Zion, Snow, and Walls

Get Up: It's 4:30 pm on a Thursday and I'm three final deep so far. Just one more final i tell myself then its off to the desert where i can find myself and climb hard. Ok, maybe not that but i was psyched to get to the desert and run around the walls in Zion. Fast forward 11 hours, its 3:30 am and dark outside. Should i fall back asleep? "No, get your butt out of bed and get psyched!" I tell myself. I toss the bags in the car and I'm off. A little snow here and a little snow there and then all of the sudden I'm passing through cedar city and my car says its negative eleven degrees outside. Oh, well whats a little suffering? But as I pull into Springdale I get that sinking feeling in my stomach. You know the "Oh crap I forgot something" feeling. I left my ATC and Cinch in Salt Lake. After quick stop at the shop in town I grab an act and meet up with dan at the trail head. While spending a lot of time in this beautiful place i really haven't done any long free climbs. Most if not all of my time in the park has been spent walling, this day however was dedicated to free climbing on some beautiful sand stone. At half past nine we started up the approach to the Three Marrys. The route we decided on was the Immaculate Conception (5.10 6 pitches) on the right marry. In short it was a beautiful line with a snowy decent.

After the route we got this beautiful splitter at the base about 50 yards from the start of our route. It absolutely beautiful and added for an amazing way to end the day. 

Fixing Day: Now skip ahead to Sunday, its cold and it cloudy out with a high in the upper 30's low 40's. However, this doesn't matter because there is no more finals and i have two friends who are psyched to climb their first wall. My friend Jordan and Cal called me up about a month ago and were psyched to try wall climbing. Their psyche had be psyched which made this weather feel not that bad. As we walked up to the base of touchstone Jordan who has never placed a single piece of trad gear before was down to lead the first aid pitch. He killed it, well all up until half way up the pitch when a piece popped an he took a 50 footer! Most people this would kill there psyche and want lowered after, Jordan is the opposite though. This just got him pumped up and he finished this pitch up no problem. The rest of the day went no problem and we fixed to pitch three then retreated to cragging at the base! 

Summit Day: I wish i could say we had an epic but the guys cruised the route and we're psyched the whole day. The highlight of the day for me was hopping on  and on sighting a route put up by Randy Leavitt called the Intruder (.11+). Other than that I'll let the pictures do the talking.