Monkey Face

A few months back my friend Dave and I planned to make a trip out to Smith and go up the Pioneer Route on Monkey Face. After one non-starter weekend we decided to make a go of it on the long weekend. Despite the threat of bad weather and large crowds (3x as many cars in the car park as I'd ever seen before) we made the hike out to the Monkey and surprisingly found only one other party high up on the route. I guess the Smith Rock sport climbers don't like walking. It was on! Dave hadn't been rock climbing for quite a while but because the weather was looming and we had a late start we decided that he'd be able to get a refreshed en route. As usual with the Pioneer route, the A1 pitch is a bit of a PIA but the rest of the route is fantastic and we made it up without any real problems (though certainly not a speed record).

Nevada Landscape

I think the winning photo came from Nevada. It is really just your standard Nevada landscape. 20 foot cinder block sculptures of nude women in suggestive poses are pretty much everywhere. Its just hard to get a photo without one in it.

Utah Trip

Finally - here are a smattering of photos from our Utah trip two weeks ago. They are in pretty much reverse chronological order because of the annoying way blogger uploads photos. It was a great trip although a bit whirlwind and a lot of driving (although as Romaric says, we are American so we have to drive a lot eh). There are a lot more photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57670177@N07/sets/72157626772886404/with/5744062982/

Great Gallery

After leaving Moab we did a day hike down into Horseshoe canyon to check out some of the petroglyphs. This is a panorama of the Great Gallery - the Great Ghost (the non-solid figure on the left panel) is over 2.5 meters tall. Click on the image to see it up close.