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.