Arches National Park

The Three Penguins

Today was my first visit to Arches National Park. Nestling just north east of Moab this area is popular with car based visitors, signs guide you where to park to photograph each feature.

The Three Penguins

For the petrified sand dunes stand here, for the Organ stand here. Not for us however this arms length interaction. First stop the Penguins. These three towers appear to (possibly) resemble king penguins. They are breached by a two pitch route called Right Chimney. We ran the two pitches together, and bar accidentally falling backwards off the last move, dispatched it quickly. The snow on top added interest.

Owl Tower

Second stop was a quick romp up Owl Tower. This single pitch VS even involved face holds and was rapidly climbed before we moved on to a single pitch crack route called Heart of the Desert. I was cruelly misled by the guide into taking far to many small cams, and far to few large ones. This error I regretted at my leisure whilst I struggled with the ever widening crack, frantically, and repeatedly searching my harness for elusive large cams. None appeared and I was forced to descend in search of more. Eventually, dripping blood, bruised and battered I made the loweroff.

Indian Creek Cracks

We headed down to Indian Creek to climb some cracks. (Indian Creek has a lot of them) It all looked very different from when I was there in September.

Indian Creek October 2009

Indian Creek October 2009

Camping was cold. My contact lens fluid froze overnight!

View from the Superbowl camping amongst the cottonwoods.

Roadside cragging

Today Herb and I went out to Wall Street for a bit of roadside action.

Wall Street AKA Potash Road, a mixture of trad cracks and bolted sports routes on the faces and aretes.

The situation was magnificent with the Colorado river carving between magnificent cliffs. The climbing was great and plans are being hatched to head down to Indian Creek for a couple of days tomorrow to climb some more cracks.

Moab

I have arrived in Moab and been for a drive to check out the local craging.



It quite snowy here at the moment (unusually so) but the last of the stormy weather should be clearing out tomorrow.

Really psyched

Arrival in the States

They let me into the States.

After my last experiences of being sat in a small room for two and a half hours whilst they checked up on me I was a little bit worried about clearing imigration.

This time I think I was better at answering their difficult questions:

Q. Are you going to climb for all of the 90 days?
A. Don't be daft, I'm going to have a couple of rest days to avoid tendon injury.

Q. Where are you staying?
A. With a friend (as opposed to last time when I said "in a tent in the desert").

Now I just need to go climbing.

Guerilla bunker

Just a few images from a guerilla bunker on the North Downs in Kent. This I feel gives an indication of the dirty irregular warfare being planed for after the German invasion in 1940.

The main room for the team of three saboteurs.

The air vent and flue

The internal remains of the flue



The escape tunnel


Fuse box

Chee Dale

Tuesday 10th February

Lily in Chee Dale

Today Lily and I dashed out far a quick jaunt to Chee Dale. After getting lost briefly we parked in Wormhill and walked down to the river. We headed upstream gazing across at Chee Tor, before prancing across stepping stones below the Cornice. We turned round after checking out some of the lines at Two Tier Buttress.



As we headed back it started snowing.