Bouncing Marty

Living at the North end of the Vegas Valley has its advantages. The Spring Mountains and Mount Charleston are a quick 30 minute drive away, dropping us at around 8,000ft and surrounded by pine forest and limestone canyons. Just in the last week or so we realized how accessible and awesome these canyons are!

They are close enough that I can shoot home from work on a weekday, grab Mollie and Nyah, a stove and a backcountry meal, hike uphill a few miles and be cooking in the solitude of a high altitude pine forest before 7pm at night. And that is exactly what we did last week. Thanks again to Mollie for the inspiration and motivation!

Of course, Nyah had a great time scouring the hillsides for chipmunks, birds, and whatever tasty smells she finds out there.

I’m ‘almost’ looking forward to the summer heat, knowing that we have this high altitude escape so close by. Oh yeah, and there are real trees up there….

About 20 minutes of freeway driving from the house brings us to the entrance to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, a giant parcel of land that the government decided needed some protection and conservation from the ever growing Vegas Valley. The DNWR was designated way back in 1936…and I’m sure glad they did. The area encompasses six major mountain ranges, peaks that reach close to 10,000ft, and hidden forests that protect mountain and desert wildlife. And its only a short drive away. We’ve just begun to explore it, and our first stop was some hiking in Deadman Canyon this weekend.

Rattling through the desert on roads like the one above for about a half hour dropped us on the North side of the Sheep Mountains, and the trailhead at the end of Hidden Forest Road. The Joshua Tree forest on the desert plains was blooming which was very cool, but I didn’t manage to snap a photo of much of it. The sun was shining but the desert wind was blowing, so we bundled up and headed up towards the limestone canyon.

The terrain quickly turned from desert flatlands into juniper pines and scrub brush; the trail in the center of the canyon gradually rising up into the mountains. The canyon walls continued to get tighter and tighter the higher we hiked, and after several miles we were almost surrounded by trees.

The elevations for the hike started around 5,500ft, and after three hours of hiking we were close to 7,500ft. There was even some snow remaining in the shaded areas. About four miles into the canyon is a nice hanging valley that would be an awesome place to camp out for the night. We were just spending the day, but we’ll be back in the summer when the temperatures start getting unbearable to enjoy the trees and shade again.

It saddens us both to know that this year’s holiday season will be almost completely void of family. The older I get the more that I realize how important it is to spend good quality time with family and friends. The biggest drawback of living so far from both of our home towns is those are the places where most of our loved ones live. Unfortunately, getting to them can be rather difficult - both time and money wise. This year is just not working out to travel cross country, so we are going to make the best of the situation and do some exploring closer to home. Southern Utah calls….

On Thanksgiving day Mollie, Nyah, and I loaded up the car and headed North; destination Moab. We took our time and enjoyed the trip through Southern Utah. On the way Mollie spied the classic restaurant of home cookin’ goodness, Cracker Barrel. I’d never been to one, so it became a mandatory stop in St. George, Utah.

Mollie is obviously excited. After chowing down on some serious chicken, dumplings, ham, turkey, potatoes, gravy, gravy and more gravy, we headed on with fully bellies towards Moab. We cruised into the small town and found our holiday home away from home, La Quinta Inn. Turned out to be a marvelous place to stay, being quite pet friendly and ‘interestingly’ decorated with cheap Indian stuff. Mollie was taking some notes for our house…ceramic moccasins with cheesy flowers are a must.

We had a scrumptious Thanksgiving meal of some cashew chicken from the shezuan food joint down the road (only place open in Moab at 9pm), then rolled to bed. We woke early the next morning to the surprise of 3″ of fresh snow! Nyah was excited about it, obviously. In town it melted quickly, but lingered around at the high elevations for a few days.

First stop, Arches National Park. Arches is very cool. There are hundreds of stone arches formed from weaker stone (mineral and salt deposits) eroding out from underneath the more solid sandstone, leaving behind plenty of weird rock formations.

Landscape Arch:

Tunnel Arches:

Delicate Arch, and adjacent basin:

There’s too many cool photos to post up here. Head into my flickr gallery by clicking on a photo to see lots more, along with some interesting panoramas. The most impressive of the bunch was Landscape Arch, the first photo of this group. The thing is massive, and so thin that its hard to believe that it is still standing.

Cold and hungry, we headed back into town and got some food, then right back out to see some of Canyonlands National Park, which is about 30 miles outside of Moab.

Canyonlands is a massive park encompassing miles very exposed and rugged sandstone cliffs, dropping down from plateau to plateau down into the Colorado and San Juan river systems. We drove up on top of the bluffs to get some shots, and found a lot more snow sticking around. The photos don’t do the views justice, these canyons are HUGE. Felt a lot like the Grand Canyon, but more vertical/compressed/jagged. The sun peeked out for only a few minutes and provided some interesting stormy lighting.

As the sun was setting we rolled back into Moab and spent some time exploring the little town, and had a nice meal at one of the local spots.

Unfortunately for Nyah, National Parks don’t allow dogs anywhere besides parking areas (what’s up with that?!?) so she spent a lot of time on the leash. Too bad, she loved the snow.

Early Saturday morning we rolled out of town, and headed towards the real ‘meat and potatoes’ of our trip. The stretch between Moab directly South to Flagstaff is littered with crazy stuff. Too much to really even post about here. We drove from one “WOW look at that crazy (insert land formation here)” spot to another, about every hour or so. The first stop for the day was Natural Bridges National Monument. My favorite of the trip.

Sipapu Bridge:

Owachomo Bridge:

As we drove, we joked that they called the park Natural Bridges only because Arches was already taken. A quick trip to the visitor center clearly explained the difference. The bridges above (and others in this deep sandstone canyon) are formed at a bend in a twisting river. As the river snakes around, the water slams over and over into the canyon wall, digging deeper and deeper into a bend until eventually it cracks through, leaving a big U-shaped corner dry, and a Natural Bridge where the corner used to be. I’m not sure if this makes sense…. Anyhow. The bridges are noticeably larger than the Arches. For reference, in the second photo above, Mollie is standing below the bridge. She’s the tiny black speck. Click for a larger version.

We packed up and continued the drive, and ran past more awesomeness. Photos tell the story better than I can….

Goosenecks State Park, Serpentine Ridge:

Awesome Highway (yes I said highway, just before the bends below it was 4 lane blacktop):

The Mexican Hat:

Monument Valley:

Our initial plan was to head down to Flagstaff and camp out for the night, hang around there through Sunday and head home. We arrived in Flagstaff at about 8pm and caught some dinner, and the call to our own beds was too strong to resist. After walking the dog around town a bit, we jumped in the Subaru for a final 4-hour push to get home. We returned to Vegas late Saturday night, happy to be home, and rather pooped from the marathon drive. It was nice to wrap up the long weekend with a relaxing Sunday at home.

Couple more favorite photos:

Panos: (Highly recommend viewing full size)

The Angel Food Wall is located in Redrocks at one of the more accessible canyons called White Rock Springs. Not long ago I climbed Tunnel Vision over there with Frandsen, Toby, and Matt. There’s a bunch of moderate climbs on the wall that are all around 500-600ft, and with the easy 30 minute approach it makes for a good easy/big day of climbing.

Take a look at the purdy dots above. Blue is Group Therapy, the route we were shooting for. Yellow is Healey’s Haunted House (5.7R burly grunting chimney fest). Green is Purblind Pillar (big sweet lookin’ 5.8). The Red is our wandering-way-off route-have no clue where were are-improvised route. Looks like we were a little lost eh?

The approach went fast, and we were at the base of the cliff early on Saturday morning. The plan was for Gary and Bergie to lead up first, with me and Frandsen following up right behind. This usually presents some really cool photo opportunities of each other, but Burgie was leading off so fast we didn’t have much time to shoot photos.

The pitches were fun and pretty solid climbing throughout. The problem was, I didn’t have a clue where we were. After the first pitch of Purblind Pillar, we took a weird traverse across some loose rock into Healey’s Haunted House, and from there we had a good looking line to the top, but nothing was matching up with our route descriptions. Climbing blind isn’t super fun. Especially when you are supposed to be back home by early afternoon.

Looking back on it now, I really would love to do this again. Climbing it knowing that I am not going to get stranded 400′ up would make for a much more enjoyable time. The majority of our climb was in Healey’s, and it had some really cool moderate chimney work that I’d like to do again with more focus on the moves and climbing, instead of worrying about spending the night on the wall.

After way longer than it should have taken, we all topped out successfully and in good spirits. The final pitch I ran out over a big wandering line, and I had to pull through the worst rope drag I’ve ever seen. It was ridiculous. I was basically doing 100lb squats over and over up the last 40′ of the climb. Not so fun…but at least we finished it. A long down climb later, we were back at the car, tired and hungry.

Good times. Angel Food wall is a sweet place. Lots of very doable moderate climbs that aren’t too big, but aren’t so small it doesn’t feel like you are pushing it in a bit. Next time I’d love to drag Burgess out there and see if we could pick off two of them in a single day…I can dream right?

Last year at right around this time Matt and I were bailing out of attempting a High Sierra ascent of the Fishook Arete on Mount Russel. Snow and cold weather forced us to abandon hopes of climbing. We decided (and had planned for months and months) to try to get up there this year, but things just weren’t coming together (re: I am lazy and didn’t train and don’t want to freeze on some big cold mountain while spooning with Matt on some bivy ledge.) Buh…Anyway…we had a free weekend.

So, to take advantage of my hall pass from Home Improvement 101, we headed to Tahquitz to pick off some moderate multi-pitch. Brian Frandsen carpooled with me down to the big granite rock, and Brian Burgess met us there as well. The Brian’s and I spent an anticipation-filled night in our bags on the forest floor outside of Idyllwild, CA and eventually met up with Matt early Saturday Morning.

Tahquitz climbs are somewhere between 600-1200ft in height, and both of our climbs were in the 700-900ft range. Matt and I teamed up to climb Sahara Terror (5.7, green dots) and the Brian’s shimmied up The Consolation (5.9, red dots). Climbing with Matt is a blast (obviously).

Brian and Brian headed right up, while we waited for another party who was ahead and likely faster than we were. This turned out for the better, because they did climb faster and we weren’t in each others way on the climb. Sahara Terror is named so because of the propensity for large slabs of granite to be loose on the climb. I can’t say I’d disagree with this reputation, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be avoided.

One particularly noticeable loose stone was this guy, which I coined the ‘Death Block’. About 6′ tall, and 2′ wide, this thing must have slid down the face above me, and perched directly on this tree. Incredible. And really scary. Sounds like this stone has been here for years though, and isn’t going anywhere. No choice but to stand on the block while you climb this route, which definitely increased the pucker factor by a few notches.

Photos may say otherwise, but Matt has turned into quite the Trad leader. Long way from a few years back when I drug him up El Whampo and scared the ba-jimminey out of us both.

Matt lead the first three pitches, along with the crux 5.7 pitch, while I lead the 3 top-off pitches. The entire climb wasn’t super difficult, with most all of the climbing hanging in the 5.5 to 5.6 range, with a few exciting 5.7 moves thrown in. The cruxes were fun and challenging, but stayed within the 5.7 grade. Fun stuff.

We topped out to find Burgess and Frandsen chilling in the sun, shirtless and enjoying the fine weather. They beat us up by an hour or so, and snapped this photo of us finishing up the final little slab. (Thanks for the photo Burgie.)

I miss climbing at Tahquitz. I think Bergie got it right when on the downclimb out he said, “I feel like I’ve just re-found an old friend!” Tahquitz has so much solid granite, just grainy enough to give your shoes great purchase, but not too sharp to cut your hands up. Awesome hand jams, finger jams, body jams, fist jams…you get the idea. Cracks everywhere.

I think we all decided that we need to make it out there more next season.

This weekend we had a free Sunday afternoon so we headed to the mountains. Vegas has a surprisingly large mountain range just to the West, with peaks over 12,000ft tall, and plenty of cool temps and sublime pine forest. Don’t tell the other 2 million people down in the valley about it though. They can stay down there and gamble.

A 30- minute drive took us to the trail-head of Mary Jane Falls, a 5 mile up and back to check out some springs and cool limestone cliffs and caves. We took off in the early afternoon and strolled up the above wash, which quickly turned into 1,000ft of nice forested switchbacks. Great weather, and good views as we climbed out of Kyle Canyon.

(I can’t do a TR anymore without including dog photos…must be done.) We climbed up passing plenty of dogs and other fellow hikers. I was surprised by how many other people were up there. I managed to keep them out of the photos at least. At the top of the climb was the falls, and some cool caves which we explored.

Fun times. Good warm-up for future training for future climbs for future summits for future skiing. That’s my train of thought at least.

And my attempt at purdy photography.

After much harassing Brian Frandsen convinced Mollie and me to pull ourselves away from our home improvement duties, and take a little road trip. The destination of choice would be Flagstaff, AZ. I had heard Brian Burgess raving about the clean basalt cracks and fun cragging up there for long enough, so it was time to make the drive. Flagstaff has a lot going for it, being in a sweet pine forest, at decent elevation, and with a cool old downtown to explore, so getting Mollie to tag along on the ‘climbing’ trip wasn’t too difficult. Unfortunately my camera battery died early on, so all I have shots of is the climbing.

I’m not sure what the official name of this place is, but we called it ‘The Overlook’. You drive on top of a plateau through some awesome country, and abruptly pull off the road at the sound of Indian trinkets being sold. There’s a bunch of people selling jewelry and whatnot at the pullout, which conveniently is just above some sweet single pitch climbs. The above is Burgess cleaning up one of the area classics, Isaiah 5.9. Ratings here felt fairly stout to me, but I’m used to the super featured sandstone of Redrocks.

The day consisted of me leading a rather stout and clean 5.6, then climbing Isaiah shown above, then working on the Trinity Cracks, which are a series of 5.10 monster classics. Perfect handcracks. Burgess, as usual, served as the ropegun and lead the tough ones. He climbs FAST. Hard to tell from the vid below if you don’t climb (or even if you do), but keep in mind that what he climbs there I struggled up in about 10 minutes (not 20 seconds).

We all munched on some sandwiches and things for lunch, then we parted ways. The Brian’s headed back to the cliff to pick off a couple more climbs, while Mollie and I headed into town to find some coffee and watch the hippies walk around Flagstaff. Fantastic town for people-watching, that’s for sure. I wish I’d had my camera. We found a bluegrass band that was playing in a town square kinda place, and hung out for the afternoon until the guys had burned themselves out climbing. We met for dinner and then headed right to bed.We had a great Sunday with the folks in Flagstaff.

Very cool town. It makes me remember all the things that I’m missing by living in Las Vegas. Cool temperatures and clouds being just two of them. We’ll be back.

Within my group of ‘buds a lot of stuff was happening at the beginning of June. Shane and Jayna quit their jobs, moved out of their apartment in Santa Barbara, and were beginning a trip to explore Europe, which would eventually lead to them settling down in Salt Lake City. Lane was losing a fiance’ and gaining a wife. Chris would be leaving behind everything he’s known, to share what he loves with others. Lots to celebrate! And what better way to celebrate than planning a big ole’ backpacking/climbing/backcountry trip in the Sierra’s.

Lane and Shane began putting the trip together months before. As word passed around, the trip started to take shape as a four day weekend, with a high altitude base camp at one of the Gem Lakes, in the Little Lakes Valley outside of Bishop, CA. Most of the crew drove up Wednesday night, and spent a chilly day Thursday hiking into the lake-filled valley. Unfortunately, I had to work on Thursday, so I would be coming in late on Thursday night.

I arrived in Bishop at 8:30pm on Thursday night. The plan was to make the late night hike into the lake system and find the guys, then have breakfast Friday morning with everybody. Keep in mind I had no clue where they were going to camp…Lane assured me that they would lay me a ‘trail’ though. By 9:30pm I was hiking up the dark trail, singing and whistling to calm my nerves and scare away any giant Marshall eating bears that might be roaming the darkness. I hiked for a little over an hour with no sign of the guys, or that I was on the right trail when I came to a sign. “Chicken Foot Lake”, with an arrow pointing to the left. This only added to my confusion. I had a trail map which clearly showed Chicken Foot Lake, but it was supposed to be on the RIGHT side of the trail. I stood there for a good while trying to figure out where the heck I was to no avail. I had no clue, so I did the only thing I could, and just kept on walking.

I came over another dark rise, and saw something that made me immediately shut off my headlamp. Several hundred yards ahead of me on a hillside something was glowing! A glow stick! The guys had been true to their word, and had laid a trail for me. The above yellow beacon contained directions (and much relief) on how to get to the camp. Within a few minutes I was happily sleeping in my sleeping bag, a half mile from the first glowstick, on a hillside surrounded by the tents and tarps of my friends.

Shane and Lane went all out with the food. I was told to only bring snacks and lunch stuff, and was expecting to be living off of oatmeal and freeze dried meals for the two days in the backcountry. I was pleasantly suprised, as I munched on a fantastic breakfast burrito! The amazing meals wouldn’t stop there either, as I would find out later.

It wasn’t long after we’d finished breakfast that we decided that with the great weather and good spirits of the group, we should really try to pick off one of the peaks surrounding the valley. Dan, Kevin, and Allen decided to make the scramble up Mt. Dade, while the rest of us would make a push for the Bear Creek Spire, Ulrich’s Route.

Up we went, with Greg in the lead. The route is moderate, with lots of snow fields to cross, and a small rocky headwall near the summit which required some delicate footing and a little ropework. Greg once again confirmed that he is the strongest climber I’ve ever been around, as he proceed to climb twice as fast, and twice as much as the rest of us. He’d get 500ft or so above the group, find a big ole’ flat rock, and leap down into a snow chute, plummeting down on his make-shift sled. Look closely below and you can see him sliding by as we trudged uphill.

The climb went without a hitch, besides wearing us out. The downclimb was exciting at times, and involved a lot of high speed glissading, which turned out to be ridiculously fun. I felt like a five year old at the old sledding hills all over again.

Another good meal was awaiting us when we returned to camp, and we crashed out early. The next morning we all didn’t feel much motivation to gain altitude again, so we hung around camp and occupied ourselves. A slackline was installed, as well as a little top-rope to do some cragging. A fun relaxing day that was topped off by an amazing stew. We caught a handful of fish in the streams below camp, which made for a tasty addition to the meal.

We hiked out Saturday night, and crashed out on the Denio’s front lawn. After a great day in Bishop on Sunday, we all parted ways, and headed back to real life. Great times, and a great trip. Good memories for sure!

I love the Sierra Nevada Mountains. One of the best parts of living in Vegas for me is that it cuts the drive time to the Owens Valley in half, compared to what I used to do from San Diego.

Last year Mollie and I took a fun backpacking trip with Shane, Jayna, Cara and Landry, and since then, we’ve been trying to put together another weekend of similar backcountry adventure. We had a few things that kept us occupied in the past couple months (buying a house, getting married, traveling, getting a dog, mowing the lawn, being domestic…you get the point), so when we both realized that Memorial Day was a 3 day weekend, and we both had nothing going on, we knew we had to head to the mountains.

We loaded heavy, and our destination of choice was the Humphrey’s Basin in the Sierra Nevada’s, outside of Bishop, CA. The plan was to climb up as high as we’d like, eventually jump over Piute Pass, and spend the three days exploring the amazing valley beyond. I had been here last year with the guys on what we affectionately called the ‘Death March’, and the area was one I knew I’d want to return to. Pictures can be found on Lando’s site HERE.

We also had a new addition with us, our new pup Nyah. We have only had her for two months now, but she’s already become a big part of our little family. We were stoked to have her packing along with us. Her energy is amazing, and she didn’t seem to have any issues with the altitude as she sprinted all over the hillsides, as we trudged up the trail towards the pass.

We climbed until the early evening, and eventually reached Piute Lake, a scerene and quiet spot surrounded by Sierra granite. Being the early season still, there was a lot of water present; all the lakes were overflowing and the waterfalls plunging. Plenty of snow drifts in the shady spots as well. We set up camp for the evening at the end of the lake, with a sweet view down the valley.

I was having a particularly tough time with the altitude on this trip for some reason. A big searing headache along with some nausea thrown in made my first evening pretty high on the misery scale. Mollie meanwhile, appears to not be affected by altitude one little bit…what a punk. I slept off my headache, and awoke the next morning feeling fairly good, all things considered. We had some breakfast, and decided to explore the basin a bit more. As we hiked up towards the pass, the trail became more and more obscured by big snow drifts, and overflowing streams and valleys. When we got high enough to see the pass itself, it was clearly obscured by a big drift, that didn’t look too appealing. (You can actually see it in the above picture, its the saddle covered in snow at the horizon.) We conceded to stay inside the valley, and save the Humphrey’s Basin for another day.

We explored the lakes and granite shelf systems for a few hours, then headed back to camp. I was still early afternoon, and we decided we’d had enough of the basin. Without being able to explore further, the Call of good mexican food, down in Bishop, was just too strong to resist. We packed up, and headed for town, a day earlier than scheduled. After a big meal of enchiladas and chile colorado at Amigo’s, we took the pleasant drive back over the White Mountains, and across the desert back to Vegas.

(Our new dishwasher!)

Saturday Brian Frandsen and I headed out for a liesurely day of climbing. Mollie and I had plans for the evening that required me to be home by the afternoon, so we headed for Beulah’s Book, a highly rated 5.9 with a 5.8 bolted variation in Oak Creek Canyon.

We broke the four pitches up in half, with Brian taking the first two pitches, and me the second set. The first pitch was an interesting section with lots of options, and some fun chimney moves. Soon Brian was leading up into the second pitch, which is the crux and ‘classic’ section of the climb. The above picture shows Brian on the exposed 5.8 variation. The chimney in the shadow is the classic route, but it looked too stout for us at the moment. We decided to head to the well protected face instead. It was classic fun Redrocks face climbing.

The third pitch was a 5.5ish face climb, and my first lead of the day. I took a fall, breaking off some loose holds about half way up the pitch that made things rather ‘exciting’, but we were both just fine, and I finished the pitch without problems. Brian took the next pitch for me, and we topped out the climb by the early afternoon.

This climb was fun, but I didn’t feel like it was worthy of the high ratings that the guide books give it. The second pitch is very cool, and the chimney section looked to be full of awesome moves, but there is just too much mediocre face climbing surrounding it to make it worthwhile.

Never the less, it was still a great day climbing in Redrocks. This is probably the last climb I’ll get to do this season without having to worry about the desert heat…here comes the summer time. Good to climb with Brian Frandsen too…we hadn’t tied in together in far too long.