Indian Creek

Ever since seeing Return2sender way back in 2005, I have wanted to climb and visit the famous crack climbing paradise of Indian Creek. This year with Spring Break being so late in the year, I finally made it out there!

Welcome to crack climbing paradise

I loaded up the Subaru and drove the 1000+ miles and 13 hour drive to Moab, Utah. There I met up with my brother and we headed into the Indian Creek Canyon.

Indian Creek

It's a popular spot, so there was no camping free at all when we arrived. We strategically parked our twin Subarus in the bathroom parking lot and set up "camp".

"camp"

Kyle navigates the BLM land map

We cracked some beers, chatted with some other climbers here and there, and watched the desert sunset over the two six shooters.

Sunset over the six shooters 

The next day we headed out for out first day of climbing. We avoided the very crowded Supercrack buttress and instead went to a quiet crag the "Blue Gramma" cliff. 

Looking our from Blue Gramma

We found a wide variety of enjoyable crack routes at the crag. We started on a pretty pumpy 5.10+ then moved onto a enjoyable 5.10b finger crack. I found the climbing difficult, and sustained!

5.10+

Feeling pretty good, I tried to on-sight a steep fingers to fists 5.10c/d crack. Things started off ok, but quickly deteriorated... 

Me - leading the finger to fists 5.10 corner

I was completely gassed by the final 10 feet of the climb, and basically got stuck at an off-width section. Fear, adrenaline, resulted in a mini-meltdown!

Melt-down!

Thankfully Kyle took over the lead and finished the climb for me. Whew! We finished the day on a nice solid 5.9 hand crack. A great solid first day at the creek. 

Packing-up

On day 2, we headed into the back of the canyon to climb at "Way Rambo". While up there we ran into the legendary Jim Donini. Pretty cool, the guy is still out crushing and climbing at the age of 80. He gave us the beta and we started up "Monk". 

Way Rambo Cliff in the back of the canyon

Climber on "Way Rambo (5.12)"

We climbed a bunch of nice 5.10 routes up in the area, and then headed back to "camp" around dinner time.

Back at camp, bracketed by the ubiquitous Sprinter vans.

 

Break time

The following day we needed a rest day, and the weather was starting to turn south, so we headed into Moab for the day to call Mom for her birthday and explore Arches National Park. 

Just outside Moab, while wishing our Mom a Happy Birthday we parked outside of what looked like a mine. Kyle noticed the very conspicuous radioactive contamination sign!

 

Uranium mine tailing clean up

 




Turns out the site is a massive uranium mine tailing site, which is being decontaminated. 

We then headed into Arches, which was a cool, but very crowded park, typical of America's national parks. 

Arches National Park

Cool

Woohoo! Arch!

That's a big arch!

The next day there was a bit of rain, so in the morning we explored Canyonlands National park and the many amazing petroglyphs scattered on the cliffs around Indian Creek.

Kyle looks over the greater Canyonlands

The signs of those who came before

Later, the sun came out and we got on some more great crack climbs!

Sun's out -- crack time

Cool route!

 

Generic crack!

We had a couple more full days of climbing before having to head back home. As always, it was great to climb with my brother and very cool to explore Indian creek. I got my butt spanked, but it was a great time!

Bye Indian Creek!