Kolob Canyons, St. George, and Red Rocks.

Today I had Cheetos and Ranch Corn-Nuts for lunch, a small fries from McDonalds, about five cups of coffee, and a Butterfinger.  Delicious.

On Friday morning we climbed in Kolob Canyon.  It's a north-west corner of Zion which has it's own entrance and is generally less well known and less traveled.  It was nice and empty.

Looking up the south fork canyon.  Early morning... but not that early as we slept in.

The hike was one of the prettiest we have been on.  The climbs are at the far end of the canyon where the walls close in to be about 50 yards apart.  On the way up you wind up and down through desert-ist sage and grass and then lush willows and stream beds.  It was a bit more up and downs than I would have liked, but the frequent changes in environment were really nice.   The ground here, like much of Zion, is sandy.  Nice for your toes, but a bit annoying for your ropes and packs.

The camera gave Athena a derp leg.  Other than that... a pretty picture!

We climbed two long routes - "1/2 Route" and "Dost Mitra."  Both climb a really steep face that has perfect lines of huecos running up it.  Many of them are big enough to climb inside for a rest mid climb.

Athena finds the rests on "Dost Mitra"

The main wall.

 We originally wanted to try a really hard route called "Namaste."  Unfortunately it takes two ropes, which we forgot to bring.  Oh well.  It was a nice day anyway.  It rained a bit while we were climbing, but the wall is overhanging enough that we just watched without getting wet.

Rapping down.

 The canyon floor is covered with small saplings which are all getting devoured by some sort of inch-worm.  The whole place looks like it was shredded.  After walking a couple feet I stopped to remove hitchhiking worms and counted 14.  Ew.

From Kolob we headed down I-15 to the Saint George area at the very south-west corner of Utah.  We did two multi-pitch climbs on the prophesy wall, "Gordian Knot" and "Presence."  There where a ton of cliff swallows about, which would come rushing around the cliffs and swoop extremely close to you.   They go really fast, and up close it's extremely noisy.  I always thought they were quiet fliers, but I guess I've never had one zooming a couple feet from my head before.

That night we made it down to the Las Vegas area, to climb the Red Rocks and Mt. Charleston areas.  We have been staying at the Lovell Canyon free sites for a couple nights.  Most of the sites are completely trashed.  They are some of the worst cared-for areas I have ever seen.  Yesterday we found one site with an empty case of beer, and all the empty cans just blowing around the area. It didn't even seem out of place, it was just sort of like "oh... that makes sense.  Lets move on."  How sad.

We climbed "Dark Shadows" in the pine creek canyon area of Red Rocks yesterday.  It's a four pitch climb that starts above some really beautiful pools of water.

Lots of water for a desert.  There was a nice rat snake of some sort on the way up, but he hid in a grape vine to escape me.

I'm 85% sure this guy is alive.  Found him on the walk in.  If not... here is a picture of a dead bat!

The pools were very clear and filled with tadpoles and water bugs, especially those dragon fly naiads that are simply disgusting.  Anyway the climb was really fun.  We met two other couples who climb in Red Rocks a bunch and got some information on where to go in the summer.  For the most part people avoid climbing here in the the summer as it's too hot.

When we got down we chatted with the two couples, had a beer, and I investigated the pools.  There were two different types of frogs.  One was brown and normal looking, and the other was a really nice grey/green and really small.

A mighty handsome frog

Athena attempts to make fun of my picture face.

 I got in a bit of bouldering that night as well.  We stopped by the quarry area in the Red Rocks scenic loop to do a couple problems.  The loop is one way, so we ended up driving around it twice that day to get back to the bouldering area.

"Sweet flash bro.  Must be a low gravity day."

 Today we did the "Tunnel Vision" route.  It's six pitches, and pitch five travels up and left in this tunnel feature on the wall.  It's really neat to enter a cave a few hundred feet up and exit it about 150 feet left and up of where you entered.  Very fun route.  At the top there was a nice view of Vegas in the background behind Red Rocks.

With a better camera, you could see Las Vegas in the back.

On the hike down I found this gigantic flower stalk.  I also got a cactus on my ass, which I slapped thinking I was getting stung.  Never slap a cactus to your ass.  It is terribly painful.

We also got in a shower today which was the first in a long while.  We were starting to worry that the clouds of flies bothering us were due to our... smells.  Turns out there are just a ton of flies out here.  So sort of a good news-bad news situation.

I found some bricks at one of the trashed campsites and made us a sweet shower floor.

 Tomorrow we will do a bit of sport climbing.  Should be fun.  We also have a room booked on the Vegas strip... so that should be awesome.  We are staying at Treasure Island!  Going to do some gambling and get some 'free' cocktails.

Athena got her bag exchanged at REI due to a faulty zipper.  Our new bags spooned while we climbed.

I'm realizing now that this post was written on two different days, so some of the "yesterdays" and "todays" in it make no sense.  Oops.