Eastbound

For the first time in almost a year and a half, and overcircumventing the globe, I have finally done some traveling going east.  I see that I left off my last post just before doing the inspection of the Cooper River Bridge with Vertical Access.  It was fun to be on rope again in a really cool setting.  Check it out:

Lowering myself down to the cable I was about to inspect

Also for those interested, there is a 2 minute clip of one of my inspection drops on youtube here.  This gives a little bit of an idea of what it is like rolling down the cables.

Redwoods (small ones)

From here I met up with Nico in San Francisco.  Unfortunately the weather was crap, so we went for a hike in the rain in Muir Woods just north of the golden gate bridge.  Even in the shitty weather, there were hordes of people there, but at least I have finally gotten to see some of san fran, the bridge and redwoods.  I now feel like a true American.

It was still too early in the year (too much snow) to get to either Yosemite or Sequoia national parks, so we went straight to Death Valley.  Supposedly the hottest driest place in the country, and we had some of the coldest wettest weather so far on this road trip.

At least the following morning we got to see the snow capped mountains that we drove through the night before; while stopping to check in with 4 disabled vehicles due to the falling rocks!  The next day though, we did the daylong grand tour of death valley.  It is an amazingly diverse place with so much to see.  We hiked up mosaic canyon, played on sand dunes, watched unique pupfish in salt creek, drove around to see multicolored rocks at the "artists palette", and checked out badwater basin - the lowest place in the USA at 282 feet below sea level.  Badwater basin was my favorite place, as it is completely filled with salt, and is right next to 11,000 foot mountains.  That is almost as much as an elevation difference as from Everest base camp to the peak.

Woohoo!

climbing some red rocks

From Death Valley we moved on to Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Vegas.  It may only be 10 miles from the casinos on the strip, but it is a world away.  It had rained the night we got there, and supposedly you are not supposed to climb on the sandstone after rain since it is soft.  We went for a hike instead, although the wetness did not stop the tons of other rock climbers there.  Red Rocks is known for the rock climbing on the vividly colored rocks there.  On our hiking day we went up turtle head peak, which was in a great location to see the whole valley one way, and vegas the other. The following day we got to do some sweet climbing.

multicolored rocks seen from atop turtle head peak, with Vegas in the background

After Red Rocks, we headed to the Grand Canyon.  Amazingly, with our lack of prior planning, we managed to score a campsite in the canyon at Indian Garden.  Most of the campsites are booked 4 months in advance, so we were happy to get something.  This place seems to hold with the pattern of most of our national parks, which is that you can just drive up to anything cool and take a picture.  It was definitely cool to hike all the way down to the Colorado River and back, but really, the best views are from the rim, 100 yards from where you can park your car.  It also wasn't until our last of 3 days there that we saw the sun, which definitely makes it all look more impressive.  Although even without the sun, it still looks cool.  It's amazing to think that all that stuff (that isn't there between the north and south rims) has been washed away by the colorado river.  It's about 16 miles across in places, and gets down to 5000 feet deep.  It is also neat to be kinda looking back in time, as you can see the different rock layers, each one is associated with a prehistoric period of time.

From the Grand Canyon, we finally headed to southern Utah, which is something I'd been looking forward to the whole trip.  It's amazing that even though it is still desert, Utah was so much different than the other stuff we'd been experiencing.  It has got such interesting rock formations and canyons that for over a week that we were there, we were constantly seeing new and interesting things.

Bryce Canyon Panorama

Angel's Landing

Zion is where we went first in the southwest corner of Utah.  I actually wish that we spent more than just a day there, but at this point we both knew that we had to be back in Ithaca by April 18th, and so we were bums on a schedule.  At Zion though we went to Angel's Landing, which apparently is a very well known hike.  And for good reason.  It is this giant piece of rock left in the middle of where 2 rivers meet.  The last half mile of the walk is where it gets really interesting because it is thin, slanted, and quite exposed.  There are just some chains attached to hold onto, with 1200 ft sheer drops on either side.

View from the top of Angel's Landing

From Zion we next went to Bryce Canyon.  This place is home of the Hoodoos, which are freestanding pillars of rock that have been eroded by water and wind from the cliffs that they once were.  Each year Bryce sees about 200 freeze thaw cycles, so in the soft sandstone that leads to lots of erosion.  Here is another place that most of the coolest views are right from the rim where you can park your car, although here we did a day walk in and around some of the hoodoos which was actually quite cool to see them up close.

hiking through a tunnel at Bryce

"The Grand Staircase"

 After Bryce, we went to a small corner of the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument where we found "Peek-a-boo" and "Spooky" canyons.  These are some true slot canyons, like the one from "that movie with the guy who got his arm stuck" as many people pointed out to us.  Although that canyon was in the San Rafael uplift (which we went to later).  Anyway, this was probably the best day hike of this entire road trip.  Peek-a-boo required us to climb up into it, and then through all sorts of arches and neat formations.

Peek-a-Boo

Then we went into Spooky canyon which was even tighter - 10 inches wide for a while.  I actually had to take off my backpack and drag it behind me.  There are many more cool pictures of these, and actually all the other stuff too at my picasa site.

Spooky Canyon

Moving on, we had a shorter day hike in the needles section of Canyonlands national park.  This stuff is just general Southern Utah landscape.  Would have been great to get in closer and get to spend a couple nights in the backcountry, but this time our lack of planning meant that everything was booked out.

neat formations in Canyonlands

On the fiery furnace walk

Next stop was Moab, which seems to be the Ithaca of Utah, and the home of Arches National Park.  Here, our lack of planning once again worked out to our advantage.  There is this one section called the "fiery furnace" which is an area of tight fin canyons which are very difficult to navigate, and so you need to get on a ranger guided walk (booked generally 4 months in advance).  It was a nasty morning all windy and pooring rain, and luckily we met up with 2 nice canadian couples whose wives were not interested in the walk.  So we got to stand in for them.  Then luckily that afternoon, the skies cleared and so we got to go on a walk around the Devil's garden - an area with lots of neat arches.  The following day was mostly a rest day to figure out how we're gonna spend our last couple weeks of freedom, and then doing the short walk to the "delicate arch".  This is classic Utah; its even on their license plates.

Delicate arch

looking back down the side canyon

After our days in the Moab area, we drove out to the San Rafael Uplift and to Little Horse Canyon.  We loved the slot canyons so much we decided to seek out another.  This one was certainly really cool with some really narrow parts, although it wasn't quite as interesting as the peek-a-boo and spooky canyons.  I did find a side canyon at some point and enjoyed wandering a bit up there to check it out.  That side canyon actually required a bit more skill to get through which to me made it way more interesting.

In little wild horse canyon

From here, we began our long drive back to the eastern time zone.  3 long day of driving later, we made it to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky and some of the best rock climbing in the country.  It actually felt quite good to see some green trees, soil, humidity, and of course rain and thunderstorms and hail as well.  Our tent got flooded out the first night there, but the climbing was so amazing it more than made up for it.  I have finally gotten comfortable enough with leading that we could climb some more difficult and interesting stuff.  It was unquestionably my best day of outdoor climbing ever.

Right now I am back in North Carolina for just a couple days... hence the time to get out these couple blog posts.  Next week, after 16 months of traveling and being a bum, I finally start working again.  Not as an engineer, but as a farmer.