Monday, 08-June-2015
- Wake up, and I start exploring right out, instead of making Breakfast right away.
- The first goal of the day is to find a good map / guidebook… so I hit the guide shop that’s right across the street from my campsite and buy a climbing book. While I’m there I stop to chat with one of the canyoneering guides, since the other folks at the shop mentioned that he’s a climbing. He directs me to good spots to go… but he doesn’t really know anything that’s not already in the guidebook. Zion has some of the best multi-pitch trad in the world… but this is not a good land for Boulderering :/
- Next stop: a walk to find postcards, and to scout the first boulder of the day. The guide mentioned a huge boulder right by the entrance of the park, so I figure that’s a good place to start. And lo and behold, right across the road from it is a small grocery and souvenir shop! I find some postcards, buy up a few breakfast burritos, and then head back to find a post office.
- Third stop is also a rousing success – the post office is nice and simple, and I get all my post sent out without any trouble or undue cost. Woo!
- Now that all of that is dealt with, I pack the car up, and drive out to the boulders!
- The Globe, AKA The Entrance Boulder – Fun, very fun. I spend a lot of time here, exploring lines and trying to do the traverse around the entire thing. The routes are good, and a bit too tall for me to be comfortable topping out… especially since there isn’t really a good way to get down off the boulder if I did top out. So I stayed low, and did some fun traverses.
- Drilled Boulder – This one… this one was fun, but the drill-holes don’t really make sense. The guide says that someone, back in the dark ages of bouldering, took a power drill to the rock to make it more interesting. But they’re not really in any pattern or route that I can make out… Most of them are too small to be used (at least by me), and then the good ones aren’t really in good locations. The rest was cool, but not 100% sold on it.
- Split Boulder – This one is WAY bigger than it looked in the book; too big for me to be comfortable climbing. I found a few interesting lines on it, but there were all a bit too easy. Nothing really good, at least nothing that I’d be willing to do with just a single crashpad.
- Other boulders near the split boulder – I’m not sure if these are named, but I strutted over and climbed them anyways. Nothing too insane, but they’re better than the Split Boulder, at least. I did some routes, read some book, drank some water, and repeated the process until I ran out of routes to do.
- Pine Creek Boulders – These were gorgeous, if not ideal for climbing. The boulders are all spread around a small creek down by the road (pine creek… crazy, right?) But most of them were a bit too hard for me to really rock.
I did find a few really good routes though, and if you ignore the obscene amount of sand that was ground into every single thing that I own, I’d say this was the best of the bunch, aside from The Globe near the beginning. - There seems to be the theme here… beautiful landscape, but mediocre bouldering. Which is fair, since Zion is all about the big, long, perfect splitter cracks. Running straight up the cliff. For hundreds of feet. Damnation Daniel! Why didn’t you come with me so we could have climbed them all?!?!
- Once the sun started setting down behind the cliffs, I made my way back to camp. A quick stop in at a grocery along the way got me all the parts that I needed to make an excellent & filling dinner… I deserved it after that day I had – boiling heat and more dust in my face than even Arizona threw at me…
- So with everything set, I made me some dinner! Stir-fried chicken with Chorizo, Onion, tomatoes, tomato sauce, and shells. Yeah. Over a campstove. Using just two dishes. I am just that good. Now if you’ll excuse me… Nom, nom nom nom nom!!!
- Once dinner is done and the dishes are cleaned, it was the usual evening for me. I hung out on the crash pad, using it like a nice mobile couch. I relaxed, watched a few episodes of Adventure Time, and slept like a log.