Private trips are amazing!!!

I can't really complain about my job in Grand Canyon. Sure it is hotter than hell, and I have to deal with toilets a lot, and people that have never been camping and pretty hard physical work all the time, but I'll be honest and say that I have a pretty rad job. It's so cool to be out there in nature and enjoying the scenery and showing people what the desert can be for them. However, one of my main complaints about the job is that I don't really get a summer. I haven't had a real summer in 6 years and this year is not going to be any different. One thing I am determined to do is do more private boating. I would love to get my own boat and eventually do more trips on my own and just with friends.

My friend, Jason (aka The Bag) put together a trip down Deso and it was so great! Besides the two day Westwater I did last year this was my first multi-day trip with friends and it was AWESOME! About half of us had been guides at one time and I think that made us realize just especially how wonderful it was to not be filling up water bottles, answering real dumb questions (ie ... (this one is my favorite and it gets asked at the put-in) "So, is this where we're going to get off the river?" ... seriously? Do you think this is Lagoon-a-beach?) and pretty much having to be "on" all the time and cook three meals a day for 28 people for 8 days straight. It was great!!
I was in charge of food and that was a bigger ordeal than I thought it was going to be, but it was pretty fun to do and fun to go to Costco and fill a flat bed and regular cart. It turned out to be a lot of work but was so great. We had 15 people there, and it ended up being a pretty random group, but everyone got along great. It was a bit of a pain getting the shuttle and everything worked out, but once we were rigged and all ready to go we slept at Sand Wash under the stars. I remembered how much I love being under the stars! When we finally pushed off the shore, it was such a great feeling!! We set out for 6 days and it was great.














We had some great limbo contests, swing dance parties, and leg wrestle contests.


We camped at one of our favorite places and it is a really good camp with a nice sandy beach that is great unless it's windy which unfortunately it was. Here we are sitting on the beach trying to pretend it's not blowing sand into everywhere, eyes, ears nose (it made for some great fiberglass -esque boogers!)



To get away from the wind we went on a hike to this sweet natural bridge.



One of the dudes that came brought his kayak but ended up swimming in a couple rapids so he let me take his kayak the rest of the time. It was really cool. I haven't paddled in a while and it was great. Erika had her boat too, so we got to kayak a lot.


Of course in Deso, the inevitable wind brought the rain and it even hailed a little the last night.



We all took turns cooking and the last days team pulled off dutch oven enchilada that were amazing!

We all brought dress up clothes, but the last night since it was raining no one got them out so Jos and I pulled them out the last morning. I've got to get the picture of both of us together.

Safety first

A weekend in the desert is always a good weekend in the desert but it was a bummer because we weren't able to do what we came there for. We went down to do Washerwoman Tower in Canyonlands. It is a 6 pitch route up a tower and with a crazy belay. I love having friends that are willing to plan stuff and put things together. I went down with Garrett, Scott Epperson and Ian. It was a pretty quick trip. We drove down Friday night and decided to stay in the trailers. It's so nice to have a place to stay down there. It was pretty cold and Ian had forgotten his sleeping bag. We had to drive seventeen miles that ended up taking 2 hours on the Shaffer Trail to get in to it. When we finally got to the base we racked up our gear and headed up to the base. It was a 45 min approach up the scree to the base of the route. When we got up there and started unloading gear I realized I'm an idiot and I had forgotten my harness. We tried to think of ways to make a webbing harness and to belay with a munter hitch but decided it might not be too awesome if there are some hanging belays to be hanging in webbing and to lead belay Scotty with a skethcy munter hitch. Anyway, I took off down for the car. I made it down and back up in a hour and by the time I got back, Ian and Scott had already started, and they were the two leaders.
They thought it was going to take me longer to get back up and they didn't want it to get too late so they decided to go and Garrett was going to try to take pictures from the bottom. They were only one pitch up and I think we could have worked something out and not had a big set back but the decision was made and with those guys once it's decided, it's decided. So Garrett and I sat at the base and waited for the them to climb it. They did it pretty fast, in like 3 hours and it was really nice weather, so it did feel nice to just hang in the sun and enjoy the desert. I love taking naps in the spring sun!

We watched them repel down right in front of this arch and it looked like a really hairy belay!
We drove back into Moab and ate tons of pizza at Zax, and had another great night in the trailers. We did get a little climbing in on Wall Street and I do like those routes.
There were some other people there climbing that were from Moab, and they were so funny. They think they're so cool being from Moab. This one guy that had his 12-ish year old son with him (that was a really good climber) said "I don't even consider myself from Utah, I'm from Moab, .... it's the only city in Utah as far as I'm concerned" and all this other lame stuff about how cool he is and you know he's passing that on to his son, because he already thought he was so cool. It was pretty funny.
The drive home ended up taking 7 1/2 hours!!! It had started snowing and Highway 6 was closed because of multiple accidents, so we headed toward Duchesne and a semi had jack-knifed and was blocking highway 40 so we had to sit there for an hour and a half! We cooked mac and cheese with chili in the car with our jet boil that ended up being a bit of a bad idea (surprisingly) and were so ready to get home when we finally did.

Anyway, it was a good weekend, and I felt bad that Garrett didn't get to climb it because of my forgetfulness, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

On a side note, I have only two more weeks of work at the hospital then I'm done! I'm doing a Desolation Canyon river trip with some friends for a week then going to Yosemite for a week then headed to the river and will be there for the next 5 months! I'm getting pretty stoked. I get spring fever and can't wait to get down to the desert and the river!