Ophir

Mike is always up for the strange stuff that most people are smart enough to avoid, so he was stoked to join in a bit of drytooling today. After a complete cluster of a morning (I forgot my boots), we made our way to the tiny mining town of Ophir. Just beyond the town is a small mixed climbing crag right off the road. Nothing fancy, but better stone than Provo and definitely no people. Fun stuff. It was on the two of us, so no cool drytooling photos. Sorry.

Epic Fail on Olympus

Sometimes things just don't go your way. Keelan joined me on today's hate fest, and we began the approach to the Great Chimney on Olympus hoping that it would would provide a good training tool. Flotation is a must on the 2800 foot, very steep approach. I chose approach skis while Keelan used snowshoes. They both sucked. It took just as long to reach as it took for me and Alex to get the Pfiefferhorn earlier this season. Pretty sad considering we could still see the car. Before the actual pitches began, we reached a short squeeze chimney that, according to a friend is full of ice when the route is in. Unfortunately, only the first half or so has some ice-ish type stuff and then it turned to powder snow. I cruised up the chimney quickly, but when I stemmed across the top I was separated by the mellow terrain above by a body length of powder-covered featureless slab. There was absolutely no pro around or anywhere below me for that matter, and after wasting a good 20 minutes looking for some, I decided to come down instead of risking a fall that would certainly land me in the hospital. Not wanting to fail so pathetically, I moved 20 feet to the left and tried to climb the face before traversing into the gully. After 60 feet, it was clear that this wasn't going to work. Keelan gave the slab exit a try but had the same result. So, after screwing around for a couple hours to try and cover less than 100 vertical feet of what I would feel comfortable soloing with rock shoes in summer, we went home. I'm pissed about failing, but sometimes conditions just aren't right, I probably would have been able to top out the pitch, but it would have been a stupid gamble. No cracks, no gear. No gear, no go.

Dirt, Rock, Sleet

Jen and I decided to take a three-day weekend and head to Zion for a bit of biking and a ton of climbing. Things didn't go exactly as expected, but they were still pretty good. On Saturday we met up with a few of Jen's friends and rode Little Creek Mesa, which was incredibly fun. Not a lot of up or down, just tons of rolling terrain with plenty of chances to play around. On Sunday we headed into the park for something long and moderate. Settling on Right Toilet Crack (which climbs better than it sounds), we thugged our way through a couple pitches of wideness, including a super fun squeeze chimney with a roof exit, before coming to an overhanging squeeze / offwidth section that was way bigger than our largest piece. I didn't want to risk falling onto the belay and Jen didn't want anything to do with it either way, so we turned around. Despite the constant gray skies and drizzling weather, nothing cut loose, so we drove over the Kung Fu Theatre to finish off the day. The next morning, however, the storm was in full force. We broke down camp as fast as we could and drove home in sideways snow and sleet. Our bikes were not happy.

Dusting

The week's storm over promised and under delivered, but it was still enough to get me and Jen out of the house before work this morning. The few inches came in right side up, so it was good skiing and not too punchy. Kinda like skiing groomers with a couple extra inches of fresh. Good clean fun. If we would have gone a bit higher in the canyon we probably would have found better conditions. We appeared to be just above the thaw line, as all the trees had fresh ice instead of fresh snow.

Warmth

Since winter seems to have given us the middle finger, we decided it was time to switch to desert mode for a while. Nothing spectacular, just a couple days of sandstone cracks and a serious ass kicking on something way over my head, but that's pretty standard for the first desert day of the year. It was really nice to be warm for a change, but I miss winter already.

Soup Sandwich

Jen and I went night skiing at Brighton last night (as an excuse to go get my truck), came home, and wanted more. The snow was just too good to waste. Allison felt the same, so she joined us for this morning's DP. While the snow was indeed good (on North-facing aspects), the visibility at the top of our run was zilch. So, we couldn't exactly ski what we wanted to, but it was still worth the early alarm.

I Don't Have The Words...

...to describe how amazing the snow was today. Storm totals are at three feet and the sun came out right as Jamon and I got to our drop-in point. We arrived in the parking lot to see several car loads of people headed toward Mill D, so we went the other way and broke trail. It was worth every step. Every turn was a wipe-the-goggles style face shot, and, well, you get the idea.