Monday, March 9, 2009

Not much in life compares to good crack.

So a few weeks ago I was going crazy feelinig holed up in SLC (kind of like I am right now). I drove to Southern Utah for some relief in the desert to spend some time in Indian Creek, some of the best splitter crack in the world. I left SLC Sunday night solo (after much begging for partners) and made it to the rest stop in Spanish fork canyon where I had a nice sleep on a stone picknick table.

The next morning I drove to Moab and to my dismay it raining. So after moping around town for a while I finally asked the guys at Pagan (the climbing store)if there was anyplace to climb in the rain and of course he mentioned Crack House. I remember this place because of a huge picture of Steph Davis upside down in a crack with tape gloves that went up to her elbows, and of course I wanted it. So after very complex directions and scary 4 wheeling in my VW golf I arrived at crack house, all alone. What a cool place! It is seriously a 100+ft roof crack in a cave. Just about the coolest thing I've ever seen.
So I set up camp and spent the day working some of it out. I remember thinking it goes at 12- but after working out parts of it I think its probably easier than that... but then again I haven't climbed all the sections. One problem I learned about facing roof cracks, by yourself is that you can only climb a short distance before you leave your crash pad behind. Definetly a problem when you are 20 miles from anthing climbing upside down with your scull being the closest thing to the ground. All in all it was a great time though. After a day in the Crack House I drove to Indian Creek in hopes of finding some partners to climb with. To my luck I found 2 guys from Vancouver BC that where very nice and let me tag along with them. They also took some stellar photo's for me to post! Saar and Vince where their names. I didn't have a lot of time so I only got in 3 routes that day, but they where good. First we climbed some unnamed 5.9 then we moved to Super Crack of the desert and followed that by an unnamed 5.10 that was rather difficult. Good stuff, hope you enjoy the photos!