Indian Creek

Just a few short days after I got back from Joshua Tree, before I could unpack my car and air out my sleeping bag I was packing it all back up for a trip to Indian Creek. It's a different kind of climbing down there. It's crack climbing at it's finest. You could spend months there, and some people do, and still never climb all the perfect splitter cracks Indian Creek has to offer. We spent 3 days there and I'm hooked on it. Towering red sandstone, frigged camping at night, incredibly friendly people from all over the globe all climbing and sharing everything. It was a really great trip! Mark on the first climb of the trip. Heading up Generic Crack.

Me attempting Quarter Of A Man. I only made it about a quarter of the way up too, which is actually pretty far considering most climbs there are over 100 feet.

Did I mention frigged camping? It was the coldest I've ever been camping. We woke up the second morning to snow so we all drove into Moab for the day and hoped for better weather when we got back.There was on old corral by where we were camping. I put on all the clothes I brought with me and took a long walk to the outhouse at Newspaper Rock to try and warm up. It didn't work. Our third and last day was sunny! We headed out to The Cat Wall for more climbing.

Above is Adam in the parking lot before we hiked up to the base of the climbs. Below is a view up the creek from the base of what we thought was The Cat Wall. Turns out that The Cat Wall was actually that first formation on the left of the picture. They all look so similar! We had Jennilyn's kids with us and didn't want to do another hike right away so half of us went back down and drove over to the Supercrack area and the other half stayed put and climbed there.

I tried the famous Supercrack but didn't love it too much. I did however love everything else I climbed on that wall that day. Price led a bunch of climbs for me and his fiance Cyndi and I couldn't have been happier with everything he picked out for us.

This is Price with Cyndi on his shoulders. Like I said pretty much everyone there acts like old friends, loaning gear and sharing ropes. These two were helping some other climbers get some stuck gear out of the crack.

This was the climb that made me really love Indian Creek. Incredible Hand Crack. It was just as fun as everyone says it is and more. I loved it and only had a problem on the one overhanging bulge part. Someday I'll climb this clean I know it. Here I'm mantling up a ledge near the base, proof that it's not all hand jams in Indian Creek.

...half way up...

...and at the top.

This was an odd one called Wild Works of Fire

Here Price is leading it for us.

Cyndi practicing placing gear while on a top rope.

Here is Jennilyn going up Coyne Crack. This is my favorite picture from the trip. It was also my favorite climb of the trip and hers as well. If I lived any closer to Indian Creek I think I would make this crack a project and go try and climb it everyday after work. When I got down they told me it's rated 5.12! I don't think I'd have attempted it if I'd known that, but then ratings for cracks are all relative to hand size.

I love this picture of Jennilyn with her hand in position aiming it for the crack.

Then there were the kids...I'll leave out any comments about them. It's impressive that Jennilyn takes them with us wherever we go and sometimes they're pretty cute. This is Fisher, the youngest at the base of the wall. I'd be surprised if they don't grow up to be climbers. I ended up having an empty car on my drive home since some people came later and some stayed and climbed on Sunday. Since I was alone I stopped over at Wilson's Arch and scrambled up under to see the view. It was better than I expected.

One last picture of the whole group...minus me: Jennilyn is climbing, Adam is on belay, Mark is sorting gear, Ben is watching the boys in the shade, Price and Cyndi are kissing, and I'm taking pictures.

And that's it! My first but definitely not my last trip to Indian Creek.