St George Weekend

April and I went to St. George this last weekend for our friends wedding in Zion NP on saturday. We left Logan at 2 on Thursday and I interviewed for an environmental engineering job in SLC that would be great if we for some reason the Peace Corps falls through. After the interview we went to REI to pick up a few things I had ordered, then we met up with our friend Jon and drove to Sugarhouse to meet our friend Erik for lunch. We went to some hip pizza joint that was overpriced and crappy. Every time we go to SLC we try so hard to find something new, cheap and good but nothing compares to my four faves: oRusted Sun Pizza , Red Iguana, Mazza , and the only chain restaurant I really like Rubio's.

After eating April and I went to see Daniel Johnston and a really great local band, Band of Annuals. It was kind of depressing to see Daniel Johnston because he suffers from mental illness, but he was able to sing some rocking songs. The Band of Annuals played back up for most of Daniel's set and were really tight, the slide guitar makes everything sound rad. After the show we went to Baskin Robbins so we could fill up on Ice Cream right before bed. We slept at Jon's house and left around 7 friday morning for St. George.

We went directly to Zion to meet up with our friends Tom and Erika to climb at the base of Touchstone. Tom and Erika were also the groom and bride, so they had family crap to attend to, so they left after one route. I decided to give a go on a 10 there, I really need practice on wide stuff! We left just in time to get back to our car right after dark and reunited with Tom and Erika and almost all of Tom's family, who fed us! We played in the hotel hot tub for 15 minutes and then stayed the night at the free camping area 10 miles from the park, we slept well, too well, the wedding was at 10, we didn't leave the camping area till almost 9 and had to get ready at Tom's parent's hotel room, we made it to the wedding at 5 after 10, not to bad, but on empty stomachs.

The wedding was really nice for how big it was, we didn't stick around for too long afterwards, besides being hungry we really wanted to meet up with some other friends, Matt and Susanna who also are from Logan. We made it to Prophesy wall and did the best route I've yet to do there; The Visionary, the first pitch was a 145 ft 5.9 on the most solid rock there, the second was a bolted finger crack that supposedly went at 10c, but felt like 5.9. I would definately recommend it to anyone that doesn't mind having bolts next to a really good crack (they probably shouldn't be there, but they are so I don't really see any point in damaging the rock more by removing them, although the route would probably be more fun placing gear, which you can still do without removing the bolts!). Matt and Susanna did about 10 pitches to our two, but we really wanted to find another hot tub in town before it got too dark, so we took off around 6 and went to our favorite hotel for mooching a hot tub, but there were two manatees in it already, so we went to a hotel that has an indoor pool and hot tub, it was nice to stay warm after getting out, but the place was packed with loud kids, so we made our stay brief and then went to the Cracker Barrel for dinner. April really loves the Cracker Barrel because it is the only place outside of the south that has Blue Bell ice cream. I ate to much but had a great Blackberry cobbler with ice cream.

After dinner we met Matt and Susanna to head out to a limestone crag, on wooodbury road, which was about 30 miles from St. George, we made it out there around 11. We went to the Black and Tan wall first, but between the heat of the sun and the noise of the huge backwoods family that showed up we decided to go to Kelly's rock about 8 minutes walk away. Kelly's rock was great, unlike most all the easy routes on limestone in st. george these routes weren't razorblade sharp, mostly. We did about 4 pitches there and left around 3:30 to head back to Logan. We made it back to Logan after 11, exhausted, but it was great to get out of town one last time before the end of school. This weekend is looking like good temps, so I'll probably head up Logan canyon on either sat. or sunday, hopefully.