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Gallery 2
South Six Shooter, UT
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Gallery
5 -
Matt's Photos of the Anasazi ruins
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| This is Day 2 in Canyonlands,
Utah. We drove up a desert wash (dry creek bed)
to our campsite at night. Rough going, both physically
and navigationally. We climbed South Six Shooter
peak on Monday. Pretty dry desert. And hot...damn
hot. |
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| Arriving at our camp site in
the dry creek bed at 1:30am. |
Morning in the dry creek bed. That is North
Sixshooter Peak in the background. |
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| Tony with North Sixshooter Peak in the
background. |
North Sixshooter Peak. |
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| Standing at the mesa rim above our camp site. |
South Sixshooter Peak sits on this mesa.
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South Sixshooter Peak. We had a long approach
to get to the rock. Nasty talus cone... |
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| Climbing the talus cone. |
Our climb started to the right of the center
shadow and went right to the summit spire. |
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| The base of the vertical rock. |
Looking southeast from the base of the
climb. |
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| Our climb went right up the right side
of the blank face. You can see an Anasazi petroglyph on
the blank face near the bottom. Looks like a carrot and
a zigzag and a wolf. |
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| There was some serious air between the
bottom of our climb and the impact zone. |
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| Tony emerging from the crack to Matt's
belay ledge. |
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| Matt enjoying the view from the first belay. |
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| Matt leading the 5.7 to the summit. |
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On the summit, which was only about 8 feet
in diameter. |
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Sort of like Eric Cartman when he dressed up like
a handicapped kid to compete in the Special Olympics...
See below...
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| Matt should have told me to straighten
my helmet... |
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| North Sixshooter Peak from the summit of
South Sixshooter Peak. That is a slightly lower spire summit
(not reachable from our position) in the near background. |
Looking down through my shoes. |
| From the summit, there was
what I will call an "edgy" interlude. The wind
was gusting to HUGE MPH every few 15 seconds, and Matt was
attempting to throw the double ropes over to a face where
I could begin the rappel down. As the wind went up and down,
I finally yelled to Matt to throw the lines. They sailed
out and then way over a nose in the rock to the south and
went where we did NOT want the ropes to go. Matt hauled
them up again, and we tried it again. On the second attempt,
the ropes went "sort of" where we wanted them
for a full rappel. I went down the ropes, and Matt backed
up the anchor with a secondary backup anchor set that was
set "loose" so if the existing anchor failed,
it would be backed up by what we placed. I made it down
to the first belay station a few hundred feet down, and
confronted a serious wind-tangles set of ropes below me.
Matt and I were just out of yelling distance, so I mostly
had to signal to him above that there was a problem. One
of our rappel lines was seriously tangled, and was blown
over the nose that went off into space. After 10 minutes
of rope management and caressing the lines, I got them both
back up to my position. For most of it, I was standing on
a wedge rock about the size of a 4-door Buick that was tipping
back and forth between the main column of rock at the belay
station. I put one Friend in the crack above me and secured
it, but I let it go a few times to untangle the ropes. At
that point, there was about 800 feet of space between me
and the ground. I just shrugged at Matt and gave him a signal
to wait. It was too windy to hear each other. I finally
got things squared away, and we got us both down safely.
In hindsight, I have never been closer to death from a serious
gravity event in a long time. I'm glad it worked out. |
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A good late-afternoon view
of South Sixshooter, on our descent back across the mesa. |
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A petrified stump on the South Sixshooter
mesa. |
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Davis canyon at sunset. This is southeast
of South Sixshooter. |
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| Matt in the Indian Creek River bed with
South Sixshooter Peak in the background. |
Tony in the Indian Creek River bed with
South Sixshooter Peak in the background. |
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Our camp site on the second
night in the desert. |
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