I also made it to Ariviapa for a hiking day. Alan and Titus wimped out so I was there alone. I hiked in the east end - much nicer than the west but with a killer drive. The canyon was really nice but really torn up by recent flooding. Hiked a long way up Hell Hole (?) - very nice side canyon. I tried out a new pair of Teva sandals for the stream hiking - the only problem was that the flood had put an incredible amount of sand in the water and I constantly had sand inside the sandals.
Not much else that week due to the weather. The only other new route was the second pitch of Bop - really nice overhang!
After Marti and Eric arrived we hit the desert museum and then went up to Wimpy again. Eric climbed the Magic Mushroom (with a little help) and we hauled him up Hitchcock for a picture. We also lowered him over an overhang in Beaver wall to see Gene leaning Vistacruiser. The kid has no fear at all!
The next day we bought Eric his first pair of rock shoes and bouldered in the Stronghold. They made a huge difference and he ran up lots of boulder problems. After more bad weather, we migrated to Feenix and climbed a little at Camelback with Nina's (Marti's sister) kids. We bagged the praying monk before it started to rain like crazy.
The next day we visited Nina at her candy store and then headed out for JTree. We had Sarah (Alan Wendts wife) and her friend Debbie with us. Sarah is blind and Debbie is legally blind. We spent most of our time at Indian Cove. We couldnt find any place to rent shoes but the shop in JTree had a huge set of used shoes so we bought some of these for Sarah and Debbie. The routine was for me to solo up an easy climb and the belay Sarah, Debbie, and Eric. Did lots of nice short routes like this. Also took a trip up to the Wonderland and climbed at Lakeside Dome by Barker dam. I did my only hardcore climb - a 3 bolt 5.10, and Marti and Sarah followed it. We also did a nice 5.8 that Debbie made it up - her high point of the trip.
After dropping Debbie off in Bullhead City, we drove to Vegas to meet my family. On the way, I decided to check out Christmas Tree pass - I climbing area I had read about but didnt ever find until this trip. We drove through by moonlight and say lots of big granite domes. At the top of the pass, we started seeing things in the trees. Seems that every tree in sight on the west side of the pass has christmas decorations on it. People come from all over just to put christmas decorations on these trees!
Vegas was a total bust - too cold to climb. First day we drove to the Red Rocks and froze to death just doing a picnic lunch. Second day I talked Marti, Sarah, and my brother Doug into driving back to Xmas tree pass. Nobody else was there. The rocks are just a few minutes from the road. We went to the main dome there - Dali dome - and found a nice full pitch 5.8 friction climb. The rock is pretty good but there was a lot of exfoliation on the surface. I imagine that these routes get very little traffic. There were at least 10 other routes on the slab - most 2 pitches. After the slab, I decided to look at a crack climb in the right side of the dome. The crack was really a razor thin flake - about 1 inch thick with a 3 inch crack behind it. I was really nice - there were a couple of old bolts to help keep the rope out of the crack. The climbing was pretty easy - 7 or 8 - and there were lots of good rests between layback moves. There were good rap bolts at the top and we descended by moonlight. Getting Sarah up there was the real epic - you had to go through a field of huge boulders to get to the route. The weather was cloudy over the pass all day but you could see sun down on the river.
That was it for the climbing part of the trip. That night it snowed down to 2000' and Red Rocks was completely covered. We wasted time in the casino (what a gross place) and headed for St. George that night. The next day was great - very sunny with all the snow melting. We went to Zion and saw zillions of waterfalls. Unfortunately, Marti and I caught the flu from my brother and we spent the rest of the trip feeling horrible. We drove back through Sedona where there was still a lot of snow on the rocks and spent a day in Feenix again. Finally, we arrived back in Tucson and flew back here.