04-20-2013 Early Moab

We are in Moab, Utah.  This is an awesome place with so much diverse outdoor activities it is mind boggling.  Of course that brings the 30 something adventure seeking crowd, we don't mind, they don't get in our way often.

The view out the front door is pretty amazing.  You can see some of the formations of the Arches National Park, small in this picture, but still pretty cool.

There is so much OHV activity in this area it is amazing.  The campground resonates with the sound of small 4 stroke engines in the morning and afternoon.  We don't mind because we do the same.

Just behind our campground at Arch View RV park is the south loop of the Sovereign Trail.  On the guide book there is a section marked; "Difficult Hill".  That really got my curiosity up.  So just after breakfast I jumped on my XT and went for a ride to find the difficult hill.  I did find it and it was...

Notice how the trail kind of disappears by the boulders.  That's because it drops rapidly.  I rode down to that section.  Several big boulder drops and loose gravel with a turn make it a very difficult hill. Here is a shot from below that area, but does not show the loose gravel boulder you would have to climb over.

So I turned around and climbed back up the way I came.  Even in the less difficult part of difficult hill challenged my bike, I almost stalled out.

On the way back I noticed a motorcycle single track sign and wondered what it was like, so I rode it. 

It was kinda cool the way they painted the trail over the rocky parts so you couldn't get lost.  I was having so much fun bouncing around the rocks I didn't take time to take pictures.  That is, until I came to the drop, that got my attention and I stopped to reconnoiter before I jumped in. 

It's level at the top, about a 3' foot drop followed by steep hill and loose dirt.  I parked and walked down to have a look.

Yep, it's a doozy.  So I climbed back on, gunned it, and lept off. Worked out ok.  This was the first morning here.

We went climbing in the afternoon but forgot the camera.  It was fun.  I did a 5.7 trad climb but didn't bring any gear so had to down climb it.  There was a lot of activity near there, and made it a little difficult to get set up on routes that we wanted to climb.  Eventually one of the routes cleared up and we made a good climb of it.  Still had fun in spite of the difficulty.

The next morning we woke up to rain.  So just sat around surfing the internet.  But around noon it cleared up so we scarfed some lunch and headed towards Corona Arch for a 110' rappel.  But on the way we passed the Wall Street climbing area and much to our surprise, no one was there.  So we pulled over and plotted some climbs.

I did a simple crack climb to access the bench for the top of the rest of the climbs. We treated it like a multi-pitch climb in the wild.  We set traditional protection in the first section,  I built a top  anchor and belayed Barbara from it. When she reached the top we set the rope for a rappel on one of the climbing routes.

It was a 5.7 route that both Barbara and I climbed.  When I got to the top Barbara had picked out another route that she wanted to climb, so I pulled the rope and reset it on a couple of anchors.
As I am rappelling down this route I am thinking there is no way I can climb it.  Later we found out the route was rated at 5.11, so Barbara accomplished her first 5.11 climb. 

 

Barbara had a time of it, fell a couple of times, had to use the sport anchors...

Very little to get a hold of...

She finally made it to the top...

It was a really good day of climbing.  We had a summer camp group of kids come to the area shortly after we arrived.  The lead climber scrambled up our first climb with no protection, then set ropes on two routes that we had planned on climbing.  The kids all had a good time on it.  Not a big problem because there were several other routes that fall within our ability range. 

Arriving back at the campground we found the view to as spectacular as when we left. 

We have several more days here.  It will be interesting to see what kind of mischief we can get into.