PLEASE VISIT MY 500PX PAGE TO SEE MORE PICTURES OF THIS TRIP
On Thursday February 14th, 2013, I met up with a couple of climbers from Ottawa Canada, Greg and Francios. They let me tag along with them on a US climbing adventure. Our first stop was near Phoenix, about an hour west of the city called Courthouse Rock.
Aaron wanted to climb the totem pole again and bolt a couple of new lines down the backside of the spire. A total of 7 people were with our group, and we had the chance to climb both the original Totem route, and the new route that has been coined “Pathological Optimist“. Collectively we rated it as 5.10 b/c and it was definitely a great way to get up the wall. Austin Sobotka was the first to lead the climb and on sighted it without any problems.
Many thanks to Aaron, Scott and Tim for putting in the time, resources and energy to clean the route, install the bolts and provide another great climb!
Here is the full album of the days activities, including the FA of the new route.
Totem Pole Traffic Jam from Nate Young on Vimeo.
The Totem Pole… a great climb in Lower Devils Canyon in Queen Creek, AZ. This was a time lapse over about 5 hours of climbing. The first two climbers were from my group, Austin and Matt respectively. The next three were from another group of climbers that came down for a few days from Utah.
What you can’t tell is at the top, after the 3rd and 4th climbers make it to the summit, there was actually a wedding proposal. Congratulations Michael and Brighton!
The Glenn Canyon Dam was releasing a “Fake Flood” to help stir up some sediments and whatnot on the Colorado River. We drove up on Sunday night and took a few night shots, and stayed to play around up here during the day.
The dam was ramping up the turbines and letting a bunch of water out, which you could see in how much water was churning around down below.
I met up with some new people from for a day out in Isolation Canyon. This is a fairly well known canyon, but it’s not often visited by throngs of people like the other crags in the central valley. The … Continue reading
I took a personal day off from work on Friday, September 15th, 2012, and decided to load up the pup and go bouldering on my own up in Groom Creek, which is near Prescott, AZ. We met a guy named … Continue reading
A new friend of mine named Aaron, that I met on The Mountain Project, climbed a route called “The Standard Route” on a Superstition Mountains Spire named “The Tower“.
It’s a pretty neat climb with some interesting sections. It consists of two pitches, the first being about ~65′ tall and the second is about ~130′.
Scott, Molly Mae and I went out to visit my parents in New Mexico for a long weekend. While we were there we hit up this crag called “Mentmore” which was only about 5 minutes outside of Gallup proper. The “Original Side” was this long gradually sloping wedge that rose vertically out of the soft dirt. The cliffs were all highly compacted sandstone, so most of the holds were very good, except for the few that crumbed on the weight of a person pulling hard.
I was able to climb a hand / fist crack called “Why Crack” which was rated 5.7 that was fun. Top roped it before hand and placed the gear just to be sure it would go. The sandstone was extremely tricky to place the gear because it was so irregular. We also used the anchors that we setup for “Why Crack” to do another route right next to it called “Reggaes Route 5.10c”. This was a fun but challenging route mainly because it was so sparse and the holds were pretty much rounded pockets.
Michael was able to pull off a sport route called “Blobs of Love” which was rated 5.8.
We had a fun time and since it was so close to Gallup there really isn’t any reason I won’t be back!
Continue readingScott wanted to take his new truck to a local car show and show it off. It was a pretty hot and humid night so we didn’t spend a ton of time out there.
This is his new truck, a 1955 Ford F350 stake bed truck. He wants to keep it pretty much original, but will fix it up to make it drive a bit smoother.
Here are the rest of the pics of the truck, and some other interesting cars from the show.
