Thursday, December 27, 2007

What a cold, dark month it's been..

We've spent most of December chasing the warm weather and sitting out the winter storms. We started off in the McDowell mountains near Scottsdale, where Mike showed me some of the old climbs he used to do. Left is a picture of me on top of a big boulder near Pinnacle Peak in Scottsdale. We then took refuge for 5 days at Mike's friend's house in Phoenix to escape the heavy rainstorm.

We then headed to Queen Creek, which is reportedly Arizona's premier sport climbing area. Again, it was quite cold, and the volcanic tuff was rough on our hands. Also the campground was quite sketchy - perhaps the proximity of a large urban area to a free campground attracted many undesirables. We worried about leaving our trailer during the day without supervision since every ratty car that drove by stopped and stared for a while.

One of the local climbers told us about a limestone sport area called the Homestead, which is at a bit lower elevation. So we decided to try our luck there and jackpot! We found an area we liked! The cliffs mostly face east and north, so we concentrated on the east facing cliffs where the weather was quite comfortable until early afternoon. It's a fantastic area, but it doesn't see much traffic - I think because it's a little farther away from the major urban areas and because it requires a four wheel drive truck to navigate a pretty rough road. Here is a picture of Mike on the Welcome Wall.

The last week we've been in Taylor, AZ, spending Christmas with Mike's family. It's definitely nice to get out of the cold for a while. We will probably head back down to the Homestead area tomorrow as the weather is supposed to warm up again.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Marin, This is Leili using Houman's account to write up a comment. I can't believe you're standing that high up. Great pictures. Have fun and stay safe!
Miss you here!