Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Spring Climbing





Paddy and I were lucky enough to go on an eight day Southwestern adventure. We started in Vegas, spent most of our time in Prescott, and headed north to the Grand Canyon and Utah. I had not really spent any time in that neck of the woods and I couldn't have loved it any more! Vegas was pretty disappointing, but considering I don't like tourists, or average Americans in general, I wasn't surprised with my reaction.

Prescott was amazing! It reminded me a lot of the Texas Hill Country, actually (except for all the mountains). We climbed there five days and went to all of the major climbing areas like Groom Creek, the Dells, Sullivan Canyon, and my favorite, the Promised Lands.

We started to head north...through Jerome (awesome mountainside town), Sedona, and spent the night north of Flagstaff. The next morning we arrived at the Grand Canyon before seven and started our march down the Kaibab trail. We went about three miles down (that's how much water we had) and then made it back out in about the same amount of time. It was gorgeous, of course, and great people watching.

Next we went north to Zion. The drive over the Glen Canyon Dam and through Grand Staircase-Escalante, eventually to polygamous Kanab, and to Zion was beautiful. We had to turn around at Zion, though, because the campgrounds were full. I was pretty sad, but as we continued driving, I got to see some of Bryce Canyon.

We finally made it back to the Wood River Valley Monday night...just enough time to prepare for the opening day of fishing season on Saturday. I'm off to tie flies now!