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!