Desert Road Trip in the Red Rocket
I just got back home to Truckee today after nearly a month on the road with my Basque brother Imanol Amundarain. It’s been a nice change from work life and a needed time to reflect after spending 5 months building vans and climbing minimally. We slept under the stars, cooked over the fire, and climbed rocks nearly every day while driving around the American West in John Bolte’s Tacoma, the Red Rocket. When John passed, his parents encouraged our friend Cedar to take the car and Cedar kindly let us borrow it for our monthlong road trip.
When Ima drove up from Bishop to pick me up in the Red Rocket, the original plan was to head to Yosemite but a storm had already rolled in so we loaded up the truck in a snow storm and drove off to the Utah desert. After a quick stop in Salt Lake where we made Pizzas with our friend Hayden Jamieson, we drove straight to Castle Valley and linked up with Evan Mann for a windy journey up the Rectory via a route called The Ministry. Having not climbed on sandstone in over a year in addition to climbing relatively little this summer, 5.10 felt quite difficult. It was humbling and perhaps even a little more fun due to the extra challenge. We descended in Patagonia-like winds and made it back to the parking lot for a big dinner and the first of many windy bivies under the stars.
A day of rain brought us to the Zen Garden on the outskirts of Moab for a day of drinking tea and cave bouldering before heading south to Indian Creek. We didn’t climb the next day due to wetness levels and instead opted to explore some Native American dwellings among the sandstone walls we like to climb. It was pretty mind blowing to see the impressive architecture of the dwellings perched so high above the valley floor and an important reminder why it’s so important to protect these places. I found an arrowhead within a few minutes walk of one of the most popular routes in the Creek and subsequently hid it among some dwelling ruins in fear that a future visitor might take it home.
Our days in the creek began with waking up next to frozen water bottles and a huge accumulation of frost on our sleeping bags. The sun would eventually rise and thaw out our belonging as we would pop on shoes and start our morning run. The first morning, we ran for over two hours to the base of the North Six Shooter and back but quickly toned it down to focus more on the climbing and eating. We tried (and sometimes succeeded) to get ten unique pitches in per day while never allowing each other to repeat anything we fell on, our preferred style. We both started to warm up to the sandstone and on the third day, I managed to onsight Ruby’s Cafe, my hardest pure trad pitch to date. The guidebook calls it 13-, Mountain Project says 12d, but either way, it was my first time ever attempting to climb a non-bolted route of either grade, other than Golden Gate or Freerider. I quickly followed it up with another onsight of my hardest offwidth pitch to date, The Big Baby.
The Creek was quite crowded, and I couldn’t help but imagine what it must have been like decades ago as a climber, or centuries ago as a native. Regardless, my experience there was still wholesome, mostly because of the crew that we camped and cooked with. We ate well, baking pizzas and other goodies over the fire each night. Both my belly and my climbing ego felt fulfilled but that wasn’t what I was searching for, so we decided to head south. Our friend Sam Stucky rolled into the Creek and after a 3 person romp up the Lighting Bolt Cracks on North Six Shooter, we drove south.
After some debate on where to climb, we opted to head to Texas Canyon. A wild and serious 4x4 drive brought us into a supremely beautiful zone with huge walls, wild towers, and an abundance of native dwellings. Our mission was to summit a 1000 foot tower of choss in near freezing temperatures called Texas Tower. The route contained perhaps the worst rock I’ve ever climbed in my life, which as it turned out, put Sam completely in his element. Literally hundreds of pounds of rock and sand were thrown off or shed from the mountain by the time we summited. Once again, I felt humbled on sandstone and actually quite a bit scared at points. Sam led the first third, I led the second and Ima led the last pitch which I must say, was likely the scariest. It was a full rope stretcher for the 60 meter rope we brought and I recall starting to chimney through choss before he fixed the rope so I could jug through the chimney. When I arrived on top, Ima had a fat smile and said his classic phrase “still alive”. Our time in this remote canyon felt liked a privilege and I’m grateful to Sam for bringing us there.
A day after our big desert tower adventure, we summited this little tower shaped like an upside down sombrero to the sound of a drone. Ima showed it his middle finger and it subsequently left.
