Trek Type

Rock Climbing without a Knife, Are you Crazy? Seriously, think about it. You are stuck 2000 feet up a blank face and you are dangling from the rope. Maybe you’ve been impaled by a large tree branch and you can’t keep moving, but if you just keep hanging there, the weight of your body will […]

Sundial Peak and Lake Blanche are a classic hiking destination for many people in the Salt Lake Valley. It’s a short, 20 minute drive and a rewarding 2 hour hike to the lake, but the views are spectacular. It is easily in the top 3 most esthetic hiking destinations in the Wasatch. Having said that, Sundial […]

Brain Full of Spiders is a pretty fun, 4 pitch route just west of Provo, Utah in Rock Canyon. The route is bolted, rated 5.9+ and a perfect combination of difficulty for my girlfriend Kim and I. She had never led anything on a multipitch route and the upper pitches are easier with a fair […]

I love this route. I think it is my favorite 5.8 in little cottonwood. It is stiff and scary. The route starts on a steep, sustained face for about 50 feet. It is every size. Perfect hands to fist. Fingers and face climbing. It as a good variety. You pull over the face onto a big […]

This climb was a somewhat intimidating onsite for me. It’s long and 5.9. Usually, I try not to onsite 5.9 in little cottonwood because I still feel new enough to trad climbing that I don’t want to get myself in over my head too much, but I decided to give it a try anyways. I’m glad […]

We began hiking up Jacob’s Ladder trail just as the sun started lighting the horizon and the stars faded into the dull grey. The low-light, black and white landscape slowly filled with color as the brightness of the day began to warm the cool fall air. Step by step, Kirk and I lugged our climbing gear, food, and water […]

Sweet Jane sits in the same area as Beckey’s Wall and Satan’s Corner so it is hard to compare with these two super classic climbs, but I still found it to be an enjoyable two pitches. The route starts by scrambling to the actual base of the climb up a 15 foot easy 5th class […]

I find it interesting how intense the alpine world is. I have spent the last few years gradually climbing harder and harder mountains. It never ceases to amaze me how insignificant I feel when I commit to a big climb. The CMC Route on Mount Moran is an Alpine grade II and the face is […]

This route was pretty good! As I mention in my previous Squamish post, the rating felt off. It is rated a 5.8 in the guide book and 5.8 on Mountain Project and I am ok with that rating, because the climbing felt about 5.8. However, the gear placements are what felt weird to me. For a route […]

To start off, I’d like to comment on the fact that the Squamish Guide Book rates the climbs differently than Mountain Project does. It’s a little confusing because the grades that I felt were a bit soft were rated harder and the ones I thought were hard were graded easier… Anyways, Bilbo Baggins is a […]