Check this out

stillfree.com

Watch the top left of the four videos first.

Round Two

Yesterday I went back to American Fork Canyon to work on Reaching For Razors, the 5.11d I mentioned in my previous post. I had been feeling a little sick, and I didn't have any expectations of climbing the thing. After warming up on a couple of easier routes, I jumped on RFR. My first attempt was less than whole hearted. I was feeling weak, cold, and clammy. I fell at the the crux of the route, three bolts up. When I fell, my right foot got tangled up in the rope, and I was jerked upside down before coming to an abrupt stop. I didn't care, I just felt like crap and wanted down. On my second try, I stuck the move, and was able to clip the next bolt. Now I had forgotten I was sick. I had to rest at the bolt, but I got up the route again, and with much less trouble than last week. I'm sure I'll be able to send it free and clean soon. I'll keep you posted. 

On the way back from AF Canyon, I got a call from my new friend Mike. I met Mike just a couple of weeks ago, and just thi

s Sunday we found out we both climb. He's more into alpine climbing, mountaineering, and trad, which is what I really want to get into as well. He was calling to see if I wanted to do a night trad climb up in Rock Canyon. I have wanted to learn to trad climb for a long, long time.

 So I said that of course I did. Half an hour later we were driving to Rock Canyon. We headed up to the very popular and often climbed Red Slab. I led the first pitch, a bolted 5.7 that I had climbed many times before. Pitch 1.5 wasn't really a pitch at all, just a scramble up 75 vertical feet or so that we did unbelayed. The second pitch was our real goal-a 35-40 metercrack up the

 face of Ed and Terry Wall, also rated 5.7. Before Mike got started climbing, 

I got to fool around a bit placing cams in the crack and testing their strength. I belayed Mike while he climbed and placed his gear. He got a little over halfway up the route before the crack widened out to the point that he just didn't have gear that would fit. Rather than risking a big fall, he decided to back off. I lowered him to the ground, pulled the rope down, and hiked around the backside of the crag to the top. I set an anchor on the bolts on the top of the route, lowered one end of the rope to Mike, and belayed him as he climbed the crack up to me. Then we switched spots, he lowered me to the ground, and I did the same climb. I should mention that it had gotten dark before we got 

the the bottom of the second pitch, and we were doing all this climbing in the dark, with only our headlamps to light the way. After I climbed, we took a few minutes to admire the view with our lights off. On one side of us was the cliff, the mouth of the canyon, and the glowing lights of the city. On the other side were the sillouettes of the mountain and the darker, starry sky.

We rappelled down into the darkness, downclimbed to the top of the first pitch, and rappelled again. Then we packed up, hiked down to the cars, and got home around 10:00 pm. This morning my mild cold was far, far, worst, and I still feel aweful writing this now. Maybe climbing for eight hours straight while I'm sick isn't the best idea I've ever had. 

Yesterday I climbed the hardest route I've ever done-a 5.11d. I didn't do it without falling, but I led the whole thing. Just thought I'd brag about that.

Zion and Behunin Canyon

Last weekend I got to go with some friends down to Zion National Park. We drove down Friday afternoon, and got back late Saturday night (actually, it was Sunday morning). Friday evening, after the four hour drive to get to our campsite, we ventured into the park to hike Angel's Landing. I had done the same hike back in March, with the whole thing under a few feet of snow. This time there was no snow, and the hike was just as spectacular. We got to the top half an hour or so after sunset. We didn't stay long because it was getting so dark. In fact the descent back to the valley floor was rather treacherous-we had only one flashlight between the five of us. It was very hard to see, and any real slip would have resulted in a fast, airy trip to the bottom, some 1488ft straight down.
We spent the night at a FREE campsite just outside the park. We met three other carloads of people I didn't know, but who soon became my friends, and the night was a blast.
Saturday morning, the whole group started up the trail to Angel's Landing. Four of us split off onto the West Rim Trail, and continued on for another hour and a half or so to the top of Behunin Canyon. We spent the day navigating the 2000 vertical feet between the top of the canyon and the valley floor. The descent included 9 rappels, including several over one hundred feet (the tallest was 165ft), sketchy downclimbs, a short swim, lots of scrambling, and, in my case, a dip in a pool of the most foul, putrid, disgustingly stale water imaginable. In other words, everything you could want from a canyon.

My First Multi-Pitch Climb

About a week and a half ago, before all this business with school and homework started, my good friend Jeff and I decided we were going to attempt a multi-pitch climb in Rock Canyon, located a whole five minutes from my apartment in Provo, Utah. I had never attempted any kind of multi-pitch route. Jeff had been on a couple, and had never lead climbed on one before. Needless to say, we were pushing ourselves a bit. We decided on a three pitch route on a tower called the Trilogy Butress. We got some pretty good info on the route from an excellent website-mountainproject.com, as well as a dude at the local mountaineering shop.
Knowing that the heat was going to be our biggest challenge, we got an early start-11:30am. In other words, we ended up climbing in the sun during the hottest hours of the day.
I led the first pitch, an easy 5.6, to a ledge about 70 feet up the wall. I belayed Jeff up to my position, and he continued up the wall past me onto the second pitch, a 5.7. As he climbed up, the route took him around a corner and out of my sight. After a few minute, he shouted down that he could not find the anchors, only a single bolt with a rappell ring on it. What was worse, he couldn't see a single bolt anywhere on the rock above him. At his discretion, we decided to call it quits. I tried to lower him back to my level, but we found that with the rope running around a corner, there was simply too much friction. I could not lower Jeff at all. Still clipped in safely at my anchors, I untied from my end of the rope and let Jeff pull the whole thing up to him so he could rig a better rappell, which he did. With both of us at the bottom of the second pitch (remember, we're still seventy feet in the air), it was time to pull the rope. But friction had plans of its own. Try as we might, there was just no pulling the rope. It just would not budge. So we were stuck. We could not go up (no bolts), and we could not go down (the rope was stuck!). For an hour and a half we tried everything we could to get that dang rope unstuck. Finally, I ended up "reverse rappelling" the rope. That is, pushing off the rock with my feet while pulling myself up on the rope, then pulling the slack out through my belay device. So I ascended up the rope, eight inches at a time. I was able to free the rope and anchor it in a better spot (the next bolt down). I rappelled back to Jeff, and we pulled the rope without a problem. We were then able to rappell down to the ground. We hiked back to the car safe, sunburnt, and satisfied. It was a first rate adventure if I ever had one.