Well! Its been a while since I posted anything, since July in fact when we went to the Uintas. My computer starting going on the fritz earlier this year and degraded precipitously in the late summer and fall. At this point I’m not sure what is wrong with it, but it seems hardware related and more or less won’t boot. It is from 2019 so it had a good run, but my other macs went on forever until I just needed more horsepower, ah well. I bit the bullet and got a Black Friday deal on a new one and here I am, posting again. I’ll probably post photos from our trip to the Red River Gorge in October, but without any text to go along with it. Backfilling the void is too much time.
Over Thanksgiving we headed to Red Rocks as we’ve done a few times in the past. Some friends ended up back in St. George to boulder in Moe’s Valley, but neither of us are psyched on bouldering at the moment because both of us have shoulder injuries. More so me than Carly, but either way, bouldering is a lot less fun when you’re not able to climb the same stuff your friends are or when you’re cautious to try hard and risk hurting yourself further. So we headed a little farther down I-15 to the shiny lights of Vegas.
We camped in the van and brought turkey I cooked on the Traeger ahead of time. We found a new zone to bivy in and it is a bit closer than the Lovell Canyon Rd area. No fire signs are well posted so not much ambiance once the sun goes down, which as a reminder is 4:30 pm this time of year in that second of Nevada.
We stuck to more moderate climbing, a bit of 1-2 pitch cragging and plugged gear for the most part. We also did a multi-pitch day in the canyon to the south of the one that accesses the south face of Windy Peak. We picked that area figuring it would be less crowded, which was definitely true—we didn’t see anyone that day. The down side was the route, Prime Rib (5.7) wasn’t super traveled and as a result took a little more effort for route finding. The route itself was good. The first and part of the second pitches had some less quality rock, but overall the climbing was fun on good varnished plates. The biggest negative was the lack of comfortable or obvious belays.
The following day we did a trail run from the top of the pass on Rt. 160 and summited the same peak we’d climbed from Prime Rib. That section of the mountains starts in limestone and transitions to sandstone which was fun. To finish up the day we did a little sport cragging almost on Rt. 160 at very sharp but still fun due to the zero approach.
BTW, all of these photos except for the drone one where taken on my iPhone 17 Pro that both Carly and I got a few months ago. I haven’t had a phone from the ‘Pro’ line yet and I have to say I am amazed at how good the photos are with the different lenses. The telephoto lenses are pretty darn good. I’m really impressed.
I’m hoping to have a little better cadence in posting worthwhile stuff now that I’ve re-upped my computer. Now we just need some snow to really start falling to get a good ski season…
