Woo!

Rising Dark

Ominous title for a pleasant little post.  JS on Tube Steaks Tomorrow, a pleasant little hand crack!  The best part of the route is the many opportunities for laybacking, which I, sport climber, never appreciated so much before I entered the land of the splitters.

Delicate

The iconic Delicate Arch, sunset.  I wonder if, when the erosion starts to seriously threaten the stability of this thing, the Park Service will do a subtle little bolt-n-glue.  Granted, they have let other arches or towers fall, but this one is such a draw, such an icon, such a reason to a pay a $15 entrance fee.  Could they allow nature to take its course?

King of All He Surveys

SZ looking out over the Indian Creek valley.  He has huuuuge...tracts of land.  (What, the curtains?)

We Be Jamming

SZ in (a crappy, sketchy, sandy) hand crack at Second Meat Wall, Indian Creek.  No fewer than three people, myself included, bailed off of this moderate.  It was a cold morning and a weirdish route- there were face feet, which should make a splitter easier, but they were so sandy that the wall just exfoliated under your shoes and you felt like they could pop at any time.  The sandy crack made the gear less trustworthy too.  But mostly I think we just didn't have our heads in the game for the day yet.

Natural Light

Evening sun through denuded cottonwood trees, in the valley between the cliffs of Indian Creek.  A break from pictures of climbers.