From Zion we headed Northeast to Moab, the ultimate spring break destination. Driving highway 12 was surreal I have never enjoyed sitting in a car as much as I did along this drive. You really experience the massiveness and diversity of the desert and begin to understand just how old and awesome the earth is. Our drive ended at the Lazy lizard hostel in Moab where we enjoyed some hot showers, ice cream and a real bed.
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| Mooooooonscape |
Our first day climbing in Moab we met up with our friends Sage, Rory, Eric and Jake who had been climbing on Wallstreet the last couple days. I was anxious to climb and rushed them out of the campsite. Climbing at Wall Street I managed to fall off a route called Nervous in Suburbia before clipping its really high first bolt and smashed my knee. A climbing trip isn't complete until I smash my knee on something hard. In search of some shade we decided to head to a crag called Ice Cream Parlor, but the name was misleading and it was just as hot. I wasn't feeling to hot to lead with my sore knee so Deni took the reigns and led a couple really fun routes for me to climb on top rope.
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| Driving up to Wall street. Shortest Approach |
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| Deni in the classic corner |
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| Deni on Wall street |
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| Lance "climbing" |
After climbing at the Ice cream parlor we headed to the grocery store to satisfy our appetite for ice cream! YUM! From there we headed back to Wallstreet to find the gang and and make plans for the next day. We decided to head to the Fischer Chimneys campground in order to climb Ancient Art tower the next day.
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| Sage and Rory on the first pitch |
We woke up early to get a head start on the brewing weather forecasted for that afternoon and headed out into the creepiest environment I've ever experienced. The towers stood eerily above us with a gray soup of clouds behind them, threatening to fall apart. No creatures stirred but the imagination provided many appropriately disgusting creatures to inhabit the little nooks and crannys of this desolate place. Eventually we caught up to our friends Rory and Sage at the base of the climb. They started climbing while we began to get ourselves organized.
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| Sage leading pitch 1 |
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| Creepy mudstone towers |
Soon after we began climbing. Deni lead the first half pitch and then I took over to climb the harder pitches, but pretty soon I was shamelessly pulling on janky bolts. I pulled gently and evenly praying nothing would rip out and hardly trusted my feet on the polished pebbles that zillions of thrill seekers have climbed before. Eventually I was wondering why the hell I was climbing this scary pile of mud.
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| Looking up at Ancient Art. Summit is on the left |
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| Deni following the second pitch |
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| Us and Rory at the Belay |
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| Lance in the mud chimney |
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| We were freezing |
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| Sage near the summit |
All the time climbers get asked “why do you climb”. A valid question, climbers expose themselves to a lot of risk, so what is the justification? For every climber the answer is different, most climbers don’t even have a solid answer, rather a constantly evolving answer. We climb different things for different reasons too. Sometimes we climb to scare ourselves shitless because life in the city is too mundane and easy. Sometimes because we want to learn about ourselves, learn things you can only learn at the end of your strength and motivation in those moments of desperation. Sometimes just to have fun and enjoy the remotest parts of nature. This time on Ancient art we climbed for the epic picture on top. I wanted to be that daredevil, badass guy from the commercial. The showoff. This I learned, is one of the worst reasons to climb. I was climbing for others, not myself. Luckily I made it up and down that janky-ass tower and back on the ground, I’ve learned my lesson. But I made it down with an epic picture so here it is.
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| Lance on the summit |
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