Isaiah 15:5 My Heart Crieth Out For Moab

After a long and dreary winter, it was really nice to get a nice sunburned face in the dessert of Southeastern Utah. Seriously, I look like I've been huffing gasoline.

It was a fantastic trip that included great weather, good food, running into old friends from college, six different rappelling adventures that I had never done before and Slumdog Millionaire. Also, Justin good work on that Condo. After sweating my balls off climbing up rocks and butt sliding down them, it was nice to have a shower to go home to.

A few highlights include:
- Rock of Ages Slot Canyon which included my first time actually setting up an anchor that I then rappelled off of. Somehow it's harder to trust your own anchor than one that has been sitting there for who knows how long.

- Driving the Shafer Trail through Canyonlands with the windows down while blasting Guns N Roses.

- The Fiery Furnace which wins the award for coolest name of any trail. Oooo! The fiery furnace from the bowels of hell! The home Beelzebub himself!

- Dragonfly Canyon in Arches National Park. I will never go to Arches again and not do that canyon. The best two hours you can spend in the park.

- Showering in the condo after two days of hiking and camping. Seriously, I felt like that crap covered kid from Slumdog getting the guy's autograph.

- Watching people limp around after the half marathon, happy that I didn't run 13 miles.

- The Medieval Chamber through Negro Bill Canyon. That's right. It's called Negro Bill Canyon.

Some lowlights include:

-Not bringing a camera to the Fiery Furnace. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

- Dangling on a rope halfway down a cliff in Dragonfly Canyon for a half hour trying to get the rope / harness unstuck. Seriously. A half hour.

- Slippery Pete's Gold Spike Restaurant, or whatever it was called.

- The massive, dirty crack of U-Turn. That is a picture of the only fun rappel. But the hike up sucked. A lot of work without a lot of payoff.

- Losing my damn wallet. That continues to sucked.

- Not rappelling off of Corona Arch. Here's a picture of other people doing it. Next time.

- Shredding the butt out of my poor shorts. But it gave the ladies something to think about.

The big balls award goes to Toby and Nate for being the first to do the simultaneous rappel off of Morning Glory Arch.
Click on that picture for a larger view. They are connected on the same rope with no anchor on the top of the arch. The only thing holding them up is the other's weight. None of us had ever done this before. So it was a pretty hairy experience, and I was safely on the ground the whole time. Of course once they did it, it was easy for everyone else to. Now, I have about 60 pounds on anyone else there, so I declined the chance to tempt the laws of physics. I've seen enough Wile E Coyote cartoons to know how that would have turned out.

Here is a video of Kris and Brianna doing it. That sentence sounded strange. Let me be more specific. Here is a video of Kris and Brianna simultaneously rappelling off of Morning Glory Arch.



The best part of The Medieval Chamber was the big crowd at the bottom watching our display of massive balls. And really, what would be the point of all this stuff if you couldn't impress German tourists, take pictures of yourself doing it and then brag about it on your crappy blog? It really is all just a big ego feed. But a damn fun one.

Here are some more pictures.