The Swing [Click to Zoom] (photo: T. Matsui)

Marshall and Tim picked me up Thursday after an exciting day of work in Bellevue. I already had all my stuff in my car, so Marshall just gave me one of the two 2-way radios he'd borrowed from some guy and we sped off into the sunset (well, it would have been a sunset if a) it wasn't raining or b) we were heading west). I drove by myself and Tim and Marshall were in Marshall's Pathfinder. We continued to speed for many, many miles; so many, in fact, that I would have lost count if it weren't for the fact that my car has this nifty feature called an odometer. Marshall and Tim were able to keep me awake by endless mindless banter over the radios. When we were virtually unable to drive any more, we happened to be in the vicinity of Burley, ID... so we decided to whip on out to City of Rocks to get some shut-eye. Unfortunately there was a lot of snow there, rendering the main road by Bath Rock undrivable. So we went around by the Twin Sisters and found a little campsite in the snow just as the sun was coming up. Tim of course had to get a bunch of pictures of the sunrise; City of Rocks in the sunrise with snow is incredibly beautiful!

We slept until noon or so and then rallied our senses and drove to Almo to get some coffee at the cool little general store there. Not quite as crowded as it is during peak climbing season, which isn't saying much anyway... It was about 80 miles of dirt road (which of course we drove at near light speed) east of Almo before we got back to I-82 just south of the Utah border. My new car didn't look so new after that... and it seemed to kinda pull to the right. Marshall got a flat tire. But that was nothing compared to what was to come...

"The next day... would figuratively but not literally blow our brains out of our skulls through our ears..."

We had to make it to SLC by 9:00PM on Friday to pick up Andrea at the SLC airport. She had to work that day in Seattle, and since she planned to leave early anyway, she just flew. Forrest's plane was supposed to come in at 10:30 that night as well. After an uneventful drive (except for Marshall rear-ending me and putting a bunch of teethmarks in my bumper (*&#@*%%@!)) we whipped on into SLC and had just barely enough time to suck down a few Black Butte Porters in the parking garage of the airport before we had to pick up Andrea, who made it in without a scratch. Forrest, on the other hand, managed to miss his plane due to a big car wreck in New York (we only found out by tracking down what seemed to be the only TWA employee in the airport at that time). The next flight was the next morning at 10:30. So we had to find a place to sleep. ATTENTION: All ye who need to find a place to crash if you're in SLC and don't want to pay for a hotel, you're screwed! We finally started driving west on I-80 until we passed the big ol' smoke stack for that hideous copper mine where there was a viewpoint at which trucks were stopped (apparently allowing their drivers to sleep). We found a little dirt road that went down the embankment next to the freeway and continued along a big pipeline. It seemed out-of-the-way enough, so we took it and it worked. It wasn't really even that noisy. Yay!

Ok, in the morning we got up early and went shopping at Albertsons to add to our pile of Costco food. I went to the airport to pick Forrest up, which went smoothly except for the fact that his big Fish bag didn't make it onto the same plane he did. Yuck . So we went to a park and played frisbee, ate a very good black bean burrito, toured the Tabernacle and resisted conversion, and made such small-talk comments about SLC as "it's a nice place to visit, but I'm glad I don't live here, and I really think I 'd rather be leading some heinous run-out 5.11c offwidth". Finally it came time to fetch Forrest's stuff and we made yet a third pilgrimage to the airport, this time returning with our final success and we were OUTTA THERE!

Dan Aylward on SuperCrack [Click to Zoom] (photo: T. Matsui)

The morale of the crew increased exponentially as we rocketed across the Wasatch mountains, visions of sandstone dancing before our eyes, reaching its height as we listened to Night Lily lovingly dismember her unfortunate suitor (the tax assessor on Tatooine) with her sharp, darting tongue. We rolled through Moab with hardly a second glance (we had to shut our eyes while getting gas at the Circle K to avoid it); for Moab was not our goal, we were bound for Indian Creek!

Another 80 miles of what would have been beautiful terrain had it not been dark got us to our beloved campsite right next to the creek where, despite the cold and our disturbance at seeing patches of snow on the ground, we zonked out almost immediately. The crack of dawn found us wide awake however, and we were ready to put to the test all the calluses we had been building up at the gym for the past few months. That day was absolutely beautiful. The temperature was perfect, the snow on the north facing talus piles was exotic, and I flashed the Incredible Hand Crack (Forrest thought I'd tried it before but I disagree) and pink-pointed SuperCrack. Marshall fell only slightly less short of his goal of redpointing Supercrack than he had the year before... he only had to hang about 5 times. But at least he got the right set of gear this time. Forrest beat his brains out on some unnamed dihedral crack around the corner to the left of Incredible Hand Crack. It was one of those 12d 10b's. Tim took lots of pictures, of course.

"Robber's Roost Canyon... scary... you would end up firmly implanted in [the really deep narrow parts] if you were to experience a disastrous failure of stemming power... "

That night we found a better campsite towards the Needles. We fried up a very salty, fatty, corned beef brisket on the hibachi (pronounced high-BATCH-ee) that wasn't very satisfying. Luckily there was lots of beer, chips and salsa to quench the thirst it created. The next morning was even more beautiful. It was gradually getting warmer. Tim and Andrea went to the Needles, Forrest, Marshall & I went back to Indian Creek. I climbed a more aesthetic version of the dihedral Forrest had humiliated himself on the day before; thusly humiliating myself in the process. I got to the top eventually though, after several sketchy maneuvers (like hanging on a very poorly placed #3 camalot and lowering a section of the rope to bring the batch of #2 camalots I should have had from the beginning, seeing as how the entire crack was about 2.5" wide...).

More beautiful days followed. We had reserved the campsite at Taylor Canyon (in the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands NP, where Zeus and Moses stand) for the nights of the 11th, 12th, and 13th. We spent entirely too much time in Moab on the 11th (which was my birthday, incidentally) picking up our 1200 foot static line (PMI finally finished with it and Fed-Ex'ed it to Rim Cyclery), buying a shovel and a come-along (hopefully unneeded utensils for extricating cars from unfortunate situations arrived at by overzealous driving on the many ridiculously underimproved roads of the area), doing more grocery shopping, and being generally lethargic. We finally got up our gumption and fired off our painstakingly prearranged plan with reckless abandon as follows:

At the Salt Flats (photo: T. Matsui)

Marshall, Tim and Forrest drove in Marshall's car over many miles of the aforementioned underimproved roads to within 1/4 mile of the lip of an 800-foot wide, 1000-foot tall, 600-foot overhanging ARC (for those of you not in the know, an arc is a pre-arch state where part of a cliff erodes away, making a very wide-mouthed cave). For those of you with no sense of scale, that's big. Marshall and Forrest carried our spool of 1200' of rope that 1/4 mile while Tim took many pictures of them, which they enjoyed greatly. Meanwhile, Andrea and I drove down into Taylor Canyon and ran the mile or so up the wash from the campsite to the base of the arc so I could tell them where to hang the rope.

This was where it was fortunate that we had the radios, since though I could see them like little ants on the top of the cliff, I had a very hard time hearing them. Just before the sun set they had the rope hung off the most bomber anchor any of you will ever see... A tree, a boulder about three times the size of a Volkswagen, two pitons, and a #3 & #4 Camalot, all equalized. Then there was even a backup prussik that held the rope just over the edge in case the abrasion did bad things to the rope. When they were done it took about 2 hours to drive back around and join us at our beloved Taylor Canyon campsite, with the best outhouse in the world. I forget what we ate for dinner that night, but it didn't come out of the outhouse.

"Primrose Dihedrals... the best desert climb in the world... was orgasmic mid-5.10 climbing..."

The next morning was Primrose Dihedrals (the most popular route on Moses) day! It sez in Climbing Magazine that it's the best desert climb in the world. I believe it. We wimped out and bypassed the 5.11d start and instead took the 5.8 traverse. The rest was orgasmic mid-5.10 climbing. We did it in two parties and had one pack that we hauled between the four of us, which made it a little slower than we'd have liked. Tim aided the ear, which is an 11c offwidth with a bolt ladder next to it. We made it to the top just in time for a sunset summit photo. And hey, if you ever do Moses, bring 2 60m ropes; you can descend with about 2 1/2 rappels. And I don't mean to sound sexist, but I must admit it was very nice to have spaghetti waiting for us at camp, prepared by Andrea.

The next day was the day we'd been looking forward to for a year. The day we hoped would figuratively but not literally blow our brains out of our skulls through our ears. The day we would make use of our 1200' rope and the effort it took to get it there. The day of our fabled 1000-foot rope swing! OH YAH, NO EXTRA ZEROS ON THAT NUMBER, BABY!

We packed up some climbing equipment, a few power bars and some water, and of course the ONYX banner and headed up the wash. Damn it, we forgot the Mountain Dew. Marshall insisted on going first, but Forrest & I went up the talus slope inside the arc (which was extremely portable-handhold-ridden) to set up a fixed line for easy subsequent ascents. You see, we had to launch from the top of the talus pile to get the proper velocity. Marshall began coiling the rope in his backpack as he walked up the talus slope. When he reached the static line, he whipped out his handy-dandy jumar and effortlessly grunted up to the top (a process taking about 10 minutes). Once he was at the top, we pulled the rope as tight as we could (using another jumar to keep it from sproinking us into space), anchored it with a yellow alien, tied Marshall to it by his prussic, watched the look of abject terror on his face, and pushed him off as we cackled with glee! Strange sounds emanated from his vocal cords as his speed increased to near terminal velocity. Then the rope caught and he was whisked like a broom out into the virtually endless empty space confined within the arc, moving ever farther until he was but a speck in the distant sunlight.

"Forrest beat his brains out on some unnamed dihedral crack..."

Of course, seeing how much fun he had, we were all clamoring for the next chance to do it. I was next, and I must say it was a very singular experience. For a few seconds, you rush along just above the disheveled rock of the talus pile, worried that you'll lose your arm or your ear or your stomach to a gaping mouth of one of those viscous rocks skimming at times less than a foot away from one or more of those body parts. Then everything becomes quiet except the wind (as you have by then used up your daily allocation of high-decibel sound emittance), and you continue your journey outward and everything becomes euphoric. Wind this way, wind that way; the sun, rocks, people, ONYX banner, and most other things diminish in importance compared to the wind, which is your friend. Aaaahhhhhh...

Anyway, back to reality. When you're done swinging, you just yank the coil of rope out of the backpack, drop it to the ground, use a jumar to take the weight off the prussic, undo it, and rappel down into the hands of the waiting stickerbush. In all, we did 7 swings. Marshall and I got to do it twice (we were the ones who paid for the rope anyway). The most significant comment after the experience came from Andrea, who said "It's better than any orgasm!". Tim was happy to hear that.

Despite the thrill, we went to bed with not quite as much satisfaction as we had the night before (which had been a hard-to-beat 100%).

The next day we had the arduous chore of retrieving our rope. Since my car couldn't make it over much of the terrain to get there, we ditched it and a bunch of gear in the middle of a big grass prairie that looked like an African savanna and piled into Marshall's car. Forrest and Marshall made me and Tim haul the rope back to the car. Sorry, kryptobiotic soil... :( Since it wasn't particularly late, we decided to get in a bit of climbing on the Potash road. There stands the greatest portion of true sport climbs in the Moab area. The cool part about it is you can belay from your bumper with salt trucks whipping by at 50 and listen to Techno all at the same time! Whee! We drove back to Moab with the intention of getting tanked up and a scrump-diddly-umptious meal at Eddie McStiffs. It was pretty crowded, being a Friday night, and the experience was far inferior to any I'd had there before. They'd done something to the beer that they said made it go down "smoother". It just tasted like water to me... But the dinner was good, and free for me, 'cause it was my birthday & my supercool friends picked up the tab :).

We found our beloved campsite in Long Canyon (near Jughandle Arch just off the Potash road) and made a white-man fire and drank the beer from the growlers we brought from Eddie McStiffs. It didn't seem so watery as time went on, or at least it didn't seem to matter so much...

The next day was to be Andrea's last day with us, and she was sad to leave despite all the crass talk she'd had to put up with from us, so we all stayed up very late under the light of the ever-present Hale-Bopp with the spaceship obviously trailing behind it. Since Andrea had to be at Green River to catch the bus back to SLC at 4:30 on Saturday, we decided to hit the Fiery Furnace for a while. The Fiery Furnace is a veritable maze of rock, taking up about 2 square miles, which is plenty big enough with that sort of landscape to get lost in for many hours. So we got lost in it for many hours. We went up, down, forward, backward, left, right, and every combination thereof, in a sea of red rock, sand, and fortunately very few bugs. I got roadrash on my leg though, which is quite painful if you haven't experienced it before... (or even if you have)...

When we finally managed to find our way out of that wretched place, we had to hurry to Green River, where we had fries with ranch sauce and watched as Andrea blazed off in the Greyhound. It was sad to see her leave, but we had high satisfaction levels, and we had a whole 'nother week to look forward to, a week we hoped would contain, for us and preferably not others, the MAZE!

The Maze District is the southwest portion of Canyonlands NP. To get there from Moab you either have to ford the Colorado River or go 250 miles around the top of the park and down the other side. We chose the second option, since we were already at Green River (North of the park), and besides, the Colorado is full of monkey water. But to get there from Green River, we had to take 70 miles or so of dirt road, which we drove in the dark a large margin faster than we should have. Actually, we didn't get all the way to the Maze District, we got sidetracked on a little hike in Horseshoe Canyon where there are many Anasazi & other cultures. Well, the cultures aren't there anymore I guess, but their paintings are. Very interesting seeing such old things ma de by people. They seemed to be a bit deformed though, if their pictures are an accurate representation of themselves. They had no arms or legs. But they did have a head, and I guess when it comes right down to it, a head is all you need, especially if it has a brain in it.

We continued our trek to the Maze, and upon our arrival at the Hans Flat ranger station, we discovered the unfortunate reality that all the permits for the Maze were taken! Ack! But I must say that the rangers there were much more helpful than those in Moab. They helped us plan a canyoneering trip in Robber's Roost Canyon, which is on BLM land, thereby not subject to such limiting things as permits. Since we had two cars, we could park one at each end, and hike from one end to the other, a great advantage over those poor one-car groups! Ha! Robber's Roost Canyon is probably about 15 miles long, and it houses a wash that empties out into the Dirty Devil river (which, as you might well imagine, is quite dirty).

The canyon required a rappel to get into at the top, and at times was barely wide enough to walk through. It kept getting deeper, narrower, darker, narrower, deeper, etc. until it was as deep and narrow as something that's really deep and narrow, or possibly even deeper and narrower than that, depending on the deep narrow thing you decided to use for comparison. Sometimes we chose to take the "high road", stemming across the V-shaped canyon and bypassing some of the really deep narrow parts, but that was often scary because of the very deep, narrow parts below you, which you would en d up firmly implanted in if you were to experience a disastrous failure of stemming power. We planned to do the whole thing in 4 days, but that was too long. We were out of the very narrow part by the end of the first day and found our beloved campsite underneath a small arc. Upon returning from my conversation with the Duke that evening, I saw a very large scorpion, which, though intriguing, seemed to cause a certain amount of fear to exhibit itself in us, and we made sure we zipped up our tents that night.

The next day was pretty lazy. We walked down the wash, and instead of getting deeper and narrower, the canyon began to get deeper and wider. We only went 3 miles or so before finding our beloved campsite up on a ledge of rock overlooking a very wide sec tion of the canyon. It was very bright out at night; the moon was almost full. We ran around in circles in a dry whirlpool, and Forrest climbed up to a place where he said there were hordes of naked women and gold and diamonds, but I'm skeptical. The third day in Robber's Roost was probably the hottest day we had. The sun beat down unrelentingly on our heads and shoulders and inner ears if we turned our heads in the right way. The canyon became very wide and walking on the wash reminded me of the beach, except for the lack of water. It wasn't long, though, before we got into a zone of sloppy, gucky, ucky muck with horsetails and hobgoblins (we didn't actually see any hobgoblins, but I'm sure they were there), and then there it was: the Dirty Devil.

We had about a quart of water between the four of us to drink with our salty Spam & Kipper Snack lunch; we didn't want to clog our filters with the nasty Dirty Devil water. So we cleverly downed the last of our water & headed up towards the canyon rim where we'd left my car. The next hour and a half afforded us a delightfully hot and dry brisk hike; so delightful, in fact, that I felt nauseous and delirious. HINT#1: If you don't have any water, it's bad to go wandering in the desert at midday in the sun with a heavy pack for several miles uphill on a south-facing slope of slickrock. Fortunately we all made it back to my car without being demolecularized by the solar radiation, where there was a partially full 5-gallon jug of water. HINT#2: If you want warm, plasticy water to taste very good, go wandering in the desert at midday in the sun with a heavy pack for several miles uphill on a south-facing slope of slickrock.

After we quenched our thirst, Marshall and I drove my car to the other end of the canyon (which took about an hour and included driving over sand dunes, which was fun but not very good for my car, a common theme for the entire trip) and I dropped Marshall off at his car and we drove it back to where Tim and Forrest were waiting for us lying on our blue tarp drinking beer. Having nothing better to do, Marshall and I began to drink beer too and then wine and then champagne. We ate dinner in there somewhere too I think, but it's all kinda hazy now for some reason. We lit our remaining white gas on fire (which wasn't much) and danced around the flames in a very primitive way listening to Underworld.

The next day was our last day in Canyonlands; Forrest had to catch his plane at 1:30pm on Friday. We decided to allocate it bringing the Pancake Pavilion (one of its many resurrections since its birth on the Pica glacier) to Panorama Point, where we could drool over the cliff at a spectacular view of the Maze District (which by then we'd already decided we'd do next year, getting our permits well in advance). This entailed navigation of a 30 mile extreme high-clearance 4x4 road, which Marshall handled with ease in his Pathfinder. We had to stop and do some road maintenance at one point. The whole time I was thinking "I'm glad I'm not trying to drive my car through all this..." It made for a very relaxing day to put the cap on a thoroughly fabulous vacation.

We went back to our beloved campsite just outside the park boundary (on BLM land) and sorted gear. Then we went to sleep. Then we got up at 6:00. Then we drove and drove on dirt roads at high speed. Then we finally got to paved road after 250 miles of dirt road. Then Marshall got another flat tire. Then we got to Green River. Then we ate a trucker breakfast. Then we went to SLC to drop Forrest off. Then we went through the salt flats towards Nevada. Then we got to Elko, Nevada and gambled and I won $5, and ate a very bad enchilada. Then we spent the night on a dirt road. Then we drove up through Oregon. Then we got home and sadness ensued because everything is over and gone and done with... But we all recovered from our sadness and now life is back to normal. We're looking forward to NEXT YEAR of course! Anyone want to join us?

— Dan Aylward, Mountain Zone Pubster