Yellow Ribbon, Climbing, and Sunshine

David recently spent sometime overseas with the Utah National Guard.  After returning home the whole unit (including the soldier's families) have to meet up for a "Reintegration Yellow Ribbon Program".  This consists of two days of meetings informing us about many topics that sometimes, but not always, have to do with the deployment and post-deployment life.  I go into to these meetings with a great attitude ready to learn about the resources that are available to us military families and most often leave thinking, well that could have been 5 times shorter than it was.  The meetings were held in Southern Utah so we planned on spending some of our free time rock climbing.
On day one we were able to squeeze in about 2 hours of climbing in before the sun went down at the Black Rocks just outside of town.  (We climbed here about 2 weeks ago and I have already blogged about it.  I'm pretty sure that I said that we would be back to climb the area again soon but not even I thought it would be this soon.)

Oh yeah, Dave's best bud, "Stevo", joined in on the fun also.

By the way, I FINALLY gave lead climbing another go and after it was said and done I thought it was a lot of fun.  I remember the last thing I thought before I started climbing and to stop myself from backing out was, "growth only comes once you leave your comfort zone".  My lead climbing situation is so sad to me because I both want to do it and I have no desire what so ever to do it all at the same time.  My top-rope climbing game is really doing pretty good I just need to take some falls and get over it so I can (hopefully) transfer that to my lead climbing game too.

Luckily, on day two of fun filled meetings we got out before noon and had plenty of time to climb.  We picked the Green Valley Gap area to climb and it was awesome.  We had to/got to rappel into the canyon and rappelling into a climbing area was new to me and I thought it added to the experience.  I'll have to have Dave write about the technical aspects of the two climbing areas and maybe he will even write the areas reviews....

Climbing in the the Green Valley Gap area was awesome and only climbed a very small portion of it.  I think we could easily spend a whole weekend in this one area.  I think once we got the bitter taste of boring Yellow Ribbon meetings out of our mouths it was a pretty good trip.  I am excited to get out there again and I hope it's soon. 

     

So, you saw that Kim and I went to St. George a while ago. Reading Kims post, I feel it is important to let you all know that she did not ruin our trip. It was very enjoyable. Not only did I get to spend some quality time alone with my wife, we escaped the cold weather for a few days, we got to go camping, and we got to climb some real rock! pulling plastic in the gym can be fun, and is a great way to stay in shape for climbing real rock. ( In my opinion anyway). We tried climbing trad for the second time sense we have been married. On top of climbing trad, we were multi-pitching, which Kim is still relatively new to. On top of both of those, a stopper failed as Kim was cleaning the first pitch, after which a wrong turn was taken turning a 5.7 into a 5.10. Anyone who has climbed themselves into a trap, knows the panic that ensues when your rope is pulling you in the wrong direction, you cant go up left or right, and you cant down-climb. The feeling is terrifying. Who can blame her for not wanting to continue.

We climbed first at the Black Rocks in St. George. I cant tell you what we climbed there, because for the life of me I cannot find them in my guide book. This area is great, because the sun is on the black stone all morning, and makes it warm enough to climb when it is still 32 degrees F. Good place for winter climbing. The routes are short, about 35 feet, and range anywhere from 5.7 to 5.11b on the sunny side, and from 5.9 to 5.13b on the shady side. The approach is short, and mildly technical. Definitely worth the walk.

The next area we climbed was in Snow Canyon. The route we tried was Leopard Skin, rated 5.7. it is four pitches of mixed sport and trad. the first pitch was fun, and I'll tell you about the last three when I finish them. The approach is relatively short, moderately technical and based on the first pitch absolutely worth it.

Gym Climbing with the Kids

Dave and I don't have kids of our own yet.  Luckily, we have a handful of nieces and nephews that we can borrow, wind up, and send home to their moms and dads.  We have been taking my sister's kids rock climbing a lot lately and it's a lot of fun to watch them climb.  I am amazed at how well they can climb with little to no instruction at all.  We just set them loose and they are climbing like little champs (and or chimps).  They like to take pictures of each other and have their pictures taken, so here I am to share them.  

It's kind of hard to see from this angle, but she kneeling on that hold.  It looks like her right foot is touching the wall but it's a good 8 inches away.  She totally made this move work for her and it was awesome. 

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.