This space, usually reserved for The Chief’s climbing column written by Jeremy Blumel, will temporarily host a column called Jeremy’s Dispatches from the Road.
Friday, March 17 began with a ray of golden luck.
A work call cancelled, leaving my day open to packing my van with enough gear, knick-knacks and odds-and-ends to let me and my family live in the desert surrounding Moab, Utah.
By 4 p.m. that afternoon everyone was latched to their seats and we shoved off for a 24-hour drive with a hyper, mobile three-year-old. We made it through Vancouver and the border without heinous traffic, stopped at Trader Joes in Bellingham for a $400-dollar grocery pause and finally slept at an I-5 rest stop north of Seattle in percussive rain.
Saturday, March 18 saw us drive through to southern Idaho, with the rain left behind in Washington for windstorms and finally sunshine!
Audio books, music, reading aloud, singing aloud, games, playing and finally use of the opiate-strength iPad to help all three of us not lose our minds together in a medium-sized van over the 2,000 kilometres we travelled.
By day two nerves begin to fray, everyone is edgy, bottoms are sore, legs numb and the pull of garbage quality road food difficult to resist.
Eating in the van on healthy food and not out at the fast food joints makes you feel much better. Squamish’s own Counterpart Coffee, their Guatemalan Atitlan and our in-van stove helped morale greatly. Still, we were worked by 9 p.m. on the 18th after a 5 a.m. wake up.
Sunday, March 19 was when the driving plan came together so well that even Hannibal of the A-Team would have approved.
We woke at 5 a.m. and crawled our way through Salt Lake City’s pre-rush hour traffic and up into the mountains. We made it to Moab by 3 p.m. that afternoon and stocked up on last-minute groceries, fire wood, beer stronger than 3.2 per cent and 80 liters of water.
We rolled into Indian Creek by 5:30 p.m. Camping was already looking full because of American spring break, but we drove on to The Superbowl campground and burrowed into an available site for five bucks a night amongst the juniper, tamarisk and fine red sand.
Finally, we get to climb
Monday, March 20 – our first climbing day. Woohoo! Elation and destruction as we re-remember how to climb at The Creek. It’s a unique place with some people falling in love with the stone and style of climbing and some people swearing never, ever to visit the place.
It’s miles and miles and miles of vertical Wingate sandstone cliffs, eroded by wind and water to expose thousands of laser-cut cracks of every size, which split the soaring sheets of stone with such precision that they do not waver in size over entire pitches 200 feet in length.
Feet and toes scream from the jamming, shoulders and backs get abraded by the physical body scumming and hands feel as though objects within a vice. It’s hard earned bliss, blue-collar climbing.
Near the end of climbing day one our friends show up; another family from Squamish with two kids, and we welcome them to The Supercrack Buttress. It’s their first time to the Creek and we want it to be worth the trip.
Tuesday, March 21 and Wednesday, March 22 we climb, getting our feet, hands and bodies back into the groove of the physical jamming of sandstone crack climbing.
At the end of climbing on day three we sit up long into the warm night, the kids in bed, and talk about why dragging ourselves and our families out of regular routines and into the dusty, windy desert may be the best or worst thing we could to do to our kids.
Our friends felt they were on the fence with sleeping schedules and easy meal times gone, but after two days of the kids playing together non-stop in the dust, riding their bikes until the sand trapped their tires, desert running, playing soccer on a dusty road and generally enjoying themselves, they might have been turned.
That was until that night’s dust storm and their whole family being in a flapping tent, being lashed by the fine red sands for hours on end.
In my next column, you’ll see how the following week turns out, how the climbing goes and whether we make desert lovers out of our friends, as well as us.
