Jen and I joined Alex for an after work sports style technical rock scaling session. Turns out that Jen and I are in good shape for trad climbing, which basically means that we can barely pull through the simplest of cruxes if they’re steep and crimpy. Doh! Guess it’s time to actually get strong. Had to happen sooner or later.

There are no words to describe what it’s like to see Yosemite Valley for the first time. I almost crashed my truck when I rounded the corner and saw El Cap towering above everything else. I’ve been climbing for 13 years now and this is the first time I had ever been there. Horror stories about crowded climbs, jaded rangers, annoying tourists, and on always convinced me that I should just go somewhere more remote. Whatever problems this place may have, they’re all worth it, and really not that bad. Crowds? Sure, but we lucked out and didn’t have a problem. Rangers? Yup, they busted our campsite neighbors for possession. Tourists? Of the two that talked to us, one was in fact very annoying. The other gave us beer. The only real down sides of the trip were a squirrel eating through my tent and hearing someone deck from the first pitch of the Nutcracker (broken arm, very lucky). And the good side? Well, how about thousands of feet of world-class granite everywhere you look. Since Jen and I are still in the process of getting fully healed, we concentrated on ultra-classic multi-pitch moderates. We could have climbed two a day for the rest of the summer before we even had to make an effort to find something else. Of the several thousand feet worth of climbing that we did, maybe two pitches ranked below amazing. Oh, and if anyone reading this is a movie producer who needs a good place to shoot a post apocalyptic hell scape, then I recommend hwy 6 through Nevada. It’ll do nicely.

In stark contrast to last weekend’s trip, Jen and I loaded up the truck with all of our gear, Chaco, and our loaner dog Zeeke, Saturday morning and headed to the City of Rocks. Despite the sketchy weather forecast, the sun came out and temps stayed nice, if not too hot on occasion. The puppy behaved well and we got a bunch of good pitches despite treating this weekend like a camping trip with some climbing instead of a climbing trip with some camping. Unfortunately, some jackass (that would be me) forgot the buns for the burgers, the cookies, sausage for breakfast burritos, and something else too (I can’t remember what I forgot). Jen only forgot Chaco’s bed, which led to a rather tense two-dogs-in-one-kennel situation that turned out just fine.

Scott and I came down to Zion to do a wall together this weekend. Without taking into account the fact that it was 89 degrees, we decided to do Touchstone. Despite being on the first shuttle into the park on Saturday morning, we were snaked by a team of four guys from ‘Rado who got a permit and drove in just before us. When we got to the base we saw that they were fixed all the way to the anchor half way up pitch 4, so we didn’t worry about it. I led the first couple pitches and Scott took over at the third. What we did not know was that the crew ahead of us had yet to complete one single pitch of climbing yet. We later learned that they took nine hours for fix three-and-a-half pitches the day before. When Scott started the fourth pitch, he found the mid-way belay station to be occupied. This led to me sitting at a hanging belay for two hours while Scott putted along behind their team. This trend continued and eventually led to us chilling on a ledge for well over an hour in the sun while the clustergaggle of ropes, climbers, and haul bags progressed in front of us. Then we did it all again on the next pitch. Finally, we got by. But not until the last pitch, well after we had planned to already be back in camp. Either way, the gully descent went really smooth and we got to the nearest drinking fountain in time to drink gallons while tourists gawked at us.

Climbing a wall in Zion is a really strange experience. It’s a lot like being inside a fish bowl, especially on Touchstone, which is only about 100 yards from the road. Every shuttle bus that goes by stops so people can take a look at the climbers and hang out the windows with their cameras. When we got down, everyone on the bus questioned us about what we climbed, how long it took, what kind of training we did, and so on. I answered everyone’s questions with a smile on my face, preying for the next stop and a drinking fountain. After we got done downing gallons of water, a woman came up to us and asked what we climbed. After we told her, she said we were amazing to watch (which I doubt, since aid climbing must be the most boring spectator sport ever), then asked to shake our hands. To say that I felt uncomfortable would be a serious understatement. I miss alpine climbing.

After a few beers, several thousand calories worth of dinner, and a good night’s sleep, Scott and I got up the next day and climbed Toilet Cracks. Despite the name, the route was great, and being in the shade, was the best possible thing we could have done.

The nice thing about being really terrible at something is that every time you go out and do it again you’re a little better than before. Despite being on something that was a bit harder to aid, we were much faster then Sunday. Our mark of success was that we were just fast enough to keep from being those jackesses who were holding up any parties who actually wanted to climb Green A instead of engineering their ways up it.

My friend Scott talked me into doing a thing in a place, and it’ll require some skills that I only possess in the bare minimum. So, today Scott and I went into BCC, aided a crack, cleaned it on jugs, filled a haul bag with rocks, and hauled it. We learned a lot today, but above all else we learned this… We are terrible aid climbers!

On day two of our granite mission, Jen and I headed to a place that we’d been to tons of times, but not recently. We went up to do Crescent Crack, but people were on it, so we did Lunge or Plunge to use up some time. I was happy to get on it, since it’s always a good test of thin-pro skills and a touch heady. After that we headed up Crescent Crack and traversed over to finish the day on the always-classic Coffin Crack. It was a pretty mellow day by most standards, but for some reason we’re pretty worked. Wide granite climbing does that to ya, even when it’s really easy.

Jen and I have been craving some granite lately, and since it was 65 and splitter today we just stayed local and headed into LCC. Despite living here for more then seven years, I have never climbed at the Egg. It looked like a good place to work on my non-existent slab-climbing skills, and proved to be super fun. We ran into Shingo and crew, and basically had a pretty kickass day.