2001 Climbing trip with Luke and Alastair to the City of Rocks Luke and I arrived at the City in an outrageously expensive rented Monte Carlo in the late afternoon. If you ever want to drive to the City of Rocks from Salt Lake, don't do it in a Monte Carlo. It's kind of like running in a bobsled competition by sitting on a heavy trash-bag. You get there, but it's not particularly fast or agile. Alastair had been reading too many guidebooks. "Let's climb Tow Away Zone," he said, suggesting a three-star trad 10a as a warmup, "It's got a bolt at the crux." Great. The hardest thing I've lead this year is Snake Dike (5.7), and Alastair wants a 10a as a warmup. I accept my fate. I'm screwed. I offer to take the first lead. A few moves lead to some pro low enough to be psychological, and then a bit more gets you a blue alien sunk into a finger-sized crack/pocket. It was completely bomber, as I proved a few seconds later moving above it: Whack! There I sat, straddling the rope, feeling stupid, while Alastair tried to recover his feet from catching the fall. Good blue Alien. Nice blue alien. I mentally sung the praises of deploying the alien. Scraggled myself up to the bolt, reached back for a quickdraw, grabbed something off my harness... and clipped a yellow alien into the bolt. A yellow alien makes a very, very bad substitute for a quickdraw. But it makes a good handle while you clip an actual draw in, so I hung for all I was worth, and then realized that my brain had experienced the mental equivalent of jumping into icewater. It shrivled up into something small and useless. I gave the lead to luke, leaving the rope through the draw. Luke tried to make me feel better by falling at the blue alien, but I quickly saw through his deception as he scurried up the rest of the route with the boundless energy that would come to haunt me and Alastair in the coming days. I appreciated the gesture, however. On top-rope, the route wasn't so bad, and Alastair and I both wandered up it. Once again, my mind is a terrible handicap to live with. To prove it, we swung the rope over to a gorgeous, frictiony 10c next door. Just up my alley. Beautiful! Luke TR'd it a few times until he had the moves down solidly. Alastair and I watched, and politely declined the chance to run up it again. We hit two more climbs, but the passage of time dulled my memory of which ones. Sunday dawned groggy, but I did learn that dry oatmeal mixed with fruit cocktail makes a surprisingly tasty breakfast. Don't just take my word for it. The sun was glaring down at us, so we headed to Calico Basin to start the day's adventure: Chasing shade. Nobody was on Tribal Boundaries (10a, ***), so my plan of actually warming up got abandoned again. This time, I got smart, and Luke snagged the first lead. It's a tightly bolted sport climb, and he styled it. I got lazy, left the draws up when we pulled the ropes, and somehow managed to sneak up without falling off. While we had our ropes up, we TR'd "Reservations", a nice, runout 10a next to tribal boundaries. One hard to figure out move, and lots of nice climbing. By the time we left, a long-ish line had formed for Tribal Boundaries. Get there early. The sun got higher, so we headed over to New York is not the City (9+). Snagged a booty biner off of the third bolt of Rain Dance (5.7) on the way - it's been a dry booty year, so it seemed worth its price in sunlight. I'd followed NY on my first trip to the City. My partner, in his infinite wisdom, decided that it was a good thing to put a gumbie on his third trip outdoors on some 9s and 9+s. Don't think I've ever been that pumped in my life... but I digress. Luke tagged the first go of NY. In true energizer bunny fashion, he was up to the top in a jiffy, and rapped and cleaned, letting me play on it a bit. Fairly mellow route, all bolts. Sun. Lots and lots of sun. Mystery Bolter held no shade for us, so we bailed to Elephant Rock for some more three-star route chasing, and ended up at the base of Rye Crisp. I've avoided Rye Crisp (5.8, ***) on previous City trips. It has bad juju, after Alan Lindsay's shattering fall on it a few years ago. I don't get spooked by many climbs, but this one had a bit of the bad vibes. I figured I should conquer them, and asked for the first lead. Described as "the all-time classic flake route of the City," Rye Crisp didn't disappoint. The route at up two #4 and two #3 camalots. A nice mental challenge with gorgeous laybacking up the flake. Luke re-lead with an impressive (gulp) 40-foot runout in the easy section. Alastair started making "tired" noises, so we wandered to Wheat Thin, Elephant Rock's other ultra-classic, and a perpetual favorite of the Wasatch Mountain Club. Luke took the lead, cruising up this moderate beauty. Alastair was now confirmed tired, so we dropped him off at the parking lot and said our farewells. I haven't read any accident reports, so I assume he made it back to Salt Lake safely. He wasn't the only one who was tired - I was secretly glad that Luke lead wheat thin, but with a bit of light left, Luke and I headed over to the Incisor to bag another mega-classic, Skyline (5.8, ***). Luke lead it nicely. I followed it with a bit less style. Bed called. Monday found me lazy, and I was determined to find something that would finally tire out the energizer bunny after yesterday's climb-fest. I innocently suggested we walk over to the back of Bath rock and check out Colossus (10c, ***), a juggy, curvy path through overhanging pods. We spotted a party on a route nearby, which I confused with colossus, but Luke wasn't fooled. The leader thought they were on Coffee and Cornflakes (10a R), but someone obviously hadn't had his morning's caffeine -- they were on Loch Ness Monster (11a) by accident. Colossus was unoccupied, and I generously offered to let Luke lead it - since, of course, I'd lead it a few years before and didn't want to spoil the experience. I wasn't thinking of the effects winter had had upon my gut, of course. Good thing, too. Luke didn't rest quite long enough below the crux, and hung for a bit before figuring out the sequence, but overall did a great job on the route. Embarassingly, while I remembered how to do the crux, I blew a finger lock at the second bolt and had to sit around looking foolish while I shook out. This route finally seemed to tire Luke a bit, thank god, so we headed to Delay of Game (5.8, ***) We headed to town, showered, and relaxed over burgers with a local man and his son, who had an astounding knowledge of the City's geology. The father, now 80, had served on a bomber in WWI, and spent many months in a POW camp in northern Germany before being freed by the Russians. They'd both lived all around Idaho and Utah. It was an unexpected gem of a lunchtime conversation, and quite an eye-opener about the people you find in some of the most rural bits of Idaho. Refreshed, we headed to Stripe Rock for a time trial on the city's most over-bolted route, Cruel Shoes (5.7), with 39 bolts in 400 feet of climbing in three pitches. Skipped half of the bolts, and started mooing at a herd of cows we could see from the top. They mooed back. We clipped more bolts. They mooed more. We mooed back, and clipped even more bolts. Rope drag forced a bivy in the middle of the second pitch, so I mooed more while pullling up more rope. One cow detached himself from the herd and started walking towards us. Luke ran up the second pitch and a half to the top, while I mooed more. The cow walked closer. We started rapping. I mooed from the top of the last pitch to the ground. The cow reached the base of the climb. Headlines reading "Climbers killed by mad cow" started flashing through my head. So I mooed even more. No speed record, but three nice pitches of climbing, and a good cow-sighting. The cow walked off while I was coming down on the last leg. I misjudged how long the climb would take. There was time left for plenty of climbing, so we headed over to the Breadloaves to wait in line for Bloody Fingers (10a, ***), one of the ultimate classic routes at the city. For this, there was a line. Someone had retrobolted a 5.8 X to the right of BF, leaving a healthy but easy runout at the start, so I scrambled up it while we waited. Nice. We watched a woman from the party in front of us struggle like mad with the crux of BF, and I started to get nervous. I thought it might get dark before we started, but no luck. Speedy Gonzales ran up bloody fingers. One worrysome moment at the start as he figured out the crux, but smooth sailing after that. I napped a bit at the crux, and then got about 20' from the top to hear Luke laughing. Curious, I moved up to where the crack squeezed off, leaving a nasty blank section. Pbbht. Needing no pro, I moved off to the face and scaled up what was certainly off-route. Ha! It was still light. Arrgh. I plead temporary insanity, but decided that I wanted to lead Intruding Dike (5.7, ** or ***) since we were right next to it. Mellow 5.7 face and crack climbing lead to the top of a pillar, where an exposed step across a very deep gully left me laughing as I lead the top section. I'm still not sure if it was on route, but it was fun, easy climbing. At long last, the sun set. A few deep-fried chicken gizzards at Flying-J gave me sufficient energy to drive back to SLC. Luke finally seemed tired, and slept the whole way home. Thank god, because we passed some mighty attractive boulders on the way out...