Just got back from a trip to Joe's Valley! Left at 5 am this morning a successful trip after 11 turn arounds and my car dying 5 or 6 times. What an adventure I'd say! Haha so it was me and two other girls. We were going into New Joe's...passed Cottonwood Canyon Road, flipped around and got onto the right highway...went all the way up to the coalmine and decided we'd probably gone too far...the directions had said something about a dirt road...so we started driving down all the dirt roads we thought it might be down. Haha oh boy, my poor car. Woke our friend up going through a rock graveyard, lost track of how many oil rigs we passed and proceeded to go back down by the river towards Joe's Reservoir. Lucky for us we saw a car with a bouldering mat outside next to it, so we flipped around, and I got out and asked for directions. The best part was when the kid pulled out the same map that we had! Oh man. But he did give us slightly better directions. You go to the last pull off before the coal mine and it's marked by a lantern. Oh how helpful! Then he told us that "The Closet" would have some good climbs for our skill level. So we got there pretty quickly once we had found the right pull off...about four hours after having left Provo we started hiking...we passed this old rusted out VW bug and tried to look for rocks that were covered in chalk. We climbed some random boulders that we thought might be fun...climbed some hard routes that we could pretty much only pull ourselves up on and then hiked around until we found some more chalk.
That was my first time bouldering outside and boy it kinda gets your heart racing. It's a bit different if you fall because you'll most likely get seriously injured. Took a break for lunch on top of a boulder and saw the nice boys that had helped us earlier that morning. We packed our stuff up and hiked into the Valley more down a hill that was all black from the coal.
The boys pointed out an area that they said would be fun for us to try out....I think it might've been "The Closet". Until I can learn to read those maps better they are kinda bizzare. Random trees are drawn and big triangles for hills...ya except there are hills everywhere and oil rigs everywhere too. I think we figured out we did a V1 and I mastered my first V3 bouldering on real rock. I was pretty excited. I can't take total credit though, my friend I climb with is super talented so she always goes first and figures out the routes pretty much. That climb was fun though. "Bad Genes" possibly? My muscles were good to go still but my hands and fingers were shot at that point and we were all a bit tired so we packed up and headed out.
It's nice because although we were driving around a lot more than we expected and ran into some complications we were all chill about it and laughed it off which was so nice!
Bouldering sure does get your heart racing though. Maybe the fact that if you fall it'll kinda suck.
We did learn some things though and that was good. If you put your extra gear in between the folded bouldering mat it helps a lot! Also 3 people is the perfect number. 1. Climber 2. Spotter 3. Photographer
Yesterday I went climbing with my roommate at the gym, it was a blast. I did my first 5.10d and attempted a 5.11a but was pretty shot from bouldering before that. We met two boys that I was very impressed with. We were all up bouldering and then they made the effort to talk with us and then invite us to come climb with them on top rope downstairs. They pushed us to climb bettter and then invited us out that night to go to a Carnival and we all exchanged numbers.
My roommate didn't go because she had homework and also has a boyfriend but I went with one of the boys and his uncle who is mentally handicapped. I was pretty impressed with this kid because one he made a point to talk to me while climbing, invited me to keep climbing with him, invited us out that night to a carnival, then offered to drive all the way back from Pleasant Grove to pick me up. He picked me up at my apartment and then also took me back to the Quarry so I could pick up a bouldering mat for the next day's adventure. When we got to the carnival...that actually wasn't going yet...he told me he would get my door and then made me get back into the car when I didn't let him help me out of the car. I just thought it was cool that he used so much chivalry and was good at communicating. It was refreshing for sure. And I'm one that will insist to do things by myself and that I'm fine, I like to hold my own, but it was kinda of nice that he insisted he be a gentleman.
This kid ended up being younger than me which was weird because he looks a lot older.... Either way though I was still impressed with him because I feel like it's something the world is kinda missing nowadays.
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