Zion

Despite living in Utah for several years each, Andy and I had only two Zion climbing days between the two of us. So, this weekend we doubled (that's right, doubled) out combined number of days on the big sandstone. Unfortunately, it rained like the monsoon on Saturday morning, so our original goal of doing a wall was instantly crushed. Instead, we strolled out of camp at about noon and tried to find some dry rock. Luckily, all three pitches of Headache were bone dry, so we climbed that beautiful hand crack and finished with Ataxia Tower before going back to camp for the Jesse Mattner Memorial Dinner (Jesse isn't actually dead, or even close, but we want to make sure his quality camp cooking lives on) and re-racked for Sunday. We slept in again in hopes of the sun drying the rock, but there was no sun, so it did not matter. Either way, we hiked to the base of Spearhead and started up Iron Messiah. A little bit of soloing, six rope-stretching pitches, and three squeeze chimneys later, we topped out the massive dihedral. Andy did the most impressive trad climbing I've seen him do so far. Good on ya mate! Then we rappelled, which was super sketch due to the many ropes that we found stuffed into the cracks, reminders of easily the descent can go wrong. We joined forced with two French climbers on the way down, so we would not have to pull as many ropes, and Andy, while at a hanging belay, managed to catch a falling shoe that was dropped from over 200 feet above. Anyway, we made it down, saw a fox on the walk out, drove all night, and got back into SLC at about 1:00am. I can't wait to go back to Zion.