Last Day
Today we dragged our aching bodies out of bed, had a waffle breakfast in the hotel, and drove out to the Utah Hills. The access road was pretty horrendous and we didnt want to risk getting the rental car stuck, so we walked up the road to the Soul Asylum crag. The road is very rutted, particularly on the steeper sections, so we were both VERY happy to have left the car behind! About three bolts up the first climb, I heard a strange "swishing" sound behind me, and thought nothing of it, so I continued climbing. When it got louder, I realized that I was getting dive-bombed by an extremely irate bird of some kind. I didn't really have time to figure out what kind it was as I quickly retreated off the climb, but subsequent googleornithology suggests that it was a Sharp Shinned Hawk. The hasty retreat was of course motivated by a sense of respect for the raptors habitat, rather than the threat of getting my eyes clawed out. After this inauspicious start, we climbed the awesome Petrified,
the one next to it, another 10a further down the wall, and I did a disturbingly named but very fun climb called "White soul power" on site, which made my month.
The climb started on a bee filled ledge (they were sucking the moisture out of small trickles in the limestone), and in the course of setting up a toprope Chloe managed to kick a bag full of various items down on top of me. Happily, she gave me a few milliseconds notice and I didn't get clouted by it our the spinning bits of scree that it kicked loose. After this, we headed back down to the car, "showered" with baby wipes, and drive back to Las Vegas. Once in Vegas, we spent a good hour trying to find the Thai restaurant which we went to on our last Red Rocks trip, but failed. It turned out to be a block away from where we stopped looking (Sahara and Rainbow I think). After returning the car, we headed to the airport and eventually boarded our delayed flight (thank god for Chicago O'hare; Without it, airlines would lose 90% of their late flight excuses!) back to SF. We got back in around 12:30 AM or so, hastily rinsed off and immediately fell asleep.
