Home»All Photographs»Rock Climbing»Mar 3-5 2014 Arches, Castleton, and Indian Creek

Arches, Castleton Tower, and Indian Creek Rock Climbing


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On Monday Mar 3rd, Nick Vitali and I left Pocatello for a quick road trip to the Moab, Utah area. The main objective was Castleton Tower but we also planned to climb for 3 or 4 days in the region.

We took Nick's Eurovan down and had super comfy traveling, camping, and sleeping.

We arrived mid afternoon and drove straight into Arches National Park. We climbed a popular pinnacle, Owl Rock, a fun one pitch 5.8. On the way out we had another hour or so of sunlight so we decided to try another desert climb, this time a wide (ish) crack in a left facing diehedral, Chinese Eyes, 5.10a. How hard could it be? I don't know if it was the traveling, not changing out of street clothes, quick and sloppy tape job, or not enough of the right sized cams but I got my ass kicked! The climb was off hands for me and sandy. I got an immediate gobi on my hand, scrapped up wrist, and battered ego while I hung my way through the crux. I managed to finally make my way to the anchors and brought Nick up the route in the fading twilight. Not a good start.

We drove into Moab and had dinner at the Moab Brew Pub (excellent brews) and drove out the Castleton Tower trailhead. We were the only ones camping at the trailhead.

The next morning we got going relatively quickly and did the long slog to the base of the tower. The day was more overcast and cooler than forecasted but we still elected to climb the North Chimney, 5.9. Fortunately, with long underware and a hat under my climbing helmet I never got too cold on the climb. Nick took the first classic pitch and I got the crux offwidth with the manky bolt. Fortunately, I had a large #6 cam and was able to provide good protection as a stemmed against well polished calcite varnish and pulled on thin crimps to climb past the crux section. The rest of the climb was uneventful except for the abundance of some kind of animal shit on my pitch. I did this climb two years ago with John Schmidt and don't remember the piles of dung as I entered the wider "chimney" section of the climb.

We had a bit of problem on the rappel with our Mammut belay/rappel devices. We led on a 10 mm rope but hauled a 7.8 mm tag line for the rappel. As I started down the first of 3 rappels from the 400 foot tower, I noticed the knot following me down as I rappelled. The Mammut device does not work with ropes of significantly different diameters. After about 20 feet on rappel I had to change from the Mammut device to a make shift carabiner rappel which worked fine for me. Nick also has a Mammut device and he elected to use a locking biner and a Munter hitch which also work fine except for the nasty kink it put in our ropes. They also most self knotted up as we pulled the ropes. Fortunately we were able to avoid getting our ropes stuck but it was touch and go for a moment.

On Wed, we drove down to Indian Creek to do some crack climbing. Burly, strenuous straight on crack climbing. We only did 3 pitches, two 5.9s and 5.10. All felt about the same in difficulty.

We stopped in the late afternoon and had a beer in the parking lot. I was able to use my telephoto to get a few shots of some Minnesota (now Colorado) climbers on a brilliant looking 5.12.

Before dusk we started our journey home and headed north. We pulled off the highway and followed a dirt road looking for a place to park the Eurovan for the night and to our pleasant surprise parked right next to a sandstone arch, Looking Glass Arch.

I had my tripod and was planning to take a night picture in hopes of capturing star trails through the arch. I got up at 3 am and spent an hour trying to get my camera to talk with my Samsung S4. The S4 can be used as a trigger when the camera is in "bulb" mode. I spent a long time trying but failed, I only manged to get really cold. I crawled back into the Eurovan and had difficulty falling asleep. At 6:30 am Nick announced there was a beautiful sunrise happening. With difficulty, I dragged myself out of bed to capture a few good shots of the arch with a gorgeous sunrise. At least partially redeeming myself from the earlier failure.

After breakfast, we had an uneventful drive back to Pocatello.