We met up with Paul and Diana one morning in Snow Canyon State Park north of St. George, Utah. Carol and I have climbed at Snow Canyon a few times, but Paul and Diana found and climbed the best route we’ve ever done there.
Carol and I first climbed a couple routes at The Circus Wall. One unnamed sport route and then The Barbarian, a relatively easy, but long, trad route. One nice twist to The Barbarian for us – Paul and Diana let us try out their twin ropes which Carol and I had never used before. One upside is that with two 60m twin ropes, it’s possible to get off The Barbarian’s first pitch in one rappel instead of doing a multistage.
Climbing
on the twins (that just sounds wrong) was pretty straightforward; I had no clipping problems and Carol didn’t tell me about any belaying problems she might have had. I did get a lot of rope drag, but that’s pretty normal for The Barbarian as I remember.
At the top, I set up to belay Carol. As she climbed, I did what I thought was a careful job of flaking the rope. After Carol got up to the anchor, we started trying to get ready to rappel.
Long story short, we soon had a bit of a tangle – enough that Carol overheard some people that were watching from the road with binoculars say “they’ve tangled the rope”. Carefully pulling out rope, we set up the rappel and successfully threw the ropes. I don’t know what might have happened if there had been a lot of wind, but it probably wouldn’t have been good. We both got down and managed to pull rope without getting snagged – whew.
I liked using the twin ropes, especially thinking about alpine climbing where it would be good to be able to rappel 60m with the twins, and to have a backup rappel rope if something happened to one of them. Redundancy is our friend. I decided that if I were to use twin ropes, though, they’d need to be stowed safely in a rope bag at all times to avoid the whole tanglefoot thing.
While Carol and I were climbing The Barbarian, Paul and Diana were off at the Aftershock Wall climbing pitch one of “Living on the Edge“. The route goes up over a big alcove with big apparent exposure. Diana led the pitch (what a stud climber she is) and Paul, Carol and I all got to climb on toprope.
It was awesome. The highest rated outdoor climb Carol and I had ever done – and that’s cool – but the coolest part was the climb itself. We probably used every skill we’ve learned, and the view past your feet once you were over the alcove was just too much.
Meanwhile, Paul and Diana had gone off and climbed The Barbarian.
Back on Terra Firma, Carol and I pulled the rope, stowed our gear and went and found Paul and Diana. We were ready to pack it in (excepting Diana, who has no discernible limit when it comes to climbing, in our short experience) and hungry, so we headed into St. George for dinner.
I took everyone to Marv’s, where we indulged in the traditional American way of looking death in the face – cheeseburgers and fries. I don’t even remember the last time I had fries, but Marv’s were hand cut, freshly cooked – and awesome.
A great day, inspirational climbing friends, inspirational climbing – I have to go back and lead Living on the Edge myself now – can’t wait.
Click here for PICTURES. Best viewed as a Slideshow.
A note on the pictures – whoever was belaying was also taking the pics; our rule was that the climber had to be in a stable position before any photography could take place, so no difficult moves are captured. I think we can all agree “hands on the belay” trumps picture-taking…
~Rick
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