Utah in Photos...Mostly.

Jay and I had been planning a trip to Utah for about six months. We have been there together twice before, and on each of those trips we got our butts kicked for a variety of reasons. The reasons that immediately come to mind are; an overloaded station wagon starting on fire, both lead ropes getting core-shot halfway up Spaceshot and a general malaise/lack of motivation that neither of us can seem to shake when in the state together. Despite all of this, those two trips remain some of the most memorable of our lives and served as the basis for what has become an important friendship existing in the space beyond the carefree days of youthful climbing adventures in what has become the (occasionally all-too) real world we both inhabit in the present-day as adults with lives beyond the cliffs.

Morning Alpenglow on the Six Shooters

During those first two trips, our youthful exuberance was our biggest asset, while our corresponding inexperience was our biggest liability. We thought we would give it another shot and let our older, wiser and more experienced selves have a crack at it. We thought it would be different this time...we were wrong. In the end, we adjusted our agenda to meet some unforeseen circumstances, re-visited some prior epics, shared some laughs and climbed a few good routes - all things considered (it is Utah after all) we had a good trip.

A Different Time

My friend Jay recently wrote a short blog post about an adventure we had many years ago. It was fueled by youthful exuberance and an inability to rationally calculate risk. I wrote a description of the same adventure as a part of a route description for Pause for a Whisper on Mountain Project a while back too.

It is interesting to see the different perspectives on a life-changing route. We were young, foolish, and proud back then; aging has only partially cured us of those adjectives, but we have both acquired enough marbles in life that playing for all of them sight-unseen no longer seems worthwhile. If either of us had been able to see past the horizon of our early twenties, and into the happy vista of our mid-thirties; we would not have put one in the cylinder, spun it and pulled the trigger like we did. Alas, such is the beauty and the curse of youth; too ignorant to know better, and so blinded by the moment that the future being risked does not matter.