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Colorado & Utah Climbing Trip - Day 2
September 11-15, 2004
Gallery 1
Jamestown, CO
Gallery 2
South Six Shooter, UT
Gallery 3
Anasazi Ruins, UT
Gallery 4
Fisher Towers, UT
Gallery 5 - Matt's Photos of the Anasazi ruins
This is Day 2 in Canyonlands, Utah. We drove up a desert wash (dry creek bed) to our campsite at night. Rough going, both physically and navigationally. We climbed South Six Shooter peak on Monday. Pretty dry desert. And hot...damn hot.
Arriving at our camp site in the dry creek bed at 1:30am. Morning in the dry creek bed. That is North Sixshooter Peak in the background.
Tony with North Sixshooter Peak in the background. North Sixshooter Peak.
Standing at the mesa rim above our camp site. South Sixshooter Peak sits on this mesa.
  South Sixshooter Peak. We had a long approach to get to the rock. Nasty talus cone...
Climbing the talus cone. Our climb started to the right of the center shadow and went right to the summit spire.
The base of the vertical rock. Looking southeast from the base of the climb.
Our climb went right up the right side of the blank face. You can see an Anasazi petroglyph on the blank face near the bottom. Looks like a carrot and a zigzag and a wolf.  
There was some serious air between the bottom of our climb and the impact zone.  
Tony emerging from the crack to Matt's belay ledge.  
Matt enjoying the view from the first belay.  
Matt leading the 5.7 to the summit.  
  On the summit, which was only about 8 feet in diameter.

Sort of like Eric Cartman when he dressed up like a handicapped kid to compete in the Special Olympics...

See below...

Matt should have told me to straighten my helmet...  
North Sixshooter Peak from the summit of South Sixshooter Peak. That is a slightly lower spire summit (not reachable from our position) in the near background. Looking down through my shoes.
From the summit, there was what I will call an "edgy" interlude. The wind was gusting to HUGE MPH every few 15 seconds, and Matt was attempting to throw the double ropes over to a face where I could begin the rappel down. As the wind went up and down, I finally yelled to Matt to throw the lines. They sailed out and then way over a nose in the rock to the south and went where we did NOT want the ropes to go. Matt hauled them up again, and we tried it again. On the second attempt, the ropes went "sort of" where we wanted them for a full rappel. I went down the ropes, and Matt backed up the anchor with a secondary backup anchor set that was set "loose" so if the existing anchor failed, it would be backed up by what we placed. I made it down to the first belay station a few hundred feet down, and confronted a serious wind-tangles set of ropes below me. Matt and I were just out of yelling distance, so I mostly had to signal to him above that there was a problem. One of our rappel lines was seriously tangled, and was blown over the nose that went off into space. After 10 minutes of rope management and caressing the lines, I got them both back up to my position. For most of it, I was standing on a wedge rock about the size of a 4-door Buick that was tipping back and forth between the main column of rock at the belay station. I put one Friend in the crack above me and secured it, but I let it go a few times to untangle the ropes. At that point, there was about 800 feet of space between me and the ground. I just shrugged at Matt and gave him a signal to wait. It was too windy to hear each other. I finally got things squared away, and we got us both down safely. In hindsight, I have never been closer to death from a serious gravity event in a long time. I'm glad it worked out.
  A good late-afternoon view of South Sixshooter, on our descent back across the mesa.
  A petrified stump on the South Sixshooter mesa.
  Davis canyon at sunset. This is southeast of South Sixshooter.
Matt in the Indian Creek River bed with South Sixshooter Peak in the background. Tony in the Indian Creek River bed with South Sixshooter Peak in the background.
Our camp site on the second night in the desert.

 

 

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