Otto's Route Video

Kristal and I decided to haul the video camera with us while we climbed Otto's Route up Independence Monument in Colorado National Monument.

Be warned this is not the most exciting climbing video in the world. Since it was just the two of us we were also trying to safely belay while shooting. As you can imagine this limited our options a bit.

Otto's Route from Jason Allemann on Vimeo.

Sport Climbing on Gear

We were a little intimidated before arriving at Indian Creek. We had two major concerns. One, did we have enough gear to climb anything? And two, could we climb anything at all? Usually on our multi-pitch trad climbs we rarely climb anything harder than 5.9, and flipping through the guidebook there was very little in that grade range.

Thankfully the style of climbing at Indian Creek is about as far removed from trad climbing as you can get while still placing your own protection. Our normal trad outings are usually comprised of many of the following: sketchy gear placements, runout sections, route-finding, problem solving, uncertainty, and fear. Pretty much all of these issues are removed at the Creek. Climbing here is like sport climbing on gear. In some ways it's even easier than sport climbing, as you pretty much know before you start exactly what moves you need to do, and often times it will only be one or two different moves repeated from the ground to the chains.

Here is our friend Chelsea leading Generic Crack 5.10-, 120 feet of pretty much nothing but hand jamming.

You will rarely encounter a crux. Cleanly sending a route is more about endurance than figuring out any crazy beta or getting stronger. Gear placement is for the most part bomber and continuous (which also means you can easily hangdog your way up). Cams literally slide into the cracks. There is little need for slings. The documented grades are more an indicator of the size of the crack than anything else, and jamming cracks is so dependant on the size of your hands that the grades lose much of their traditional meaning.

Here is Chelsea leading Battle of the Bulge 5.11, 70 feet of thin hands, which can be climbed as a crack climb (the way she did it) or by lie backing the entire thing (which is how we did it). It's pretty amazing that an entire route can be climbed with such wildly differnt techniques.

As you can imagine, one problem with having such awesome uniform cracks is having enough gear to climb them. Some climbs require upwards of 8 of the same sized cam. Thankfully not all of the cracks are so uniform, and thanks to our good friend Karl back home, we had a full triple set of cams, and even quadruples of a few of the smaller ones. Although our rack was inadequate for many of the long uniform cracks, we had no trouble finding routes we could climb on our own.

Here I am leading Chocolate Corner 5.9.

And here is Kristal preparing to rap off of The Warm-Up 5.9.

As you can also imagine, not everyone visiting the Creek has an enormous rack of gear, so it is quite easy to join other parties on routes and/or share gear. We conveniently ran into Chelsea and Laura on our first day there. We had first met them bouldering in Joe's Valley and we had a great time hanging out with them again for a few days. Not to mention Chelsea is a crack climbing master, and she graciously led some awesome climbs so we could top rope them. We had the entire Blue Gramma wall to ourselves one day along with their friends Max and Dan.

One day we ran into a group getting ready to climb the impressive offwidth The Big Baby 5.11.

Kristal offered them some of our big gear to use, which the gladly accepted, and they later lent us some smaller cams so that we could jump on the nearby Cave Route 5.10+. Here I am about two thirds of the way up.

And if you look real close you can see Kristal in the next photo near the top of the cave preparing to rappel off.

And here she is on her way down.

Many of the areas at Indian Creek have a 'sport crag' type feel to them, with people setting top ropes and working projects. It actually felt a bit strange after all the multi pitch climbs we've been doing lately. There are multi pitch routes up many of the walls, but most of the traffic they get is only on the first pitch. There are some impressive towers too, which we unfortunately did not get a chance to climb. We will just have to come back.

Fisher Towers

Our next climb would bring us to the top of the wildest summit we've ever climbed. The Corkscrew Summit of Ancient Arts, 5.8 A0, at the Fisher Towers.

The Corkscrew Summit is the one in the center of the picture below. Note the sheer vertical wall of the Ancient Arts tower. We'll be coming back to that. The climb itself starts about a third of the way up, on the right side of the tower.

Here is Kristal (tiny in the lower right of the picture) at the top of the first pitch, with the summit up on the left.

The climbing to the base of the summit was pretty varied, highlighted by a long 5.8 chimney that was incredibly fun. This in spite of the fact that the rock quality was not always that great. They don't call these 'mud towers' for no reason. The best was saved for last of course. After 4 pitches of climbing you step onto the shoulder of the summit. Next up is a 20 foot walk along the 'sidewalk', which was one of the most 'exciting' things I have ever done. Remember the sheer vertical face? The other side of the tower is much the same at this point, and the sidewalk is a rounded ridge about 3 feet wide with 300 feet straight down on either side. Here is Kristal at the base of the summit, standing on the 'diving board', after walking across the sidewalk.

The summit is aptly named as you have to corkscrew up and around it to get the top. It also has it's fair share of excitement, with questionable rock quality and incredible exposure. Here is Kristal standing at the top.

The excitement didn't end there. Just as we got to the top we were surprised to here some yelling from above and spied two base jumpers floating down.

They came whizzing by about 20 feet from us. Super cool.

We also spent another day bouldering at Big Bend and had plans to climb another classic desert tower, Castleton Tower. Unfortunately some inclement weather rolled in the night before, and we decided not to wait it out. We might be back to try and climb it before we head back east, but for the moment it was time to move on.

Next up, the incredible, incomparable, and not to mention chilly, Indian Creek.

Canyonlands

On returning to Moab we decided to take another rest day before hitting the rock again. We went touring through Canyonlands National Park, yet another incredibly beautiful park in the area. We went on a couple of short hikes and did some sightseeing.

Here is Kristal standing on Mesa Arch.

We had put away our climbing gear for the day, but that never stops us from checking out any intersting climbing we come across. Here is Kristal on one of the boulders we encountered on the canyon rim.

We camped just outside of the park for a couple of nights, at a primitive campground with incredible views of the surrounding area.

Since climbing Tonka Tower in Arches, we figured it would probably be handy to have some aid gear of our own. Here I am putting together one of four Etries we ended up making.

And here is Kristal testing one out by aid climbing the car.

It turned out we would put them to use the very next day. We decided to climb Walden's Room 5.9 C1, up House of Putterman, just outside of Moab. At least that was the plan. With sub-par directions from the guidebook we spent over an hour driving around seemingly endless back country roads, not quite sure of where we were heading. Eventually we managed to decipher the directions enough to get an idea of where we were. Access to the area had changed a bit since the guidebook was published, so we parked the car and headed out, not sure of how long it would be, or even if we would be able to find the formation. With all the uncertainty we didn't start the approach until just before 1:00, and gave ourselves until 2:00 to find the climb, otherwise we would head back. The route was only 3 pitches, but with the increasingly short days this was still cutting it close. Remarkably, we made it to the base of the route at 2:05, after a 5.75km hike, and we were super excited that we would actually get to climb. There is nothing worse than taking your rope for a walk.

Here is Kristal at the top of the first pitch, which climbed a short but burly 5.9 hand crack, waiting to belay me up.

The third pitch involved some aid climbing and here is Kristal making use of our new Etries.

We were happy to get up and down before the sun set, and thankfully the approach was quite easy going, so hiking the last 45 minutes back to the car in the dark was a breeze. Here is Kristal at the top, with the low sun casting long shadows.

Grand Junction

When we heard the announcement that the annual Reel Rock Tour would be showing in Ottawa in November we were pretty bummed that we would miss it. We quickly checked out the tour schedule to see if we could catch it somewhere along our travels. We noticed that it would be showing in Grand Junction Colorado around the same time we were planning to be in Moab. Of course we also looked up any climbing we might be able to do in the area, and ended up visiting for a couple of days before heading back to Moab.

The Reel Rock Tour was of course fantastic. Maybe not quite as awesome as previous years, but still full of entertaining films. As for our own climbing, we checked out some of the bouldering in Unaweep Canyon, which is chock full of sandstone boulders. Here is Kristal on fossil rock, so named for the obvious bone imprint that she is holding with her left hand.

We also spent a day in Colorado National Monument, another beautiful destination, and climbed Otto's Route up Independance Monument, which is the thin tower on the right in the picture below.

This route actually has quite an interesting history. It was first climbed in 1911 by John Otto, a local with a fierce passion for the area. He lobbied for years to have the area designated as a national park, eventually succeeding, and acted as custodian of the park for many years. In addition to spending time and energy developing trails, he also made the first ascent up Independance Monument. Of course it was 1911, so the way he did it was by inserting pipes and chipping steps into the rock. The pipes are long gone, but the holes he drilled for them, and the steps, remain. You can see the steps clearly in this shot of the last pitch.

Today the climb goes in 4 pitches at around 5.8 . Here is Kristal just before the crux of the second pitch.

And just before the crux of the last pitch.

And hanging out at the top of the last pitch, with six feet left to go to the summit.

We were excited to find another summit register. Here's the obligatory shot of Kristal filling it out, with the town of Fruita in the background.

We did a bit of hiking through the park the next day. Here is Kristal tentatively standing on one of the many roofs that line the rim of the valley.

Arches

Our next stop was the Moab area. It would be a short visit, only two days in fact, but we would be back again shortly. The first day we spent in Arches National Park, which has some breathtaking scenery. Pretty much everywhere you look reveals beautiful vistas. We climbed two towers, the first being Owl Rock, up a nice 5.8 single pitch route.

Here are some interesting rock formations as seen from the top.

The next route we climbed was up Tonka Tower, which went at 5.8 A0, and became our first foray into aid climbing. According to the guidebook the aid climbing was minimal, and included a short section of climbing up a bolt ladder on the second pitch. We didn't have any aid gear, but figured we could easily wing it by stepping into slings. Thankfully we didn't have to resort to any such rudimentary techniques. We quickly befriended the party ahead of us, and they graciously left their Etries clipped into the bolts for us to use. Good thing too, as the 'bolt ladder' consisted of only two well spaced bolts on a minimally featured sandy face of rock. It would certainly have been interesting for us to get through that on our own. Here is Kristal at the summit with our new friends Ethan and Mike, with the tower next door to the right.

For the rest of the day we did some touring around the park. Here is Landscape Arch, supposedly the longest arch in the world, spanning 290 feet.

The ridiculous Balanced Rock.

And Kristal with Delicate Arch in the background.

On day two we did some bouldering at Big Bend, a small bouldering spot just outside of Moab, in the valley cut by the Colorado river. Despite it's small size, it contains a surprising number of quality problems, with an epic backdrop of sandstone cliffs.

Pictures

Before leaving Joe's Valley we finally got some better weather, although it was still bitterly cold at night. We spent two more days there, finishing up some projects and jumping on as many classic lines as we could. We got some pictures of a few of them.

Here I am on The Angler V2.

Kristal on Cave Man V4, a super fun problem that traverses out of a cave and up a cool overhanging arete.

Here I am just about to finish up The Buoux Crack V2, a committing problem if there ever was one.

Much of the scenery around Joe's Valley is pretty cool too. Here is a detached pillar from the cliff line overlooking the Area 51 boulders.

From Joe's we went back to Triassic and spent a day bouldering. We were pretty impressed with the quality of problems there. Here is Kristal on one of several great warm up problems on this wall.

We didn't have any sort of guide of the area. It was fun to jump on unknown stuff and just see how it went. Here is Kristal midway through an awesome unknown traverse problem.

Afterwards, through the miracle of the internet, we were able to figure out what some of the problems we climbed were. Here is Kristal midway up Golden V1.

And me topping it out.

And here I am on Desp'arete' V7, an incredibly reachy, and incredibly awesome, overhanging arete.