life back in these United States...

After a wonderful seven weeks in Mexico, we returned to the homeland to continue our travels and adventures north of the border...

The first stop was with our friend Charlie Harman in Austin, TX.  Although we were unable to do any climbing this visit, we did have the pleasure of spending time with Diego the Australian Mastif; who clearly took a liking to Nyssa.

As we headed west through Texas, it seemed as if the boredom might never come to an end.  When all of a sudden we found ourselves in a slightly ironic landscape for Texas... a massive field of Wind Turbines.

And finally after two days of driving through fairly bleak portions of our country, we arrived in Moab to a beautiful sunset over the sandstone cliffs.

And to the west the La Sal Mountains glowed...

We awoke our first morning in Moab to find ourselves in a serious "room with a view". Through the window you can see Castle Valley, home of the infamous Castleton Tower.

Our first day in Moab was spent climbing at the very "Dr. Seussical"  Fisher Tower.  We attempted to climb Ancient Art; however, we were unfortunately rained off the route.

Below, Rich is belaying our good friend and excellent host, Jeff on the first pitch.

Our second day in Moab was spent 40 miles south in Indian Creek, the land of splitter everything, and on this fine day we were able to have it all, splitter weather and splitter cracks. Below is the Supercrack Buttress, where it all began in the Creek.

And for all you trad climbing enthusiasts out there... the Indian Creek obligatory rack. 

Rich giving his damdest effort on Generic Crack (5.10)

And despite the beautiful crack in front of me, I had been climbing in Mexico for seven weeks and could not resist the urge to crimp as hard as I could on the smallest face hold that I could find... oh well...

Nyssa trying to gain as much surface contact as possible... she fit a little bit better in the crack than I did...

Sunset illuminates the silhouettes of the North and South Six Shooter Peaks of Indian Creek.

Our third day in Moab was spent at a truly beautiful and extremely easy to access crag called Wall Street.  The photograph below does an excellent job of illustrating the name... world class single-pitch sport and trad climbing... easily belayed from the back of your car... Utah is a wonderful place!

Rich trying to push the carrying capacity for appendages on this sloping crimp rail on Nervous in Suburbia (5.10a)... and even the locals told me it was a sandbag...

In standard Utah fashion, right across the street from the climbing a breath-taking view featuring the Colorado River awaits...

On our final day in Moab we climb The Looking Glass Arch (5.4) This line offered fun slab climbing to a beautiful summit and an extremely rewarding rappel.  Below Nyssa, Jeff and Mike climb the second pitch.  

And after all the work, the reward... a 185 foot free hanging rappel that actually starts off by moving through a hole in the summit of the arch! Once again, Utah is so cool! Below, Nyssa enjoys the glorious ride.

We finished off our final day in Moab with a visit to Arches National Park, another strangely beautiful and "Dr. Seussical" landscape.  

Nyssa and Rich in the South Window arch. 

The North and South Window Arches at dusk.

And finally, the license plate featured attraction of Utah, The Delicate Arch.  Being a big fan of Edward Abbey, and Desert Solitare in particular, visiting this fantastic place provided a great deal of perspective into the sublimity of the landscapes that he described with such admiration. 

And so as not to deviate from precedents set... more local wildlife photos... here a lizard makes sure our climbing gear doesn't completely deprive him of his favorite sun-bathing rock.  

until next time...

all good things must come to an end

...only to be followed up with a lot more good things. But more on that later...

Our time in Mexico came to a close on February 28th.  I am well aware that we are a bit behind on our postings, but still wanted to give you all a glimpse of what our final days at the Potrero were like.
We have abstained from posting any photos or making much comment on Mexican culture thus far; however, to gain a better sense of where we spent our seven weeks south of the border, I wanted to share some photos from the public market that comes together every tuesday in the small town...

From fresh fruit to push-up bras, the market had what you didn't know you needed until you saw it, and even then you weren't sure if you needed it or if you were simply hypnotized by the display...

A young proprietor cleans prickly pear cactus...

Though we still aren't entirely sure what was being fried in the vat, this gentleman was extremely enthused to have his picture taken to promote his mystery fried meats...

With average temps coming in between 95 and 100, the weather took a serious swing towards the uncomfortably hot and motivation levels plunged to an all time low in our final days.  Even the locals began to find the heat intolerable...

The heat did not however prevent them from coming out to the canyon on the weekends to enjoy the scenery, compete with friends as to who has the best system, drink and spectate the crazy gringo climbers...

In this photo, Nyssa, Josh and Mitch acted as models to illustrate some of the less desirable aspects of the potrero, i.e. grid bolting.  Though we certainly benefitted from the unregulated new-route development that takes place in the potrero, the lack of oversight has negative effects as well.  Climbers who have bolts and a drill, but lack the motivation to seek out new lines that are worth developing will often squeeze new routes in between old routes, making for potentially unsafe and most certainly unnecessary routes.   

Though technically on different routes, Mitch and Josh are climbing in the exact some crack in order to progress up the climbs.  Both of them are clipped into seperate lines of bolts, and if so desired, they could have been clipping one another's bolts. 

But don't worry, we were still doing plenty of safe and extremely enjoyable rock climbing. Below Nyssa is standing up and reaching up on nothing to the miracle hueco on Milk Cow Blues (5.10c)

Nyssa embracing the space between bolts on Mugre Mugre (5.10d)

Nyssa approaching the chains on the top pitch of Mecasuit (5.11a).  Leading 5.11 was Nyssa's goal for this trip and clearly she had success!!!

Rich trying to fight the excruciating pump and prevent the vertigo in the crux corner sequence of Don Quixote (5.11d).

The really fun thing about limestone is sometimes lucky climbers have the opportunity to pull on tufas! This makes for really fun movement and represents very well the drastic potential that exists for the features on limestone.  You will certainly not find anything like what I found on Tufa the Price of One (5.11c) in the Gunks of the Dax.

Rich trying to stay as tight as possible and embrace the really teenie tiny holds on XL Puff Sneaker (5.11d)

We were fortunate to have our friend Josh Potter come down and spend our final stint with us in the Potrero.  Josh is a very strong climber and came down to crush...here he is only having to try a little bit on El Balota (5.12a).

And because it seems appropriate, here is one final Mexican wildlife photo...

until next time...

one tyrolean traverse, fire dancing, a face-size hamburger and a puppy dog

First of all, apologies to all of you who have been patiently awaiting our postings.  For the last 2 weeks of our stay at the Potrero, we treated ourselves to a house with some beds and consistent hot water.  Unfortunately, this came at the expense of losing out on reliable internet and subsequently put a stop to active blogging...so here is a collection of photos to document some of our more recent adventures in MX.

We took a drive into the desert one sunny morning with our friends Jack and Dan to Culo de Gato to climb the Crescent Moon Buttress.  It is a beautiful 8 pitch climb in a very beautiful landscape, as you can see below....

  

Below is a profile view of the route. You can see the namesake "crescent moon" feature, which is at the top of the 3rd pitch.  As you continue along the ridge you see the deep "v" notch, over which we set up a super sweet tyrolean traverse.

In this photo, Nyssa is rappelling down into the aforementioned "v" notch.

 

And now here she is climbing back out...

Jack and I remained on the initial side of the notch in order to orchestrate the tyrolean set up from both sides...you can see we definitely had our thinking caps on for this operation...

After much careful planning, we knew things were safe and took the ride, which was definitely exhilarating and exciting! Below, Rich is enjoying the ride...

Here is Jack heading across the notch towards Dan and Nyssa...

And the ever photogenic Dan enjoying the exposure... 

And after all that fun, we still reached the summit of the buttress.

 Our friend Quest, who is an avid poi enthusiast, told us about a photo contest that he was interested in entering, which required a photo of poi being done in an obscure or extreme location.  With our rope skills honed, we decided to take a crack at some night time photoshooting on the spires to enable his victory.  

I set myself up on the spire opposite of Quest (which is the far, illuminated spire in the picture above) and captured the image on the left. 

Dan was ready and waiting with his camera to capture the fire dancing from below, which is depicted on the right half of the entry photo. 

 Quest combined these photos for his submission to create the above image.  We would encourage all of you to vote at 

http://www.homeofpoi.com/competition/view_all_entries.php/22_556

In order to celebrate their successes, Potrero climbers will flock to the kitchen of a lovely mexican woman to indulge in the infamous face-sized hamburger. After placing your order, you spend your waiting time on her front porch, enjoying the finest lounging Hidalgo has to offer...

And then the burger arrives...and holy crap, it actually is the size of a face...Here we see John and Jamie enjoying their hard-earned feast.  Note the size of the beer bottle in relation to the size of the burger...

And finally, a puppy.  This is Chewy, who was adopted by Kris from Skagway, AK.  He purchased Chewy from a Mexican who was selling grilled corn and puppies outside of the canyon gate one sunday afternoon.  There is a very active program for puppy adoption in and around Hidalgo, and thankfully it enables climbers to provide a much higher quality of life to some of the stray dogs in Mexico...this one just so happens to be the cutest puppy ever!

We have now crossed back into the US and are beginning the next leg of our journey.  This also means that we should have little to no problem providing you all with new postings.  There is still plenty left for us to show you all from Mexico, and soon we will have updated posts from Indian Creek, Moab, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City and finally Driggs...

until next time...