Arches National Park

Today was a day of unexpected things. In the morning Robb and I split up, he headed towards SLC and I headed through SLC down to Moab UT which is about 350mi distant. As I drove further south and east I could watch the dashboard thermometer rising with the sun: 82F, 88F, 94F and then 99F even when I cruised into Moab it didn’t cross into triple digits.

Moab is a cool town, it has a great feel to it and I was definitely in the uniform of the locals, shorts, t-shirt, sandals and ball cap. I grabbed a couple of supplies at the hardware store and set out to find a hotel for the night, the drive took a long time and actually getting something done wasn’t a huge priority. Tomorrow I’m primed and ready to roll though.

After I got settled in a crappy place with a room right beside the elevator it was time to check out Arches National Park. Since I’m heading south tomorrow I may not have another chance to see it and so off I went. It’s jaw-droppingly awesome in there! Red rocks forming huge towers and arches and amazing cliffs, just spectacular. As proof, here are some pictures I took:







You’ll notice that the last one has a couple of climbers in it, and being a friendly sort I ambled over for a chat. The guy belaying is Shingu, from Salt Lake City, and the guy climbing is Rob, from Adelaide Australia; not in the picture is Shingu’s girlfriend Colby. We got to chatting about the usual stuff, where you from, whats the grade on the climb etc and it turns out that Shingu knows a few people around Canmore and Invermere, not too surprising I guess but then he says “hey, if you’ve got a harness you can tie in and climb if you like”. I probably started grinning like an idiot at this point, but I only had my shoes and chalk with my thinking that I’d probably only be bouldering out here. ‘No problem’ he says and tosses me his harness and while I’m getting ready he builds a quick one for himself out of the tail of the rope!

West face of Owl Rock in Arches National Park
Picture borrowed from Mark Goodro’s Flikr account, I hope he doesn’t mind
The climbing was pretty easy really, it’s rated a 5.9 apparently and my only problem was the gallons of sweat pouring off me as I’m grunting rather gracelessly up this pillar, at 7pm it was still 80F probably. Getting to the top was amazing though and standing on top of the tower was such a rush! The view all around the valley was more towers and pillars and cliffs all crying out to be climbed… maybe I’ll call in sick to work tomorrow šŸ˜‰ I tried to buy them a beer back in Moab but they were heading off to another spot yet tonight so I sat on the bumper of my Jeep swilling cheap Canadian import beer and watching the sun go down, it was fantastic and an excellent reminder of why I love to travel.

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