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.

The Narrows

We decided to hike the narrows yesterday.   It's one of the best known hikes in Zion, so one of the more popular ones on the weekends.  For us that's fine... as we have nothing else to do mid-week when it's much less crowded.  There are three options for the hike.  The first takes about eight hours and starts from the furthest north point of the main park road and hikes upstream to "big springs" then back down again.  The second takes two days and hikes 16 miles from the top with an overnight somewhere along the river, while the third hikes the 16 miles from the top in a single day.  For the last two options only 40 backcountry permits are available each day, with only 12 camp-sites available along the way.  As we made last minute decisions, no camp-sites were left so we did the one day top-to-bottom hike.  About 60-80% of the hike is in the river bed, so its a fairly long 16 miles with an expected length of 12 hours from trail head to trail head.  We got our permit, and reserved a shuttle to take us on the hour and a half drive to the top (Chamberlaind Ranch trailhead I think) the night before.  We started hiking at 8AM.  It was a bit chilly.

Athena.  Staying dry and walking slow.  Lots of over exposed photos, so I tried color correcting.  Enjoy the terribly edited photos throughout this post.

The first bit of the hike is mostly dry, with frequent river crossings.  For a while you try not to get wet, as that's what you always do when you hike.  "Keep your feet dry!"  After 5 or 10 river crossings you sort of give up.  There is something joyful about walking up to a river and just walking through it without breaking stride. 

Oh you know... just walking THROUGH THE RIVER

The further you get the more time you spend in the water.  It's not that deep in most places but the bottom is unfriendly so the going is a bit slow.  Slow but fun, as the scenery is wonderful and you get to hike in the middle of a river in the wilderness.   After a couple miles the few other people you saw at the trail head either pull ahead or drop behind, so you hike alone.  It's peaceful and nice.

We met this little guy at the first section of narrows.  No way around.  It was a north going Zax and we were a south going Zax.

The first section of 'narrows'  is a few miles into the hike.  From there you spend the rest of the time with canyon walls towers above you on both sides for the rest of the hike.  We entered the canyons fairly early in the morning, so stayed cool most of the day.

We made what little way we could for the deer.  Someone was excited.

The canyons widens at points, allowing more light and letting meadows and small stands of trees along the water.  At other places the walls block the light and create long stretches with almost nothing green growing.

A narrow!  

"look natural.  I don't want a posed picture."

More pictures of a river...

Campsite one is just to the right.  It would have been awesome to stay a night.

Lots of flowers still! Everything is still blooming. Aquilegia formosa I think, or "Crimson Columbine"

A larger creek enters the canyon eventually adding more volume to the river.  Things get a bit deeper, and more interesting.  All along the way there were little black birds that at first i thought were drinking from the river.  But it looked like they were catching water bugs in the small rapids.  They would perch on a rock next to the flowing water, dip their bills in, and then dive under completely and pop back up.

"Big Springs"

The lower narrows.  This is what you get if you hike up from the bottom.

The bottom-up hikers without permits are only permitted to hike up to big springs.  Once you pass that it begins to get much more crowded.  Eventually its like angels landing, and the beauty of the place is lost in the hoards of people.  For some reason when you put some tourists in a canyon, they have to scream just to see if it will echo.  It's like an involuntary reflex.  They just realize they are in a canyon and start yelping.  When you've got 50 or so of them doing this it gets fairly annoying.  The last three miles or so were like this.   All the wildlife disappeared and was replaced with slow moving yelpers.

We were planning on a climbing today, but our bodies hurt.  Hiking in the river is a bit tough on your ankles and knees, and walking though water for so long apparently leaves you sore everywhere the next day.  So... we went to the park's "Human History Museum",  and drove to the west side of the Mt. Carmel tunnel to make lunch.

Just making some Chili.

We've stopped just outside of the north entrance to Zion for Kolob Canyons,  where we will climb tomorrow.  I got to make lunch with a western whiptail lizard for company.  I watched him hunt for bugs as I was stirring my chili.  And we saw a bunch of big horned sheep on the way out.  So that was a fun rest day.

This master hunter kept me company while cooking. Aspidoscelis tigris I think, the "western whiptail."