Mountaineers Hiking & Biking in Moab, Utah -
Part 2
November 2010
Trip Leader:
Bill Priedhorsky -
Bio
Author of
Part 2 Personal Reports: Sherry Hardage
Participants:
Dennis Brandt; Ross Lemons; Tom Claus, Irene, David, and Lee Powell;
Lauren and Dave Heerschaf: Carolyn Bell and Walter Dunn; Kathleen
Gruetzmacher and Elena; Jean Dewart; Chris Horley; Martin Staley;
Sherry Hardage; and Terry Morgan; Kelly Gallagher and Don Krier; and
Bill Priedhorsky.
Personal Trip Report – Behind the Rocks, November 10
I seem to be
losing my virginity a lot lately. In October, I was an IKEA virgin,
now I have an IKEA desk set up in my bedroom at home, the perfect
size for that nooky little space next to the bathroom door.
Yesterday, I lost my Rock Virginity. Actually I may have lost it
once before, in high school with John Melanson when he and Norman
Farquhar dragged my butt up to the top of this enormous boulder and
then dropped me off an overhang. But it's been 40 years since then,
I'm sufficiently re-virginated.
Yesterday was a
Top Ten Day! I not only lost my virginity, I didn't lose my
life......with the help of 4 very competent men, three of whom were
good technical climbers. At least three times during the course of
the day I thought, "If I am not absolutely careful, I'm going to
fall down this cliff and die."
The day started
with Bill, the leader of this expedition telling me we were going
for a hike. There might be some rock scrambling. I had only a vague
notion what that meant. They were taking ropes just in case we
needed them. Right.
Tom, a tall lean
soft-spoken man from Santa Fe, was the best teacher, so calm and
organized. Terry was not very experienced either but was ahead of me
in the conquering fear department. And Martin was the quietest man
I've ever met. I'm not sure I even know what his voice sounds like,
but he smiled a lot, and was silently helpful all the time.
I had an inkling
that things would not go well when, ten minutes into this hike we
met a wall of rock and these guys just went right up it, like
monkeys, hand over fist, feet on invisible nubs. It looked so easy.
With the exception
of Martin, they are all 6 feet or taller, Martin is not far behind.
I'm barely over 5 feet. They are men. I'm not. My legs simply do not
fold up to my chest, because, frankly, my chest gets in the way.
They broke out the climbing bag with lengths of nylon flat rope,
which I'm sure has some technical name, some 'beaners', and made a
'swami' belt for me. But unlike John Melanson, they did not haul me
up the rock, they simply allowed me not to die if I were to fall.
Tom, who stood under and directed where to find the invisible nubs
for my shaking boots, kept insisting I stand up straight and not hug
the rock for dear life (how do you stand up straight when all you're
standing on is an invisible nubbin of rock??). He said things like
"don't use your knees!" but this was after I got to the top by
heaving a knee up over the edge of the cliff. It was good, if late,
advice, my knee ached the rest of the day.
For a while, we
'scrambled', climbing up uneven staircase-like rocks that presented
moderately easy passage in a vertical direction. There was a large
arch, the kind of formation Moab is famous for. After a lot of
posing for pictures the plan was to go up a 'fin'. This is a narrow
slice of rock caused by erosion of parallel cracks in the monolithic
mass of sandstone that constitutes the entire region. It's tall,
thin, and the only way up it is to hold onto a cable, thoughtfully
installed by someone crazy enough to get up there without it. Of
course, Tom and Martin just walked up the thing without touching the
cable, and threw down a rope for me.
At this point, I
should mention the weather. When we started out, it was overcast and
cloudy, chilly but not cold. The wind was intermittent and not
strong, but enough to drive a chill through fleece jackets. Bill had
sent me a list of things to carry in my backpack, one of them was
gloves. By the time we reached the arch, the high thin clouds had
moved on, the sun was out. The temperature was pleasant, and I was
grateful for that. I can't imagine all this exertion in hot weather,
there's no way I could have carried enough water to sustain the day.
Terry told me the
best way to go up a fin is to ignore the fact that it's only a few
feet wide with terrifying dropoffs on either side. Actually, he
never used the word terrifying. He did mention that at home, he can
walk easily down a length of rail on a railroad and not fall off.
This is the same thing. Just focus on the place you can put your
foot and don't think about what's on either side. Our minds are our
worst enemies. I can walk a rail too, but I'd be crazy to walk a
rail 200 feet off the ground! I followed Terry's advice and just
focused on holding the cable, leaning back a little, which I must
say is SO counter intuitive. Turns out, it was way easier than I'd
thought. The cable had little burrs in it that would have cut my
hands, but Bill lent me a pair of leather gloves. A burr caught my
pants though, and tore a hole. So I now have 'canyon' pants as a
souvenir. They were destined to become more souvenir-like as the day
progressed.....
Tom exploring an alternate to the
cable route.
This alternative was even worse than our actual route.
At the top of the
fin, the land leveled out. This is not to say it was like the great
plains of Texas, it was simply humpy without any more forbidding
cliffs. We were on top, finally, of that massive sandstone formation
that makes up much of the Colorado Plateau. The views were
spectacular. Off to the northeast was a land of many fins and humps
of eroded sandstone resembling the backs of enormous turtles. Beyond
that, pristine snow covered the La Sal mountains, so aptly named
with the Spanish word for salt. In the opposite direction we looked
down into the canyon from whence we came, to the wide Colorado River
in its deep, serpentine canyon, the almost maroon walls bordered by
gold leafed cottonwoods.
Bill had it in his
mind that we would 'get out' by going north. He had a map but it
wasn't terribly precise, and there were no marked trails other than
the occasional cairn. After a while, there were no more cairns and
we were bushwhacking, headed toward the canyon he and Tom could see
from the highest vantage points. They had spotted a couple of
possible routes they called Plan A and Plan B. I'm not sure which
one was chosen, but it led to a cliff with an impossible drop, a
sheer rock wall. It was now about 2:00 and the weather had changed
from sunny to cloudy, from mild to chilly, snow was on its way.
We backed uphill
and took the alternate route which involved going through a narrow
canyon between two fins. Even though this is normally hot desert
country, the land between the fins gets all the water and
microscopic bits of rock that run off of them during rain storms.
It's positively lush down there, full of Mormon tea, stickery
juniper trees, grasses, flowers, rose bushes, and lots of damp sand.
Bushwhacking through the little canyon was slow work. At one point
the only passage was past a juniper with a branch that had grown
sideways and then bent as it hit the fin wall. The guys moved the
branch aside and slipped past. But the branch was right at chest
level for me, and even with my pack off, it was downright painful to
get past it, felt like I was being molested by a tree!
The little canyon
opened out onto another cliff but this one had a few narrow shelves
and larger 'stairs' that led to the final major obstacle, a 30 foot
drop. Time to get out those ropes again. I was terrified. This was
the worst moment of the day, and after 5 hours of scrambling,
climbing and hiking, I was tired. I didn't trust my shaky knees
anymore but there was no other option. We could see the jeep trail
at the bottom of the canyon. The way out was clear, just not
accessible, in my view. The four men showed no sign of turning back,
and I wasn't about to suggest it. I doubted actually, if we could
have found our way back to the exact fin with the cable, and that
was the only way down over on that side.
Bill set up a
belay and this time he wrapped the rope around my waist. Martin
simply scampered down the shelves and then slipped down a crack
'chimney' and was on the ground at the bottom. Well, bottom might be
a misnomer, he was at least off the cliff. The actual bottom was
still far down a talus slope with a few more shelves to traverse. I
sat for a few minutes and tried to calm down. My heart was beating
itself out of my chest. I don't think I've been this scared in a
long time. I was looking my own demise in the face and there was no
option but to trust these men and the ropes. And hope my knees would
hold up. This time, it wasn't easier than it looked.
Tom and Bill set
up the belay with Bill noting there was nothing to brace himself
against. Tom suggested a little sapling tree barely surviving in an
inch of soil. Bill pushed against it with his feet and it toppled
right over. Oh good, I'm going to be held up on the side of a cliff
by a guy without a rock to brace against. But Bill dug in his heels
and decided his weight alone would keep him from sliding off, in the
event that I fell. I took off my gloves, now damp from the sweat of
my palms. Just writing this, I'm having to wipe off my hands!
Set up to go, I
inched my way down the cliff, hanging onto tiny crevices of rock,
placing one foot at a time on the sandy, slippery shelves of rock.
In reality though, the sand was damp, held well, and the shelf was
wider than it had appeared to my terrified mind when I first looked
down. The drop from the shelf to the skree below was still 30 or
more feet. That aspect of reality had not changed a bit. The worst
part was coming around the corner where Tom was standing. The
'corner' was an overhang of rock with quite a step from my shelf to
the one he stood on. He told me exactly where to grab hold of the
rock and then he put an arm around my back for support and I inched
over to his shelf. There was barely enough room for both of us, but
a wider platform, the top of a tower of rock, was below, and I got
down to that. Terry was already there. The rock we sat on had a gap
between it and the sheer wall we'd just come down, forming the
chimney. Since I already had the rope on, I had to go first. Bill
was still way up at the top belaying me. Tom dropped down to the
platform and talked me down the chimney.
After the terror
subsided of being suspended in a crack with just a sloping slab of
slippery rock below me, it was kinda fun. I had both hands on the
rock opposite the one my back was pressed up against. There were
some visible foot holds to stand on and lean against, but at the
bottom, there was empty space bounded on one side by a very steep
slab of rock. Martin was down there, he held onto the toes of my
boots as they slid down the slab. I pushed my back into the wall and
inched my way down. I could feel the rope tighten and knew Bill was
doing a fair share of holding my weight as I slid. Eventually there
was not a thing to hang onto and essentially Bill lowered me to the
ground. It was only a few feet and Martin was right there. I had
feet flattened up against the slab but they would not have had
enough friction to support me if Martin hadn't been bracing from
below. Finally I was on the real ground once again. I collapsed into
a heap by the pile of packs we'd lowered earlier.
Terry got down
faster but it was a struggle for him too, belayed by Bill. Then Bill
had to come down from way up above and Tom belayed him from the
platform I think (Post note: I've since been corrected, Bill was NOT
on belay!) It dawned on me after a little bit to take some photos,
so I got Bill coming down the chimney , and then Tom who slid down
with what seemed like little effort and no rope. Monkeys. They're
all monkeys.
The rest of the
way to the bottom of the canyon was a relative ‘piece of cake’,
though it was steep and sandy with little angular rocks mixed in. It
felt a lot like skiing. I tried to stay in the men's footprints so
as not to create too much disturbance of the cryptobiotic plants
that keep desert soils from eroding. Martin and Tom went on ahead at
their faster pace to get the cars. The canyon emptied out onto the
paved road where we'd parked a ways further down. I deeply
appreciated their willingness to 'go the extra mile'.
Hiking out in the rain – the only bad
weather of the trip.
We walked out on
the sandy and sometimes quite rocky jeep trail that followed what is
often a raging river, a periodic tributary to the Colorado. Evidence
of high water was everywhere, plants mashed over towards the mouth
of the canyon, some small trees along the edges with exposed roots,
flotsam jammed up against boulders, and slick exposed rock on the
river bottoms. It began to rain, a cold spitting rain. I packed
according to Bill's list. I pulled out my rain jacket and was
comfortably dry if not exactly warm on the walk out of the canyon.
By the time we reached the paved road, it was snowing, small icy
splats of snow that didn't stick, but would shortly. We waited under
a shelter for about twenty five minutes before Tom and Martin showed
up with the cars. This incredible day was finally at a close.
Personal Trip Report – Fiery Furnace November 11
A little bit about this trip. It's a Los Alamos
Mountaineer's trip and as such, one is required to sign a waiver
that the club is not to be held responsible if you get hurt or die,
and no one is responsible, even if one of the other club members
does something to cause you to get hurt or die. You acknowledge that
you know what you're doing is dangerous and potentially fatal. The
fact that I signed all the little initial places and then my full
signature at the bottom kept coming to mind as the first day
progressed. But I'm here writing, with some sore upper body muscles,
bruises, and scrapes. I'm here still.
Thursday, I'd planned to go out when the sun came up
to photograph the red rocks in the snow before it melted off. It was
snowing when we got back to the house Wednesday evening and was
supposed to snow during the night. I'm sequestered in a little
bunkbed in a nook of the stairwell, like poor Harry Potter.... There
are 24 people in this huge house, built like a 3-story quad but all
hooked together. It's possible to rent 1/4 or the whole thing. Beds
are everywhere. What looks like a cabinet for a large TV is really a
Murphy bed in the living room, every couch flops out. The people are
outdoorsy types who bike, ski, rock climb.....so I'm in a whole new
community as an outsider, but made to feel welcome. It's very cool.
They do this kind of thing often and I intend to do more with them
when I can.
The day dawned without snow. What I'd seen on the
cliffs the night before was already melted, steamed off in foggy
puffs that hung suspended in the canyons. A good sized group of us
drove into Arches National Park, gratis since it was Veteran's day,
and headed toward the Fiery Furnace. I'd driven past that area but
never went inside. It's basically fins, one after another with
garden like areas between. Bill and Tom brought ropes, just in
case.......of course! The group was larger, we'd been joined by
Irene, David and their son Lee, Kathleen and her daughter, Elena.
Elena has quite a crush on Tom, she's 13. She does
that cute pre-teen flirting......accidentally bumps into him, pelts
him with snowballs gathered from little icy bits still clinging to
tree branches, prances up ahead glancing back often. Tom, who's
forty something, easily regresses to 14, and flings dirt clods back
at her.
We parked in a little pull-off near the fins and
followed a stream bed to the base of the sandstone monolith, where
everyone walked up a narrow shelf and around a huge boulder with
barely a place to put your feet. I took one look at that obstacle
and in spite of the thorough thrashing my fears and ego had taken
the day before, I balked. "I'll stay here and just take pictures."
Tom would have none of that and pointed to a crevice I could just
walk up, so there I was, on top with the rest of them.
That area is spectacular. From the top one can see
miles in all directions. The La Sals covered with snow and capped
with clouds, red, brown, and green canyon-lands between those
mountains and our position, blue sky shining through arches off in
the distance, cliffs behind us to the west. We were at the back of
the fins, and could walk out easily onto the tops of them and look
down. Most were at least 10 feet wide so the fact that the drop off
was forty feet or more wasn't intimidating. I should have run the
battery down in my camera I took so many photos. We hiked to the
very edge of the Furnace on the east and after a nice little lunch
break headed back toward the cars. On the way somebody spotted an
interesting arch formed on the inside of a fin with the hole
pointing up to the sky. The mountain goat people scampered up to the
top of that fin and looked down through the hole. More nice photos.
Fearless leader Bill, along with
Irene and Elena, exploring a slot between the fins.
Even more fearless Tom is about to climb to the top.
We found our own
footprints in the damp soil and easily made our way back to the
cars. Elena found a better route which most took, but I'd already
slipped down into the crack I'd come up. Everybody was waiting for
me at the end, stifling their laughter. The way they'd come down was
an easy walk. It's now named the Sherry Crack. Oh goody…...
The fins are huge, dwarfing our party
as we scramble around them.
Kathleen, Elena and I left early to go grocery
shopping. It had been my plan to make a Thai meal, but the best laid
plans.......often go awry. I'd brought my own skillets, anticipating
the kitchens would not be well provisioned. I was right. Our kitchen
was lacking a large soup pot, pots big enough for all the rice, etc.
However, the group has the entire house, so we raided the three
other kitchens for pans, dishes, bowls, and wine glasses. We managed
to make a pretty good dinner. It just took a long time and when the
whole group was there, it was crowded. The dinner came out in
stages, and between times everyone drank wine. The laughter got loud
and the food went pretty fast. It was a great end to another fine
day in Slickrock Country.
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