Exploring Moab: Part I
There’s more photos from the long weekend up in the gallery!
Saturday morning dawned cool and quietly. We noticed that most of the people in our campground were up and gone as the first light illuminated the red rock walls of the canyon surrounding the city. Mark and TJ started the day off with a ride through town, with TJ getting his first chance to put his new “fixie” through its paces. Eventually, we got everything and everybody together to head into Arches National Park for the morning.
Arches is a relatively small national park, but just chocked full of some darn incredible photo opportunities. That morning, we hiked down Parkway, all around Balanced Rock, and then out to see Double Arch. Mom even scrambled up to the rear window of the arch to see what the view out the far side was like!
Around luchtime, the temperatures in the area had reached into the upper 90s, and it was time to go find some A/C. We headed back into Moab, and had a great lunch of Mexican food (mmm, fish tacos), and then went back to the RV for a nap in the cool air. At about 4:30p, Mark and I headed out to see if Wall Street was climbable yet.
The crags along Potash Road were in deep shade by this time of the day, but the rock was still radiating heat. The rest of the family dropped off Mark and I, and took off to do a little grocery shopping. We had about an hour, just enough time to run a couple laps on one of Mark’s all time favorite climbs.
30 Seconds Over Potash (5.8) – This 80ft tall crack climb was the pinnacle of our crack climbing abilities when we were out here two years ago. Mark lead it back then, and he was so proud! This weekend, he hopped on it excited to see if our crack climbing had improved at all. It has. While the lower cruxes were still hard, and hard to protect, he finished off the redpoint with no problem, and I climbed it on TR with only one silly fall. The crack varies a bit between tight fingers and solid hands, and even doubles up against a sweet off-width at the top (didn’t notice that before). Mark and I were both happy to climb it, but after our hour on the rock, we both agreed, it was just another crack. Whatever had seemed to make it so special before just didn’t seem to be there any more.
It was a fun way to end the day, though. We headed back to the RV for a tasty dinner of big sandwiches, chips and melon and procuitto. We spent the evening relaxing in camp chairs watching the swarms of bats feast on mosquitoes over the Colorado River.
