A fun western rock climbing road trip

As we made our way back south from Canada, we had some time in the big cities and then headed east, with a dominant thread of rock climbing. There are so many great places to climb in the US, much less the world, and even a decade of traveling and climbing has left many cool and famous spots to visit. We were going to cross off a couple of places i had wanted to visit for a long time, which was nice. These spots offered up a lot of a variety - across the ten days, we climbed in 4 different states, crags and rock types.

Another cool part of this section of the road trip was staying with new friends and our family along the way. The mix of people, from those that have been with us our entire life to people that we met along this road trip, was wonderful. Both ends of the spectrum had us into their house, shared drinks and dinner with us and many a good conversation.

The crags

- Smith Rock, Oregon (basalt)

Wrote a bit about this a few posts ago, Smith Rock is a very impressive landscape. The rock walls tower above the river, and we had two days of climbing on excellent, and challenging routes. For some reason, the 'ethics' of the very famous climbing area has the first bolt extra high. This means that when you are climbing up to that point, you are particularly vulnerable to a nasty fall.

Thankfully, we did not have any issues and split our two days climbing between a crag right by the river that was peaceful and another one high on the opposite end of the park, which afforded big views to the big, volcanic mountains in the area, mt bacheloer and mt hood. Looking out across the landscape made belaying a real treat.

- City of Rocks, Idaho (granite)

Our next stop was The City in idaho, a pretty famous and very remote crag near the idaho/utah border. The City is a dramatic departure from basalt in Smith Rock, with pocketed and featured granite. The remoteness of the location was what i took from the climbing (and trail running), we drove along dusty dirt roads both getting and leaving from the park. City of Rocks is well named, as the individual rock formations combine to create the impression of a city arising from the high desert.

The climbing was a little spotty and weird, with many mixed routes. For those unfamiliar with the term, mixed routes use a blend of bolts drilled into the rock (our preference) and traditional protection (cams and nuts) that the climber inserts into crags and little crevices in the rock. Even if that makes no sense to you, the main point is that it blends two types of climbing in one route. Think combing downhill skiing mixed with cross country skiing on one run. Doesn't make much sense.

- American Fork Canyon, Utah (limestone)

The next stop on the trip was salt lake, which mu wrote about in our last post. Our climbing was in a famous crag, up American Fork in a canyon halfway between Provo and Salt Lake. The climbing is great, limestone with pockets and features. This means big moves and nice grip on the shoes. My favorite day was up the canyon wall, at a spot that looks out across big cliff faces and with a couple peaks in the distance. Felt strong that day, the climbing comfort and skill is slowly coming back to our Euro levels, after many many months of just getting the sport in when we can.

- Red Rocks, Nevada (sandstone)

The last stop on our rock climbing road trip was back here in red rocks recreational area, 15 or miles outside of Las Vegas. This is our 'home' crag in a sense, with my parents living very comfortably a few minutes from the park. Over the last 5-6 years, there is nowhere that we have climbed as frequently. It is so lucky to have my parents here, as the climbing is amazing and the life so cushy.

The actual climbing is great, sandstone with mostly big features and very athletic moves. This week, mu and i are trying to try out a few different crags beyond the old favorites here in red rocks. Branching out because we have a few more days than usual for a visit and a desire to branch out. Should be fun.

 

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Utah Diversity: Mountains and Mormons

Last night, we arrived to Korol Seniors' household in Las Vegas after simul-roadtrips -- Korol Seniors drove for three weeks from Maine to Vegas; and we, Korol Juniors, up to Canada and back, most recently through my home state: Utah. Both sets of Korols have seen a lot of beauty along the way but Korol Seniors told us that they believe that Utah is still the most beautiful state. And I might have to agree. I love many other states -- obviously California -- but Utah's diversity and vistas make it a top contender.

Our last few days in Utah didn't really include the dramatic landscapes of Southern Utah. Instead, the trip was concentrated along thirty or forty miles of the Wasatch Front mountains and I was reminded of (or perhaps noticed for the first time) the concentrated geologic diversity in those canyons. Before this past trip, the canyons of the Wasatch Front somewhat blurred together in my mind but this week, but over the last week or so we saw the huge range that the Wasatch Front have to offer.

We climbed the grey pocketed limestone of American Fork Canyon, hiked through the granite-like quartz monzite of Little Cottonwood Canyon to White Pine Lake, hiked on sparkly quartzite to the top of Mount Olympus near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, and I climbed with my brother Paul and his daughter on the rounded and steep cream walls of Ferguson Canyon while Wilson mountain biked the layered conglomerate rock of City Creek Canyon and Ensign mountain with my brother Dave. I was surprised by how different the rock was or looked across such a small area. All this diveristy found in less than forty miles, as the crow flies.

The geologic variance in such a small geogragraphic area made me think about Utah's religious variance and my own family's variance. In Utah, thinking about religious variance is often a binary exercise: Mormon or not Mormon. In my family, it is binary: four of us, including me, are no longer Mormon, and four of us are Mormon. All of my Dad's eight children grew up Mormon but at different stages of our adolescence and adulthood, each of us decided whether we would believe in and adhere to the Mormon faith.

Counterintuitively, this decision doesn't explain who lives in Utah -- currently four of us live outside of Utah (two Mormons and two non-Mormons) and four of us live inside Utah (two Mormons and two non-Mormons). Our percentages are not that far off of the Utah percentage as a whole -- according to a 2012 Salt Lake Tribune article, 62.2% of Utah's population is Mormon. The fact that Mormons compose the majority of the population isn't surprising. But it may be surprising that being Mormon in my family is not indicative of whether you will or will not live in Utah. I am hopeful the my family's lack of correlation between being Mormon and living in or out of Utah is a trend in Utah, as well as a larger trend in the USA: that other people's religions (or lack therof), don't have to dominate a community and correspondingly how members of the community perceive each other. It's about time, as the current 113th US Congress was the first to include a Buddhist in the Senate, a Hindu in either chamber, and to have the first member of Congress to describe her religion as "none".

Viva diversity and feeling comfortable to be any or none religion!

 

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Oregon is Gorges

We last updated the blog while making our way around British Colombia, which was super fun and offered a ton of different recreational opportunities. After one last night in Seattle (man do i love it there), we were on to Oregon.

The first several days were in Portland, with a mini reunion of my college buddies hosted by Francisco and Heidi. Francisco and i were paired as roommates our freshman year, and for a good semester that seemed like an improbable match. We were nice enough to each other, nothing malicious or anything, but it was not a warm fuzzy feeling in our room. Then, things switched and we became really good friends. The next year had us living together, then a year off for our respective study abroad and then back at it for senior year. We have now traveled together, including a road trip from Maine to Southern California our senior year informally titled Good Seats and Cheap Eats. Our parents have become great friends as well, which is pretty rare. They now visit each other and take trips together.

To me, it seems like we just needed time for our personalities to gel, and I am so thankful for that gelling and the subsequent lifelong friendship. All the better for two families to come together, one from Maine and the other Southern California. It is pretty interesting that the catalyst was an amorphous roommate matching process.

Back to Portland, we had a great couple of days there, hanging out with the kids, eating delicious food and talking for hours. The boys went out for a night to see the Portland Timbers game (MLS Soccer), which was super fun. That is a must-do as far as i am concerned in portland. The rafters seem to shake when the stadium is rollicking, and the atmosphere around the stadium before the game is infectious.

After portland, Mu and I resumed our outdoor recreation focus throughout Oregon. We got in an epic trail run in the Colombia Gorge, running hundreds and hundreds of feet up in elevation above 600 foot Multnomah falls, through virgin forest and along roaring creeks. Looking out across the thick Colombia river, it was easy for me to think of Lewis and Clark leading their expedition down the river towards the Pacific and what a nice reprieve that must have been after the rugged Rockies and Cascades.

Then it was on to Bend, a charming outdoor mecca located along the Deschuees River. Bend has a worthy reputation of being home to excellent climbing (smith rock), skiing on the volcanic mt bachelor, world class biking, big white water and hundreds of miles of trails for hiking and running.

We got in two days of climbing at Smith, which has large walls rising from the river gorge below. The climbing is excellent, if a little airy, and we were fortunate to be there the day before a high-lining festival. High-lining is a sport in which people attempt to cross slack-lines (webbing that bridges two high points). People are harnessed in as they balance on a line hundreds of feet in the air. The exposure is crazy, even if the system is as safe as rock climbing with harnesses and safety protection. Still, knowing that someone is safe does not exactly compute when they pitch off the slack-line a couple of hundred feet off the deck. There is a moment in every fall when it appears that the athlete JUST might be able to keep it together and then the next instant has them pitch forward and free falling for an instant. Mesmerizing.

Beyond the climbing, we got in a some mt biking and a sunset trail run along the river in the nearby national park. Both lived up to the reputation we had for Bend, had us in volcanic gorges and reinforced that we had just scratched the surface on what is available in this hip city that also boasts friendly people, farmers markets, a bunch of excellent breweries and cute coffee shops.

We plan on coming back, to Portland, Bend and Oregon generally, sooner rather than later.

 

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The great white neighbor to the north: a multi-sport nirvana

Mu and I are back in the states from from our most recent international adventure. Where, or where, did we ensconce to? Our great white neighbor to the north, of course.

Canada is a pretty great place, and one that does not feel very international for this Maine bred boy. After all, I am not even sure how many times we went there when I was a kid, 4, 5 or 6? At any rate, it was a bit more exotic for my ball and chain, as she has never been there. I mentioned this in another post, but she had been to 56 countries before last week, and not our great white neighbor to the north.

That has all changed, as my buddy from college and his lovely bride staged an amazing wedding weekend in Pemberton, BC. Pemberton is a small town about 30 kms north of Whistler, with big, rugged mountains all around. It is pretty much exactly what you would expect from BC north of Vancouver, with a veritable ton of outdoor stuff on tap. In fact, the quantity and quality of the outdoor stuff available in our week up here was pretty stunning. And that is not even counting our sea kayaking and sailing jaunts with dear friends in northern Washington, thanks so much for showing us around Heather and Russ.

What did we get up to?

1) Trail runs: in terms of efficiency, there are few things that match a trail run for getting out into nature. You cover so much more ground per unit of time than hiking, always attractive for the korol clan. The entire trip up the coast has led us to some very special places for trail running, with the trend continuing in the great white neighbor to the north. We got out on some pretty long runs, well over an hour, in the whistler area that led through multiple trail systems and parks. I like the speed of trail running, fast enough to keep my mind engaged fully and yet slow enough to pick out little revealed gems along the way.

2) Mt biking: Whistler is generally regarded as the Mecca for downhill mt biking, which uses the infrastructure of the ski resort to shuttle riders and bikes to the top of the world and let them bomb down. You get way more vertical than self powered, and the speeds and forces at play are exponentially increased. A couple of buddies were in town for a long weekend of biking, and let us crash with them. I did get a chance to rent a bike and do some riding, but opted for the cross country trials through beautiful forest in the lost lake trail system and across some hairy bike bridges instead of the more expensive and rugged downhill. The riding was world class, really flowy and right in my wheelhouse. I wanted more, but it was on to the wedding festivities for us in the great white neighbor to the north.

3) Hiking: Sean and Sarah planned their wedding to allow folks to get into the outdoors before the ceremony, a choice which perfectly fits their own love of nature. Mu and I took the opportunity to head to the Joffrey lakes, a set of three lakes descending from a big glacier, with a creek and waterfalls serving as the connectors. The entire area reminded us both of hikes we took in Patagonia, for its steepness and the size of the glacier. Upper Joffrey is fed from fast runoff from the glacier and the water was super cold and clear. No swimming for me!

4) Climbing: this part of BC is pretty famous in the climbing world, as Squamish is 40 or kms south of Whistler. The climbing spot has massive granite walls reminiscent of Yosemite, and also had some excellent and long sport climbing routes for us to play on. The climbing had good features for granite cliffs, and we were excited to be back on the sharp end. We spent a couple days at a crag north of Squamish called area 44, which had big views across a valley to some big glacier peaks and good quality rock. There has been a long gap between the last time we climbed in vegas had us and the gap had us easing into the sport, but there is more to come as we make our way back south and east towards Salt Lake and Vegas.

5) Backpacking: some might quibble with the distinction between hiking and backpacking, since they are very similar. But for me there is a clear difference between the two, with one - hiking - being more of a speed approach to cover major miles and then sleep somewhere comfy indoors and the other - backpacking - slowing down but having the freedom to get more wild. We went on a 2 day jaunt into the Garibaldi provincial forest, which is named for a large lake that started out as a volcanic caldron and then got glaciated during the ice age. The lake is massive, deep, clear yet blue from the hanging glaciers that feed it and was one of the prettiest places we have seen in the past year+ of traveling. We got views at sunset of the lake and the surrounding ridges, and then in the morning had breakfast on its shores with the sunrise reflecting in its quiet waters.

I get the feeling that we will be coming back to our great white neighbor to the north, with Mu getting starry eyed at a few options for climbing in eastern BC and me being enticed by the cat/heli skiing.

 

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Premier backpacking in the north cascades

When we last left you, we were just leaving Seattle for a 3 day backpacking trip up in the Cascade Mountains. After excellent input from our Seattle friends, we headed to a loop in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, which linked up Pilot ridge, Blue Lake, Dishpan Gap and White Pass. All told, the hike was just a hair under 30 miles, which fit nicely into our plans of making our way northward towards Canada.

Day 1

Mu and i got on the trail a little late (shocking, I know). This was due to getting to play some basketball with friends from childhood in Seattle. A no brainer for me, but a bit of a tough sell to my lovely wife. The drive up to the trailhead was pretty quick, we entered national forest land within an hour and half (max) and then spent another 90 minutes on progressively smaller dirt roads until we got the trailhead, in a virgin forest that was a nice precursor to the hiking we were going to be doing these first miles. We started off at 6 pm.

We had only a couple hours of daylight left, which was lucky in a way with the long summer days up in the northwest. The first miles meandered pleasantly through this amazing forest, virgin old growth. I got to thinking about the dynamics of these woods that have been in this state for centuries. On one hand, the forest feels timeless. On the other, there is a tangible sense of the never ending growth and decay taking place, with fallen trees littering the ground and new seedlings sprouting from their decaying bark.

Day 2

We woke up at about 1600 feet of elevation above the river below, still in the virgin forest. Once we got on the trail, we were hiking up pilot ridge for several more miles until we broke through to the ridge running that would take us to Blue Lake. The views were stunning. Simply stunning. The wild blueberries littering the trail weren't bad either. On either side of the ridge, we had vistas alternating from glacier capped peaks in the foreground and vistas for dozens of miles. The peaks, near and far, are surprisingly steep, in some places the peaks looked pretty similar to the glaciered peaks we saw in Patagonia several months ago.

After traversing the ridges, we descended into a basin with the aptly named Blue Lake. Not the most creative name, but certainly apt. The water was both astoundingly clear and a deep blue color, with steep peaks. It was lunch time and the rain stayed away long enough for us to pump some fresh water from the lake and get a little rest. We had some work to do before nighttime, starting with a steep ascent to a notch between two peaks. When we reached the notch, we had views extended to the horizon to all cardinal directions. This part of the world is much more rugged than i had thought, and the vistas to the north extend all the way to canada with hardly any civilization. I find this is an underrated part of the world, in my mind an equal to the mountains in Colorado, Utah or California, but with not nearly as much visibility. Good for the people of Washington state to keep these parts wild.

The rest of the day went by alternating between rain and sun, hiking along ridges and then dropping down to passes, a nice mixture and one that had us making pretty good time until we nestled our tent in a campsite near a little mountain lake, made dinner and tucked in for the night.

Day 3

We woke up a bit damp due to the rain over the night, and got our stuff packed up in short order. No need to dawdle in the rain. The first bit of time on the trail (the pacific crest trail, in fact) was soupy, hard to see much but aiding us to feel the remoteness of the terrain and this wild country. In fact, the entire time we here hiking the 3 days, we never saw any traces of civilization in one of the valleys, true wilderness in that way.

After a bunch of miles, the rain lifted and the views became breathtaking. The fog swirled through the valleys, sometimes with views for miles and others socked in. Then, in front of us we saw a rainbow, and in fact the vaunted double rainbow. The primary rainbow was super bright, with clear delineated colors. It was cool to see the rainbow with the blue skies just above, a view i won't soon forget.

A fitting cap to our premier backpacking trip in the Cascades.

 

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