind. It was a fun and easy ride, and we were surprised just how quickly we reached the end. We did see a few impressive (insane?) souls riding UP the steep 7 mile hill. All the more impressive given that a few of them looked to be in their 60's.

By now it was about 1:00pm, and on the drive home we finally heard from Lynn. They were STILL on the slickrock trail, exhausted, out of water, and at least an hour from the trail head. They wanted to give me a heads up that they would be looking for a pickup, along with a water delivery when they reached it. When Lynn finally called an hour and a half later, they were coming into town after walking their bikes down a tiny, treacherous path down the side of the valley into Moab (NOT on their trail map. Later determined to be "Dave's Trail").


I quickly met them at the nearest intersection, where they had found a small ice cream shop and were attempting to recuperate. Lynn seemed to be in reasonably good shape, but George was clearly not. He was very dehydrated, and probably on the verge of heat stroke. All told, they spent over 5 hours in the desert heat, without water near the end. Once he had recovered enough to stand up again, we returned to the room where he was able to shower and take a nap. Afterwards he expressed his belief that the trail was so difficult as to not even actually be doable, and that nobody could possibly do it without walking their bike half the time. He seemed a bit disbelieving when he talked to the worker in the bike shop who could managed to entire trail in about 1.5 hours without ever getting of their bike.

Since neither George nor Lynn was interested in doing anything further, I wound up going to Arches National Park with Vince and Joanna. They will be leaving on Saturday morning, and I was not sure if they would have another chance, so I did not want to waste the opportunity. We had a good time hiking through the Devils Garden section, which is one of the most impressive in the park. I was hoping to find Wall Arch (though I could not remember it's name at the time), because it collapsed some time subsequent to my previous visit to Arches. I have a picture of myself standing under it in 2007, and would have loved to get another picture now that it is gone. Unfortunately, we did not have a map and I did not remember it's name, so we never did find it.

We had brought some light sources with us since we were visiting rather late in the day. This turned out to be a good thing, because the sun set pretty rapidly and we did wind up hiking back to the car in the dark. We probably would have made it if we did not have lights, but since we did we felt free to explore a bit farther than we would have otherwise. By the time we reached the trail head, a lot of stars were in the sky and we stopped to stargaze for a bit. The horizon was still light from sunset, so we drove another 20 minutes toward the park exit (It's a BIG park), and stopped again. Fortuitously, we happened to stop at just the right moment to see the full moon breach the horizon and amazingly rapidly rise fully into the sky. The light from the moon quickly obscured alot of the stars, but we still managed to catch several satellites crossing the sky. From there is was straight back to the house for much needed sleep.

Mon 8/15 : Climbing & Biking

Most of us were up early, and wanted to get going before the sun started baking the area. Lynn was still asleep, though, and I think that everybody was a little frightened of waking him up. We discussed the plans for awhile while he slept, and decided to go to the ice cream parlor and do some climbing. It would be Georges first climb ever. Since the sun hits that area by noon, I eventually went ahead and got him up. I don't think he was too happy about it.

Once we got all our gear organized, we went straight to the wall. I offered to lead the first route (listed as a 5.7) but Lynn insisted on doing so himself. I did manage to convince him to let me stick clip the first bolt for safety, at least. As it turned out, leading an unfamiliar route, on unfamiliar rock, without having done any lead climbing for a long while was a bit more intimidating than he expected. After a brief foray beyond the first bolt, he decided to anchor himself off and use the stick clip for the second bolt as well, but did not want to carry it up any further and handed it back down. He then climbed to the second bolt, and repeated the attempt to actually lead climb. This was not any more successful than the first attempt, and he was too high for us to pass the stick clip up. We wound up lowering him enough to grab the stick clip, which was attached to his harness for the rest of the route, and used on every bolt.

I then climbed the route on top rope, and agreed that it did not feel like a 5.7, and was probably not the best route for the new climbers. George was next up, but quickly found that the aggressive shoes that he had borrowed from Lynn were too painful, and had to come back down. He switched into my shoes, which were better, but his toe was still hurting from the first pair of shoes, so he came down again. Vince was up next, and gve me the biggest surprise of the day. He ran up the route just as quickly, if not even more quickly than I had done. He's climbed just a little bit before, but still appears to be a natural.

We moved our rope to another route rated as a 5.5, and everybody was able to get to the top on that one. We were planning on doing one more route that Lynn began to set up, but the sun had reached the base of the cliff and everybody down below was anxious to get going.

We came back to the house and decided that the next activity would be mountain biking. We checked out a couple of bike stores in town and wound up renting from Moab Cyclery, as they were closed on Tuesday and therefore offered to let us keep the bikes until Wednesday at no extra charge. As it was still hot, we planned on relaxing until about 6:00, hitting the Bar M Loop trails, and then biking more Monday morning. Bar M was chosen because they had a mix of beginner and advanced trails, so that Lynn and George could go do insane stuff, while the rest of us stayed on the beginner trails and met back at the cars. Even the beginner trail was more difficult than expected, but we all got through safely and had a good time. George and Lynn apparently got a bit lost and wound up on the hardest trail out there (Dead Mans Ridge) instead of the loop they intended to take. When they met up, the trail they described sounded absolutely terrifying, but they both loved it despite having to walk their bikes over a number of obstacles.

The evening was rounded out with dinner at Pasta Jays, one of the few good restaurants that I had found the last time I was in Moab. Tomorrow, George and Lynn are going to try to most mountain biking popular route in Moab (Actually, in the world), the Slickrock trail. The rest of us will be finding something MUCH easier. Hopefully, I can get one of them to write a guest entry on the blog detailing their adventures.

Sun 8/14 : Dragonfly Canyon

By the time that Lynn and I woke up this morning, everybody else in the house had already gotten up and gone. (We were tired from yesterday, Ok?) Lynn texted them and found out that they were at the grocery store, so we headed out and met them there to stock up the kicthen in the house. After we unloaded the groceries, me made a quick stop at the gear shop so the others could pick up a hat, sunglass strap, etc, and headed for the canyon.


After a east downclimb into the canyon bottom, it was on to the first pothole. It went a bit faster than yesterday, as this time there was no question of trying to avoid it. Everybody did extremely well, and we were quickly through. George even took a flying leap into the pothole rather than attempting the climb down to it. By the time we reached the 2nd pothole, Lynn decided that downclimbing was for wimps as well, and did the same.


Finally, the first rappel. With the exception of George and Joanna, the rest of us had all rappeled before. Once he was half way down the wall, George got the hang of it and was doing great. The most impressive of all, however, had to be Joanna. Not only had she never rappeled before, but apparently has a strong fear of heights. For this reason, we decided to lower her down with Lynn controlling her descent from above. She did remarkably well, all things considered, and never freaked out. One of the best quotes of the trip came when she reached the bottom and was asked "How was it, what did you think?" and said "It was Great!". I then asked "Did you like it?" to which she immediately replied "No!" with a great big smile on her face.

While the trip was largely without mishap of any kind, the one exception actually happened on the very first rappel. I had descended first in order to provide a safety (firemans belay) to the remaining people. While I was waiting at the bottom with George and Joanna, I looked up just in time to see something small falling down the cliff and landing in the deep murky pool below with an audible PLOP! The something in question happened to be the ATC (device needed to rappel) that Vince was attaching to his harness. (Sorry Matt, your old faithful ATC is gone, but has already been replaced with a shiny, brand new one.)

By the time we chimneyed through the narrow section of the canyon at the top of the next big (118 foot) rappel, everybody was comfortable with the rappel and had a an even better time on the 2nd rappel. Everybody was over the fear, and was able to enjoy it more.

The hike out of the canyon went a bit easier than yesterday, as we knew the proper route out and did not have to backtrack at all. We also had a shuttle vehicle parked near where we emerged on the road, so that saved about a mile of hiking back to the car.

Back at the house, we all took a shower and had an excellent Fettucine Alfredo prepared by Vince and Joanna. Afterwards, we wandered around downtown for a bit, and rounded out the evening with a game of "The Settlers of Cataan". The game lasted a bit longer than usual, and only ended when we declared Joanna the winner because she was so far ahead, and we wanted to get to bed.

Sat 8/13 : Lynn, my hero!

I am more exhausted at this moment in time than I can recall being in a VERY long time. But perhaps I am jumping to the end of the story, so lets start at the beginning. Our first stop of the morning was "Gear Heads", a small outdoor shop in Moab that carries just about EVERYTHING. (Small in size, but they sure pack the merchandise in. REI has nothing on their selection) We picked up the accessory cord and webbing needed to safely enter into technical canyons.

From there, we grabbed breakfast at the Moab diner and headed up to Wall St do get a little climbing in. We should have taken a hint that nobody else was there on a Saturday morning, but figured out the problem mere moments after we stepped out of the car. The south facing wall that is South St was blazing hot, and the rock was painful to even touch. We drove around a bit to look at the amazing scenery, and then decided to try the Ice Cream Parlor, which I had read was in the shade in the morning. (Last time in Moab, Matt and I had tried to find the ice cream parlor, but failed. It turned out that we actually did make it there while we were looking, but failed to identify it.)

We arrived at around 11:30, to see a large group departing, which I believe was a guided tour. We hiked up to the base and found several other climbers preparing to leave. As it turns out, the sun comes over the the top of the cliff around noon, and bakes that wall as well. Thankfully, the very nice climber that was preparing to leave set our rope on his anchors when he was done, letting us climb that route without having to lead it. This both made it easier, and far quicker, so we were both able to climb it before it became too hot.

Since it was still early, we decided to go further down the dirt road that passes the ice cream parlor. I was expecting it to get worse shortly thereafter, but we went quite a long ways before deciding to turn around and see if we could move from the cabin to the house we had rented. (Thats my story. Lynn will tell you that I got nervous about continuing to offroad in my Prius. Either way, we both enjoyed the stares we got from the multiple offroad vehicles we passed going the other way, who had not doubt spent quite a bit to rent those vehicles)
When we got back to town, we were able to get into our rental house, and prepare for the highlight of the day, our dry run of Dragonfly Canyon. We will be guiding the rest of the people on this trip down that canyon tomorrow, and decided that actually having done it before bringing non climbers into it would be beneficial.

I will discuss the canyon in greater detail tomorrow, but I would be remiss if I did not chronicle Lynn's heroic efforts on this trip, especially considering that I titled this blog post after them. In the order they occured, here they are.

1 - I had placed my waterproof camera into a Pelican box so that I could throw it Lynn. I had just filmed him swimming across a keeper pothole, and wanted him to do the same from the other side. Apparently I had not closed the box properly, because as soon as it landed in the water near the other side it immediately filled with water and began to sink into the pool. It would never have been retrieved since the pool was impossible to see through, and deep enough that we did not touch bottom. Lynn immediately jumped in and managed to grab it before it sank very far, for which I am very grateful. (This was all the more impressive as the water was quite cold, and Lynn had not enjoyed his first trip through it very much.

2 - The hike out of the canyon was very long and exhausting, and I was very tired from the days activities. I was not moving very quickly, and Lynn decided to carry my extremely heavy backpack along with his own. (I would love to believe that it was out of sympathy for my suffering, but I know that it was actually just to get me to move faster.)

3 - When we *FINALLY* reached the road, we still had a ways to go back to our car. We had hoped to hitchhike the mile or so up the road, but nobody was stopping. Once again, Lynn proved his mettle by leaving the gear with me and walking to the car himself, and driving it back. (OK, it was another way of speeding things up, but appreciated nonetheless)



When we got back, Vince and Joanna had arrived, and we went out for Mexican food. Shortly after we got back from dinner, George arrived as well, so we are all here now! (Except for Brad, who won't be here till the middle of next week.)

Fri 8/12 : The rest of the way.

Today was (mostly) according to plan. The mostly came about because our 7:00am wakeup call was promptly delivered at 6:00am, and at least for a little while we simply thought that our phones were getting their time zones confused. Thankfully, we figured this out before we left for the caverns, and were able to spend the time relaxing in bed. (OK, watching cartoons.... It was Lynn's idea, I swear.) We arrived at the caverns just before they opened up, and were literally the first ones the begin the hike down the natural entrance.
While there can be no doubt that the Big Room that everybody who goes down the elevator sees, I remain convinced that the natural entrance is even more impressive. I can't say exactly why, except perhaps that the sense of constant descent, and the amazement at the people who first explored it are both amazing.

By the time we reached the bottom about and hour and a half later, we decided to immediately take the elevator back up and begin the drive towards Moab. The drive was estimated at 12 hours, and the front desk closed at 11:00pm, so we wanted to get there in time.

While I still feel that I am now more tolerant of long drives than I used to be, today was still a LONG day of driving, made all the more so by the fact that much of it was done in New Mexico. I remember being very annoyed at the habits of the New Mexico highway department last time, what with the silly speed limits and incessant "safety corriders" which seemed only to serve the allow them to double their speeding fines. This time around, I was pleasantly surpised that most of the speed limits seemed to be more reasonable on the route we took, but they found another way to mess up the experience. We encountered a number of "construction zones" along our route. These typically took the form of a couple of guys doing some relatively minor work on one lane of the road. This would not have been a problem at all, except that for no discernable reason New Mexico seems to believe that construction zones cannot be less than about 5 miles in length. Despite the work only actually occupying about 10 feet of distance, each work site was proceeded by literally miles on lane closure with reduced speed limits.

Despite the frequent slow downs, we did reach Moab in time, and are now checked into a cabin at the Lazy Lizard Hostel for the night. Tomorrow we switch to one of their rental houses (Grammas House) which will accomodate the rest of our group when they arrive. The cabin is sparse, but will meet our needs.

Thu 8/11 : Carlsbad Caverns

Perhaps I am simply more accustomed to long drives than I was last time around, but the drive from Austin to the edge of Texas did not seem nearly as interminable as last time. (It's still over 7 hours, but it seemed to go pretty quickly.) The first problem came when I got around to looking up the operating hours of Carlsbad Caverns. Much to my surprise, they cease to allow people to walk down the natural entrance at 3:30, and to go down the elevators at 4:00. Since Lynn had complained about my original plan to leave Austin at 6:00 am (sleepy head!), it turned out that we we're going to be just a little bit too late. Lynn suggested simply canceling our hotel in Carlsbad and continuing to drive towards Moab, but knowing how incredible the caverns were, I pushed to stick around and tour in the morning if we did not make it today. We decided to head there anyways in the hope that we would make it, which turned out to be a good call since we had failed to realize that we would be crossing into Mountain Time, thereby rolling the clocks back an hour.

Despite being there in time, we were unable to hike down the natural entrance due to some lightening that had been in the area previously, so we took the elevator down with plans to return tomorrow. As before, the caverns were incredible. Lynn, who had only ever seen some of the caves in and around Austin, seemed amazed. He very much seemed to enjoy playing with his camera, and getting some amazing shots.

Eventually, as we were taking our time to look around and get photos, the ranger who was ensuring that everybody was out of the cave before they turned off the lights showed up behind us. We wound up walking out with her, and getting to see each section of the lights get turned off, which was very neat to see. (For the technically inclined, the lights were controlled by Allen Bradley pushbuttons... Kinda wondering if there was a PLC hiding somewhere.) Lynn, of course, would be hard pressed to avoid trying to get a picture with a cute park ranger. Much less three of them.

Unlike last time, we both had smartphones, so we should not have trouble finding the good food in Carlsbad. Last time, as my loyal readers might recall, the restaurant recommended by the front desk of the hotel turned out to be fast food. The only place that didn't look horrible was Chilis. This time, though, we had our phones! And they told us to go eat at Chilis........

The blog returns!

Like a phoenix from the ashes, this blog now rises again! For the next week and a half, anyways. This was started to document our Road Trip in 2007, so now that I am embarking on a new road trip, it seemed only appropriate to use it again. (And whats more, I am actually revisiting several highlights from the last trip, so all the more appropriate still.)

This time, the destination is Moab, with a stop along the way at Carlsbad Caverns. It was awesome last time, and as several million years have not yet past, I doubt that it will be any different this time.

Annette and Matt are not along this time, as Annette is in NY visiting her family, and Matt is too busy with work. This time along, I had planned to travel with my friends Lynn and Eric. Eric had some problems with his leg, however, and had to cancel, so the road trip portion (along with Carlsbad) will be just Lynn and myself. Joining us in Moab are Lynn's friends George, Vince, and Joanna, as well as our friend Brad who will be flying out later in the week. (Another person with work to worry about .... How sad.)

We have lots of adventure planned, so stay tuned!