December 20, 2025 through January 4, 2026
This year has been a busy one. We’ve done some trips, some of which I’ve mentioned here, many I didn’t write about. With Christmas and New Year’s being on Thursday, we opted to take the two weeks off and do a long road trip. We planned generally for Red Rocks to Phoenix, to Tucson, and then back to Salt Lake City, with climbing and mountain biking along the way. We ended up needing to keep our plans flexible due to a prolonged series of storms. Here’s the general route:
For Thanksgiving we went to Red Rocks for the first time in quite a while. Despite the short days, it is often really nice there at that time of year. Our plan was to stay through Christmas, but the weather forced us away before that. While the sun shone though we were able to get on the classic moderate, Olive Oil (5.7), and amazingly had the route to ourselves. Carly led P1 and combined P2-3 in a long pitch. I finished up P4 and P5. Its a great moderate route with minimal runout and enough interesting climbing to not make it seem like a walk-up. One of the most memorable points in the day was right at the start with one of the most fantastic sunrises I’ve seen in a long time.
The following day we headed into First Creek Canyon and climbed Black Magic (5.8). Again Carly lead the first two pitches and then I did P3-4. I thought it was fun route and the crux P3 pitch wasn’t all that difficult, it had some good feet to get out onto the arrete. I thought P1 was the most interesting climbing, with some thoughtful, balancy, but well protected moves.
Tuesday we saw that the weather wouldn’t hold all day and Flash Flood warnings were in place in the days ahead. With that in mind we headed to the Second Pullout and did single pitch stuff and also the Great Red Book (5.8). GRB was quite fun on the second pitch. Committing slabby moves into a wide spot for a sec. Thankfully the protection was OK with bolts and I had a #4 cam for the wide bit.
As we finished up climbing we could see the rain coming in and we did get doused on the walk back to the van. Since Red Rocks is +6 hrs away we never head there when rain is in the forecast. The water softens the rock and it is too soft to safely climb on for a day or two depending on how much water soaks in. For this trip we had more flexibility so we enjoyed the experience of the rain. However the rain wasn’t supposed to stop much so we headed to Boulder City and the Hoover Dam en route to Kingman where we hoped to mountain bike.
As we continued to Kingman it looked as though the weather wouldn’t be improving for mountain biking, and more importantly we had a van problem surfacing. As we headed to Kingman, about 75 miles, I noticed the temp gage was a bit higher than usual. It wasn’t dangerously high, but I still checked the coolant when we stopped for gas. Coolant level was fine so I decided we should try and see if we could get it looked at in Kingman. We headed to the Chevy dealership, just because its the easy option. It was Christmas Eve and they were short staffed and wouldn’t be able to look at it until the day after Christmas. We continued looking for another shop and found that Holden’s Auto Service had good reviews. We rolled in thinking our chances were small for getting the issue diagnosed and resolved on Christmas Eve after lunchtime. However Christian and the other guys at the shop were able to find that the radiator fan clutch was slipping and therefore the fan wasn’t forcing the usual amount of air over the radiator, leading to the higher temps. They found the part and installed it in less than 3 hours! Much thanks to them for getting us confidently back on the road, and on Christmas Eve.
We stayed in the van near the dam so that we could walk across the Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge downstream and take a look at one of the modern engineering marvels in the US. The fact that the Colorado River is a dwindling and argued over resource in the West (see Where the Water Goes, and Cadillac Desert, et al.) the dam was still an impressive sight to see. Perhaps another time I’ll take a tour inside.
After getting back on the road we decided we’d bivy near Phoenix that night and then stay around there for a few days. Since we’d been living out of the van for 5-6 days at that point we booked a hotel on points for Christmas day so we could shower, restock supplies and do some mountain biking.
Christmas day was about as pleasant as they get in Phoenix, sunny and in the high 60’s. We rode at South Mountain and at Hawes. Both areas were nice, but I greatly preferred Hawes. South Mountain had a lot of really steep and rocky sections despite all the trails we picked being intermediate ones. Hawes was much more smooth. The views from Hawes were really nice too, beautiful desert, tall saguaros and some interesting peaks in the background. A really memorable Christmas.
Our friends Kasi and Andreas are in Tucson for the winter and our plan was eventually heading there to see them and climb in Cochise. We packed up and headed east of Phoenix to climb in Queen Creek aka Oak Flat for a couple days before going to Tucson.
Queen Creek is volcanic tuft, which is a very coarse type of rock we don’t have much of in Utah. The access is quite good to many spots in Queen Creek too. The first day we climbed at Atlantis which is basically directly below the road parking. The routes were fun and reasonably well bolted. We ended up climbing until sunset which is a little out of the ordinary for us. After climbing we headed to Oak Flat Campground. The camping was great, nice flat established spots and no charge, though they should have a modest fee since they have fire rings, picnic tables and a couple of toilets. Oak Flat is at risk due to a mining company trying to purchase the land. Hopefully it doesn’t go that way and the campground and climbing are untouched from the mine.
The following day, the 27th, we had to head down into Superior to avoid some rain. We hiked around Picketpost Trailhead to kill some time. For the entire trip we were fortunate to have amazingly green views, incredibly lush for the desert. We eventually saw more clear skies and headed back up to do a three pitch route which we swapped leads on. The route finished up a bit higher than the road where we parked and we were rewarded with a nice sunset.
Heading to Tucson the next day we met up with Kasi at her casita where we stayed a couple Christmases ago. We had a couple days to kill before heading out of town because Andreas was with his parents in Seattle. We climbed at La Milagrossa Canyon again and yet again it was awesome. The climbing there is so thin and technical. The routes seem impossible at first than then they climb down as the balance and sequence make themselves more obvious. Despite not getting to see another zone around Tucson, it was still a great afternoon and sunset.
Once Andreas made it back from Seattle we headed east to The Cochise Stronghold. We opted for the west side since the largest feature, Sheepshead is on that side. The afternoon of our arrival we walked from camp to Trad Rock to clip bolts on some fine granite. Naturally we all thought we were pretty good since we all lead a “5.11a” slab thinking it was closer to 5.10a. Sure enough with some cross referencing between the book and Mountain Project, we realized the slab was in-fact 5.10a 😂.
That evening as we made dinner some showers started to rain on us as we made dinner. We rolled out our awnings and were lucky to have a nice large space to be outside, but not getting wet between our vans.
The next day (New Year’s eve) showers didn’t seem like they would clear so we rode our mountain bikes on the dirt roads outside of camp. We visited Council Rocks, a rock with some pictographs on the underside of an overhanging boulder. After exploring around for a while we spotted some more rain on the horizon and were able to make it back to camp before it started pouring again. The showers continued on and off until we called it quits at East Coast NY’s (10pm).
Thankfully the morning was clear but everything was a bit wet from the afternoon and evening of showers. Nevertheless, we started packing for climbing. The granite in Cochise dries quickly and we figured we could get some climbing in on Sheepshead. As we got to the base of the feature though we saw a number of other parties on different routes. The moderate classic we wanted to do, Ewphoria (5.8) was sopping wet so we opted to do some three pitch routes adjacent to each other so we could chat and take some pics. The routes were in the 5.10 range and felt reasonable for the most part with only a few cruxes. As the sun was setting we headed back to the vans and had a great sunset/moonrise, a great finish to a short, but fun trip to Cochise.
Saturday Carly and I headed north towards Flagstaff and Utah. The hope was that we could ride bikes for an hour or two and continue driving to Salt Lake. We planned for a two day return to Salt Lake. We didn’t quite take into account some of the weather and elevation Flagstaff has and it was too cold and probably too wet to ride the trails around there. Had we thought of it we should have gone through Sedona which is lower elevation.
We stopped on the south rim of the Grand Canyon for the evening. We got dinner in the park and then found a spot to park the van for the evening. However before it got dark we headed to the edge of the rim to check out the views. I hadn’t been to the Grand Canyon before and it is quite a sight. I’ve seen a lot of mountains and the GC was another sight altogether. Usually you’re looking at something for the view. In the case of the GC it is the lack of something that is the view. The scale is monstrous, almost impossible wrap your head around. Definitely go a check it out if you have the opportunity.
Sunday morning we got up before sunrise to get an early start on the driving it was still 8 hours of driving without stops to get home. Sunrise was quite nice. Some clouds gave the sky some depth and provided someplace for the color to go before reaching into the canyon itself, spectacular. I saw a really interesting raven with a long curved beak, it seemed like a deformity.
On the way home we stopped at Big Bend on the Colorado River. While it is a bit of a tourist trap and costs $10 to park (not part of the National Park system, its on a reservation), it is quite a pretty sight. While pictures don’t do it justice, there are lots and lots of good photos out there of this view.
Heading back to the road we stopped one last time in Richfield, UT, an up and coming mountain biking area. The trails apparently close until April 1, probably in an effort to keep them from getting out of shape when the ground is soft. We decided to do the kid’s loop a couple times which didn’t seem to be part of the closure just to get some fresh air and move the legs a bit. We were the only ones there so it didn’t really matter.
Such a great extended road trip! Two full weeks off and only three work messages I needed to save to address on Monday. Which work came a little abruptly since I was on a plane and in San Jose a little more than 12 hours after getting back to Salt Lake—quite the mood shift.
PS All but two of the photos in the gallery are from my iPhone. 😎
