Flying South for the Winter, for a few Days of it Anyways

Dave and I found ourselves free from work and school commitments earlier this week so we decided to escape the cold for some camping and climbing adventures.  It's not like we have to leave behind awful weather since northern Utah has hardly seen snow yet this winter.  But, it has been too cold to rock climb outside and I require warmer weather to sleep in a tent.  So we loaded up the cruiser (and boy was it loaded) and headed south.  We figured we would be going to St. George but truthfully we hadn't fully decided where we were going to end up.  We thought there was a chance we would be going as far south as Las Vegas.  The adventure turned into quite the road trip.  The first half of the drive was cold and snowy.

Young Living Lavender Farms in Mona Utah under a fresh blanket of snow.

The ice froze to the side of our car in a rather interesting way.

It was a glorious feeling when we finally found ourselves some sunshine.  Don't let the picture fool you, it was  still plenty cold at this point of the journey. 

We stopped to stretch out and try out our new steel targets... they are awesome!

When we got to St. George the weather was plenty warm.  David decided that we would camp and do most of our climbing in Snow Canyon.  

I enjoyed the scenery and sunset while David set up camp. 

Yeah, the campsite isn't exactly roughing it but it is a beautiful canyon.  Dave and I prefer less civilized places to camp but it was really pretty nice and less of a hasle than the more rugged type of camping. 

A very important part of the adventure is, of course, the campfire.  

I am upset that this picture is so blurry.  I guess it's the best we could do with the timer and with the camera on night time mode. 

 Sunrise in Snow Canyon

That is me on an awesome climb in the Black Rocks climbing area near St. George UT.  We climbed here first because the rock is dark/black and half of it gets sunshine in the morning so we didn't get cold.  It was a really fun area to climb and I wish we would have taken more pictures and spent more time climbing there. 

 Here I am right before we started our multi-pitch climb that I ended up ruining for us.... 

This picture was taken after the approach and before we even started climbing, that is one big wall. 

If you look really closely you can see David at the top of the first pitch of the climb.

So, Dave was super excited to climb this four pitch climb in Snow Canyon.  I have multi-pitched before and I think it's alright.  I don't do it enough to really be comfortable with it, but I was willing to give it a go.  We had lunch, packed our bags, and made the near vertical approach to the start of the climb.  All was well starting off and David was going to lead all of the climb so I just had to clean the route and top-rope.  Dave seemed to struggle a tad on parts of pitch one but figured it out alright.  Then it was my turn, and I flat out failed.  I was AWFUL.  So Dave ended up having to come down and save me then the fun was over.  Also, it was getting too dark to climb anything else so that is the bad note I made us both end on.

Even considering my epic fail on the major climb of the trip it was worth the drive.  I think we both had fun and I know we will climb in the area again, it really only a matter of time.