Typical Indian creek rack

Tape em up for Indian Creek.

I learned the art of hand taping for this jamb capital of climbing.  You need a rack with a multitude of cams.  We had nine sets at some of the popular sizes.   This place has beautiful sustained parallel cracks in good sandstone.  The background of this page is in unvarnished Indian Creek sandstone.  Climbing on the unvarnished rock is like climbing at the beach.  Sand is everywhere rock is lose and scary stay away from it.  The varnished darker rock that is pictured in the routes below is fantastic.

 

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3 AM Crack (5.10) Supercrack Buttress

If you look real hard you can see my friend Scott leading this sustained full length pitch.  With two ropes you can make it almost to the ground on rappel. Its a perfect handcrack most of the way, but I remember at least two fist sections.  My hands actually cramped up from the continuos jamming on this one.

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Binou's Crack (5.9) Donnelly Canyon

Me leading this multiple width crack.  I am just at the transition point from hands to a tight chimney.  Heal and Toe worked great in the wide section. There is a finger tip thin crack to the right of the chimney that you can get small pro into.

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Cat Wall with Fin Wall behind

We didn't visit either of these cliffs. The picture was taken looking northwest from the reservoir wall.

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Cave Route (5.10+) Battle of the Bulge Wall

Eighty feet inside of a cave!  We hit this climb at the perfect time.  It was mid day, hotter than hell outside, nice and cool inside, with the sun beaming directly into the entrance. 

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Chocolate Corner (5.9) Donnelly Canyon

I had trouble leading this one.  The crack was small hands.  The real problem was getting my feet to stick in that size of crack. I slid down this one multiple times.

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Moon Goddess Revenge (5.11) Blue Gramma Cliff

Mark approaching the crux.  The move was going from layback fingers into a full on hand jamb as you round the corner.  For me it was one of those moves that I made, but I don't know why.

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Pente (5.11) Reservoir Wall

Check out this sequence of pictures for some beta on getting to the roof.  The route got its name from this rare pentagon shaped roof.

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Pente (5.11) Reservoir Wall

The roof is just the start of this climb. It just keeps going and going.  You can't carry enough pro for this thing.

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Supercrack Buttress

There are some good climbs on this buttress.  The "Incredible Hand Crack" is the one I remember best.  Perfect just perfect jams through a roof.   That one is fun fun fun.  Expect to wait in line for the climb.

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Think Pink (5.11-) Battle of the Bulge Wall

WOW!  The longest most sustained roof I've ever done.  Mark is just below the roof in this shot.  Beware of the wide section in the roof.  Your jamming away and suddenly it don't work anymore.  You then get into this lose overhanging layback.  If this climb were half an inch longer I would not have made it!  It took ten minutes before I could speak after reaching the top.

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