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Marshall and Tim picked me up Thursday after an exciting (NOT!) day of work in Bellevue, WA. I already had all my stuff in my SUV, so Marshall just gave me one of the two 2-way radios he'd borrowed from some guy and we drove off into the sunset (well, it would have been a sunset if a) it wasn't raining or b) we were heading west). I drove by myself and Tim and Marshall were in Marshall's Xterra. We continued to cruise for many, many miles; so many, in fact, that I would have lost count if it weren't for the fact that my SUV has this nifty feature called an odometer. Marshall and Tim were able to keep me awake by endless mindless banter over the radios. When we were virtually unable to drive any more, we happened to be in the vicinity of Burley, ID... so we decided to whip on out to City of Rocks to get some shut-eye. Unfortunately there was a lot of snow there, so we went around by the Twin Sisters and found a little campsite in the snow just as the sun was coming up. Tim of course had to get a bunch of pictures of the sunrise; City of Rocks in the sunrise with snow is incredibly beautiful!

We slept (it off) until noon or so and then rallied our senses and drove to Almo to get some cowboy coffee at the cool little general store there. Not quite as crowded as it is during peak climbing season, which isn't saying much anyway... It was about 80 miles of dirt road (which of course we motored right thru) east of Almo before we got back to I-82 just south of the Utah border.

We had to make it to SLC by 9:00PM on Friday to pick up Andrea at the SLC airport. She had to work that day in Seattle, and since she planned to leave early anyway, she just flew. After an uneventful drive we whipped on into SLC and had just barely enough time to cool ou throats with a few in the parking garage of the airport before we had to pick up Andrea, who made it in without a scratch. Forrest, on the other hand, managed to miss his plane and the next flight was the next morning at 10:30. So we had to find a place to sleep.

ATTENTION: All ye who need to find a place to crash if you're in SLC and don't want to pay for a hotel, you're screwed! We finally started driving west on I-80 until we passed the big ol' smoke stack for that hideous copper mine where there was a viewpoint at which trucks were stopped (apparently allowing their drivers to sleep). We found a little dirt road that went down the embankment next to the freeway and continued along a big pipeline. It seemed out-of-the-way enough, so we took it and it worked. It wasn't really even that noisy. Yay!

Ok, in the morning we got up early and went grocery shopping to add to our pile of warehouse club food. I went to the airport to pick Forrest up, which went smoothly except for the fact that his big Fish bag didn't make it onto the same plane he did. Yuck . So we went to a park and played frisbee, ate a very good black bean burrito, toured the Tabernacle and resisted conversion, and made such small-talk comments about SLC as "it's a nice place to visit, but.. " and "I really think I 'd rather be leading some heinous run-out 5.11c offwidth". Finally it came time to fetch Forrest's stuff and we made yet a third pilgrimage to the airport, this time returning with our final success and we were OUTTA THERE!

The morale of the crew increased exponentially as we cruised over the Wasatch mountains, visions of sandstone dancing before our eyes, reaching its height as we listened to Night Lily lovingly dismember her unfortunate suitor (the tax assessor on Tatooine) with her sharp, darting tongue. We rolled through Moab with hardly a second glance (we had to shut our eyes while getting gas avoid it); for, somewhat sadly, Moab was not our goal, we were bound for Indian Creek!

Another 80 miles of what would have been beautiful terrain had it not been dark got us to our beloved campsite right next to the creek where, despite the cold and our disturbance at seeing patches of snow on the ground, we zonked out almost immediately. The crack of dawn found us wide awake however, and we were ready to put to the test all the calluses we had been building up at the gym for the past few months. That day was absolutely beautiful. The temperature was perfect, the snow on the north facing talus piles was exotic, and I flashed the Incredible Hand Crack (Forrest thought I'd tried it before but I disagree) and pink-pointed SuperCrack. Marshall fell only slightly less short of his goal of redpointing Supercrack than he had the year before... he only had to hang about 5 times. But at least he got the right set of gear this time. Forrest beat his brains out on some unnamed dihedral crack around the corner to the left of Incredible Hand Crack. It was one of those 12d 10b's. Tim took lots of pictures, of course.

That night we found a better campsite towards the Needles. We fried up a very salty, fatty, corned beef brisket on the hibachi (thats high-BATCH-ee) that wasn't very satisfying. Luckily there was lots of beer, chips and salsa to quench the thirst it created. The next morning was even more beautiful. It was gradually getting warmer. Tim and Andrea went to the Needles, Forrest, Marshall & I went back to Indian Creek. I climbed a more aesthetic version of the dihedral Forrest had humiliated himself on the day before; thusly humiliating myself in the process. I got to the top eventually though, after several sketchy maneuvers (like hanging on a very poorly placed #3 camalot and lowering a section of the rope to bring the batch of #2 camalots I should have had from the beginning, seeing as how the entire crack was about 2.5" wide...).

More beautiful days followed. We had reserved the campsite at Taylor Canyon (in the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands NP, where Zeus and Moses stand) for the nights of the 11th, 12th, and 13th. We spent entirely too much time in Moab on the 11th (which was my birthday, incidentally) picking up our 1200 foot static line, doing more grocery shopping, and being generally lethargic. We finally got up our gumption and fired off our painstakingly prearranged plan with reckless abandon as follows:

	At the Salt Flats

Marshall, Tim and Forrest drove in Marshall's Xterra over many miles of the aforementioned underimproved roads to within 1/4 mile of the lip of an 800-foot wide, 1000-foot tall, 600-foot overhanging ARC (for those of you not in the know, an arc is a pre-arch state where part of a cliff erodes away, making a very wide-mouthed cave). For those of you with no sense of scale, that's big. Marshall and Forrest carried our spool of 1200' of rope that 1/4 mile while Tim took many pictures of them, which they enjoyed greatly. Meanwhile, Andrea and I drove down into Taylor Canyon and ran the mile or so up the wash from the campsite to the base of the arc so I could tell them where to hang the rope.

This was where it was fortunate that we had the radios, since though I could see them like little ants on the top of the cliff, I had a very hard time hearing them. Just before the sun set they had the rope hung off the most bomber anchor any of you will ever see... A tree, a boulder about three times the size of a small vehicle, two pitons, and a #3 & #4 Camalot, all equalized. Then there was even a backup prussik that held the rope just over the edge in case the abrasion did bad things to the rope. When they were done it took about 2 hours to drive back around and join us at our beloved Taylor Canyon campsite, with the best outhouse in the world. I forget what we ate for dinner that night, but it didn't come out of the outhouse.

The next morning was Primrose Dihedrals (the most popular route on Moses) day! It's regarded by many to be the best desert climb in the world. I believe it. We wimped out and bypassed the 5.11d start and instead took the 5.8 traverse. The rest was orgasmic mid-5.10 climbing. We did it in two parties and had one pack that we hauled between the four of us, which made it a little slower than we'd have liked. Tim aided the ear, which is an 11c offwidth with a bolt ladder next to it. We made it to the top just in time for a sunset summit photo. And hey, if you ever do Moses, bring 2 60m ropes; you can descend with about 2 1/2 rappels. And I don't mean to sound sexist, but I must admit it was very nice to have spaghetti waiting for us at camp, prepared by Andrea.

The next day was the day we'd been looking forward to for a year. The day we hoped would figuratively but not literally blow our brains out of our skulls through our ears. The day we would make use of our 1200' rope and the effort it took to get it there. The day of our fabled 1000-foot rope swing! OH YAH, NO EXTRA ZEROS ON THAT NUMBER, BABY!