I always enjoy driving a few hours west of the Vail Valley to the high desert to crack climb. Its one of my favorite trips to do. No need to drive to Moab or Indian Creek or even into Utah for that matter. 2 hours and you can be in Colorado National Monument and then just shy of 3 hours you can be in Escalante Canyon. Mikey, J, and I did a daytrip to Colorado National Monument, specifically Tiara Rado, to hone our crack climbing skills in preparation for a few days in Indian Creek, Utah the following weekend. This was my 4th time at Tiara Rado, and while I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners (its easiest route is a tough 70′ cupped hands crack that goes at 5.9+), it is a great place in a nice setting and even gives you a 45 minute hike each way to/from the car.

Rainier, Kona, J, & myself were planning to head down to Indian Creek the next weekend since Sawyer & Kristine were heading to Dune Acres, Indiana on Lake Michigan for a girl’s weekend with all the Bates gals and their baby gals. However, the forecast was for a wet and dreary weekend in Utah, so that plan was called off. Fortunately, the Chalk ladies had wonderfully sunny weather on the shores of Lake Michigan. Sawyer just loved playing in the sand.

I kept checking the weather forecast for another of my favorite spots which was about half the driving distance as Indian Creek from Edwards. The weather forecast for Escalante Canyon, CO looked favorable with possible rain starting Saturday evening. Good enough! The dogs, J, Tamra, Trevor, & Chelsey all packed up and headed west in my car and Tamra’s car for some car camping and cragging. While its fun to try and climb multi-pitch routes, its much more important to me these days to spend as much time as possible with Rainier and have her with me at all times since she is getting up there in age at almost 13 years old. She gave us a scare last week with a mass on her spleen, but fortunately the tests confirmed it being non-cancerous. We have to figure out now if its worth removing or if she can live with it as long as it doesn’t get any larger. Doing single pitch routes at crags is a lot of fun and means I can have the dogs with me as well. I believe you actually get more climbing in doing single pitch cragging than multi-pitch climbs, though it sure is fun topping out on a tower after a few pitches of climbing. My friend Natalie Moran also joined us that morning as she is living close by in Delta going to massage therapy school. She had no idea Escalante was in her backyard and I think was pleasantly surprised. Anyway, we got to the canyon just in time for me to take J over to one of my most favorite crack climbs called Willy’s Hand Jive just before dark. I led it and then we both climbed it twice. He loved it. The next morning Natalie met us about 8am at camp and we all went out and had a great day of climbing. I know there are a lot of climbing photos below, but you should have seen how many I actually took 🙂

I then led Willy’s Hand Jive clean this time with no rests and set up to take photos of the crew from above. I pulled the rope up to me while J took the other rope and led the route as well.

Then, for the last 2 hours of our afternoon before we headed home, we hiked up to the Interiors Wall and climbed two fairly short routes we knew well.

A great 24 hours in Escalante Canyon with a great crew. Hopefully, we can get to Indian Creek later this year for some more crack climbing fun.