Brian & Bridgid

A little over a week ago we were forced to bid farewell to Indian Creek. Bridgid and I both agree that it is the nicest climbing we’ve ever done and we look forward to returning next spring. Unfortunately, it was just too cold. We packed as many climbs into the short periods of midday warmth, but we spent the other 18 hours of the day freezing our butts off. These conditions are fine on a one week climbing trip, but after a few weeks we were ready to leave. It also didn’t help that we were hit by 3 rain/snow storms during our time in Moab.

An unsuccessful attempt at Supercrack. Photo by Dave Millar.

We had a great last day of climbing after the big storm. I finally redpointed Supercrack and Bridgid followed it with only a couple of falls. We repeated Incredible Hand Crack and Bridgid almost flashed it. Bridgid led Twin Cracks (5.9), her first trad lead since leaving Squamish. Also, we met some nice climbers from North Carolina and Pennsylvania named Alan and Debbie, and Alan, who is a professional photographer (check out his web site), took some photos and videos of us. We’ll post these as soon as they are available.

Unfortunately, the cold weather had encouraged me to slack off on my PT and stretching for a couple of weeks, and after our last day at Indian Creek my back felt horrible. We immediately made the move back to Las Vegas, where the nighttime lows are nearly as warm as the daytime highs at Indian Creek. Even Bridgid admits that the heat feels nice and my back is getting better slowly. Unfortunately, I’m forced to take time off from climbing until my back heals, which will probably be several weeks.

We’re revising our plans for the next month. We’ll probably save Joshua Tree until we return from North Carolina. Instead, we’ll visit Mel and Gunter in Socorro, NM earlier than originally planned (probably next week). Until then we’re thinking of exploring southern Arizona.