Life is Swell

Last week I was forunate enough to help out with a Colorado Rocky Mountain School climbing trip in the San Rafael Swell. It was an intro to crack climbing for most of the students, and we had a blast. For starters, the weather was perfect, other than the first day when we got snowed/graupele on pretty hard. We visited five different crags, and each had worthy lines that were super fun and provided a great introduction to desert crack climbing. Private Pizza may be the best 5.9 in the desert, just gonna through that out there. The rock in the Swell is Wingate and Navajo, but the Wingate tends to have more feature than in the Creek, and the Navajo is more reminiscent of the stone at Red Rocks than the soft crap on Wall Street. And to top it off, we only saw two other groups of climbers, all week long! The icing on the cake was the great group of students and co-leading the trip with my wife, and friend Dave. What an adventure!

Look for a trip report from the Needles of South Dakota later in the week, as we are about an hour away as I write this!