As temperatures cool and the days grow shorter, I've taken my annual trip out of Arizona into Utah, albeit unintentionally. We were supposed to go to Hueco but due to rain, we had to make a detour to Moe's Valley with Kevin Fahey, Sav, and Jon. We went for a short 3 day trip, and we spent most of it getting smacked around by the powerful sandstone movement. Our group came in with a variety of goals and agendas. Kevin's goal was to finish off Israil, and then make some progress or finish Kung Pao and Pink Lady. It was Jon's first time at Moe's, so he was looking to sample in and try everything in the sandbox. Sav and I had similar goals of trying some of the other classic lines that we haven't done in the valley, though we didn't get very far. I was mainly focused on trying Israil Direct but I was getting shutdown by the big move. I was able to flail my way into sticking the dyno once, but didn't have much success after that. A fair amount of time was spent on this line so there wasn't much left over to try the other goals of the trip, Indolence, and Gription.
During the first day, we went and explored around the area after getting in to St. George quite late at night. We tried Israil, which Kevin and Jon both got, and then we headed over to Underwhelmed where we were overwhelmed from the fatigue by the compression and physical nature of Israil and Israil Direct. The second day, we went back to Israil Direct, where I exhibited a decent amount of failure to do the dyno, but the rest went quickly. We then went over to Pink Lady, where we all put in some effort to do (or repeat) the line. I was able to dispatch a repeat of the line with a nifty right toehook to achieve the crux pocket, and then sampled the extension, Orange Guy, which traverses further right another 5 or so feet through a two finger pocket. We then headed over to Kung Pao, which is the sit-start (or right entrance?) into Sichuan Peppercorn, a sweet compression and pinch line on tufa-like sandstone features. We were able to dispatch Sichuan Peppercorn with a sweet kneebar sequence, but I took a break to have some extra energy for the remaining lines. With fading light, we decided to skip Indolence, a gently overhanging line with a crux on slopey crimps, and proceed upwards in the valley to sample Gription, said to be one of the best boulders in the Southwest. I may have some disagreements with that assertion, but I cannot deny that there is a reason for that statement. The line climbs on gently beautiful sandstone slopers and crimps to a topout looking over the entire valley. I was able to climb on it as day turned into light, and it is now something I look forward to returning to as long as access to the valley is allowed.
Gription
The third and final day, we went to the Habitat Roof at Mario Land, as neither Kevin or Jon had been there, and Sav was looking to finish off Hobo Habitat from his last trip. Jon was able to finish off Hobo Habitat and Sav got very close but dropped the top after spending a decent amount of time working the beta. Kevin unfortunately suffered an injury on the approach, but was psyched to return. Having done both Hobo Habitat and Habitat against Humanity, and psyched to not be punting for once,I went to work on two other exits that I didn't do the last time I was at the roof. I was able to flash the left exit, New Millennium Homes, and did a right exit to Hobo Habitat, the Juice Thief Extension, first go from the bottom after having pulled on to examine a sequence. They both feel about the same difficulty level as Hobo Habitat.
Cold temps have arrived and with it, snow. It looks like there's only a few more weeks of the forest season before the roads close, so there is a rush to try and get things done.
