Big Rocks!

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bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 30, 2013 - 10:48pm PT

C'mon Jonathon, we need to adapt a more post-colonial perspective. What's a county boundary in South-central Utah?! Garfield and Wayne county governments are so inbred it's scary. Anyway, all of my pics are from "Whine" County, except for the Horn, which sadly misses the mark by about 5 kilometers. The county line pracitically crosses the summit of Mount Ellen. We are petitioning to have it (The Horn) gerrymandered into Wayne. All those other pics (long canyon, et al) were posted by others. Not that Garfield county does not deserve honorable mention....

Had to leave the Cap Reef thing for SLC when Kyle was diagnosed with Autism, otherwise I'd a never left, ever. Right now I'm mulling over a 2-bedroom 1920's moenkopi stone house listed for $80.000. Nice vacation crib.

Love these oldschoool maps.

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2013 - 03:00pm PT

#1 son Kyle Van Belle killin' it at Big Rocks, 3 years old. 1996 Epi photo. Git Sum!

Elcapinyoazz

Social climber

Joshua Tree

Jan 31, 2013 - 03:10pm PT

Man, that IS an old school map...Bicknell was still called Thurber and Teasdale is misspelled.

mechrist

Gym climber

South of Heaven

Jan 31, 2013 - 03:15pm PT

Thurber!

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2013 - 03:30pm PT

Love that satellite picture of the Fold and the Henrys.

Elcapinyoazz

Social climber

Joshua Tree

Jan 31, 2013 - 03:40pm PT

You guys know this one?

Aquarius Paintbrush, CASTILLEJA AQUARIENSIS

This is a rare, possibly endandered species of indian paintbrush that only occurs on the slopes and plateau of Boulder Mtn.

The service projects we ran with the kids, usually a week of their 2mo program, was building barbed wire fence across the mtn so the free-range grazing could be confined to one side or the other, allowing the species to perpetuate. Grazing is the biggest threat to this plant.

Building barbed wire fence from scratch, across remote mtn terrain is an undertaking...doing it with with a crew of 11 deliquent teenagers..well, it turned out to be better than it sounds. It gets really entertaining when the daily afternoon thunderstorm rolls through and you start getting shocked while streching wire beacuse the fence continues a couple miles and the lighting is hitting over there.

le_bruce

climber

Oakland, CA

Jan 31, 2013 - 04:24pm PT

Bump to keep it going and to see more pics.

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2013 - 04:32pm PT

That last photo looks an awful lot like it was taken from the Eastern edge of the 11,000 foot Aquarius Plateau. Jus sayin'.

weezy

climber

Jan 31, 2013 - 04:57pm PT

Man, that IS an old school map...Bicknell was still called Thurber and Teasdale is misspelled.

on the same map the Colorado River is called the Grand River, but you can't see in that photo.

edit: lol, cataract canon.

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2013 - 08:38pm PT

OK, now this thing was Sporty! There is no easy way up. You'll want a standard desert rack, with an emphasis on Wyde. Rapping off the thing is almost as scary as climbing up it. Makes the Pinns feel like diamond-hard perfection, God's Own Stone. No sign of any previous ascents. Yur Gunna Dye!!

Juicer

Trad climber

SLC

Jan 31, 2013 - 10:34pm PT

Here's a nice perspective on Wayne County for ya Bob. Was it Garfield that tried to pave the Burr Trail through the park?

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Jan 31, 2013 - 11:43pm PT

NICE MAP! I collect that stuff. Got a few choice framed maps of old, old, Colorado Plateau cartography.

Yep. I was the point guy on that Burr Trail debacle. Had to testify in court twice, fly back to DC a few times to brief the Directorate, the works. Once I briefed the Deputy Director fully drunk and swimming on Xanax. Good times, I crushed! Eventually the 9th Circuit in San Francisco ruled in the NPS's favor and that was that for RS2477 claims in National Parks. 1996 - 1998 were stressful years. Thank God for all that nearby boulderin' and craggin' to blow off steam...

One of my favorite quotes: So eloquent!

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/478102/WORK-ON-BURR-TRAIL-UNDER-PROBE.html?pg=all

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 1, 2013 - 01:10pm PT

Back in 2003, the Bulldog Fire ravaged the Horn. I just realized we're coming up on the 10 year aniversery. Although much remains, much -- very, very much -- was lost.

This killer face, peppered with sweet pocket problems (Bill Hatcher photo):

Became this:

For God's sake let's be careful with fire! asdf.

mechrist

Gym climber

South of Heaven

Feb 1, 2013 - 01:30pm PT

...whether we're talking about a bighorn sheep or a big dirt hillside.

Nice! I love big dirt hillsides.

I'm headed to Utar this spring. It has been 12 years since I've been Horny. I took my 2WD Nissan PU up there, not sure if my new truck will make it, but it should.

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 1, 2013 - 02:06pm PT

Good luck with that Wes!

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 2, 2013 - 01:02am PT

bvb

Social climber

flagstaff arizona

Topic Author's Reply - Feb 2, 2013 - 02:46am PT

Here's another problem I found on my very first day in the Hankries, Saturday, June 19, 1993. When we caught our first glimpse of the Horn from the south shoulder of Mount Ellen I was sure that this whole thing was a wild hallucination. We'd been at Capitol Reef for maybe 2 days, straight outta Boston and totally shell-shocked by this incredible new environment, when I was talking with the park biologist, Sandy Borthwick. And as we have all experienced when chatting with non-climbers, upon learning we were climbers she says "oh, you should drive to the Henrys and see the Horn, there's a bunch of big rocks up there, I think there might be rock climbing." Yeah, right. At least she had the good taste to refrain asking if I'd climbed Everest. As we're having this discussion I'm literally looking across the street at a 300' Wingate wall covered with splitters and what she knows about climbing she undoubtably learned from watching Spencer Tracy in "The Mountain." So I really didn't pay much attention to her suggestion.

In any event, a few days later we decide to take our brand-new 4Runner (purchased the week before) up to the Henrys to hike up Mount Ellen with 6-month-old Kyle in tow. That wound up being a fast and casual hike, so with most of the day still left to kill we consult the 7.5 quad and Pennell looked close enough for a quick recon -- plus those stacked-up contour lines looked mighty, mighty suspicious -- so we decide to drop back down and swing over to scope this "Horn" thing. Holy Mother of God. As we rounded the shoulder, there was the west side of the Horn. Boulders. Huge, huge boulders. Thousands of them. Crags, too. It looked incredible. But what the f*#k kind of rock was that?! Then we drove around to the East side of the formation and I just about f*#king died. We had shoes and chalkbags, that was it. We had no idea about any trails, but it was clear from all the lichen wear on Wedding Buttress's 11c crack that the place was seeing traffic. We just bushwhacked straight up to the first bench and started running around like kids in a candy store. Later that day we found a prehistoric sleeve-and-nail star bolt with a hanger of unknown provenance on top of a 5.7 boulder crack. Boy Scout Top-Rope Route? Fred Becky's "Kilroy Was Here" calling card? Who knows? The place was way, way mysto. I'd never seen or climbed on rock that was anything like this -- it was like bullet-hard, heavily pocketed granite drenched in thick golden hues, set in an old-growth Ponderosa pine forest designed by a master Japanese gardener. Totally unreal. My first exposure to a laccolithic mountain range on the Colorado Plateau. Instant believer. I drank all the Kool-Aid on the spot.

This was my favorite problem from that glorious day:

Wind 'er up...

Big move!

Spent pretty much every spare moment up there for the whole summer and fall of '93. The bouldering potential appeared to have been pretty much ignored. Many crucial pockets were loaded with lichen and micro-biospheres, and the first time I walked up to the boulderfield on the west side there were lithic scatters and projectile points laying around and lichen crisps shellacked on crucial holds. I think someone told me The Perfect Child was put up around this time? The SLC crew and the Moab contingent were on to the Horn for sure, and I'd bet money that Steve Hong bagged that obvious 5.11 front-and-center splitter, but it was years before I bumped into other climbers up there, usually from Moab or Salt Lake. I had the luxury of getting off work early during the week, bombing up there and getting 2 or 3 hours in, and being home by dark. It was a good time to be alive. The Wingate splitters 10 minutes from our living room, Big Rocks 20 minutes away...Gravy, baby. All f*#king Gravy.