Ibex (Climbing & Scouting Trip) February 10, 2018

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The nice thing about being in college is that you are recently freed from parents and you feel like you can do "whatever you want." That was the feeling I'm sure we all had when three of my friends and I decided late Friday night after a long week of school and work that we would wake up early the next morning and go on an adventure. Me and my buddy had heard tale of this awesome climbing area out in the middle of nowhere. It was an hour past Delta, UT....so it really was in the middle of nowhere.

Sunrise over the Sevier lake bed

We woke up at 4am and all met shortly after that. All of my roommates thought I was crazy to give up so much sleep on a weekend. They obviously hadn't caught on to the fact that I was usually gone every other weekend. The drive took just over 2 hours and we arrived just as the sun started glowing on the horizon. I hopped out and took a few pictures then we started scouting around. We drove South down the lake bed then drove over to the main buttress and worked our way South from there, looking at climbing routes.


We eventually decided the morning had warmed up enough to pull out our own climbing gear and see what damage we could do on the wall. We did some climbs on the Coral Crags wall and we all decided our favorite climb was "Donald Pump" (5.10a). The best part of the climb was the crux. I didn't like my footing on the wall and ended up using a bolt below me as a toe hold. I dubbed that bolt the "Stormy Daniels bolt" since I was cheating on the route... and that was the climax of the morning. I would highly recommend a climbing trip out to Ibex for any level of climber.






 By early afternoon, a front had moved in and it had started lightly snowing. We persevered and kept on climbing. I was just starting on a little 5.9 and the winds picked up. I kept on going and by the time I had reached the top, my fingers and toes were numb. I was pulling some crimps and jamming my toes in places I knew would normally hurt a little but it felt fine. Who knew climbing with numb extremities was so nice? We ended up retreating to the car and waited on the storm. Things were not letting up so we drove back through Delta.


We stopped by Oak City and drove up Pole Canyon to some  Pictographs we had heard about. The pictographs were cool to see, especially since they were unlike what you usually see as far as Utah pictographs go.




After our detour, back to Provo we went. The scouting trip was a success and an Ibex trip in the future is in the works.

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