White Rock (Camping & Climbing) April 27-28, 2018

There's nothing like a pre-finals week get away! With our last few finals for the semester looming in the coming week, one of my buddies and I decided on a weekend get away. It was late Friday night and we were both tired of studying. Literally on a whim, we packed up and left. It was 10pm, but that didn't phase us. I had had my eye on this awesome climb called Sputnik (5.10a) out at this place called White Rock. I'd never heard of it, and had never even been out to that area of Utah.

Sunrise

We drove for 3 hours out to the area. Apple Maps misguided me and had me drive down this awful un-graded road about 1 mile South of the actual graded White Rock access road. It was around midnight and was completely dark. We drove down this road in my poor little VW Jetta for about 30 minutes and had some close calls navigating the terrain. We ended up stopping because the road got worse and I knew we had to be on the wrong road. I opened the trusty Google Maps app and it re-routed us to the actual road. After the nice detour, we finally made it to White Rock. It was 2am, so we found a place to sleep and got to it.

Saturday dawned bright and early and we were ready for an awesome day. We cleaned up our camp and drove to the base of the rock. Since we had drove in in the dark, we were surprised at the rock in front of us. With low mountains and hills covered sparsely in juniper trees surrounding us, White Rock was an anomaly. 

We climbed the gully and went up the North side to our climbing objective. Sputnik was an awesome climb with big chossy pockets that peter out into smaller pockets. There is an awesome roof with some interesting moves. Good times. We were preoccupied with climbing and belaying, so no pictures were taken of the actual climbing.

After ticking that climb off my list, we were talking to some other climbers in line for Sputnik. They recommended the multi-pitch climb on the North side of the rock. We hiked around to it and up we went. Easy 5.5 or 5.6 climbing with great views.

                                        

The 3rd pitch

At the top, we enjoyed the views while eating some granola bars and snacks. We scrambled down the South side of the top of the rock then down the gully to the West, and back to our car. We saw some climbers bouldering and talked to them for a minute.

                            

Back at the car, we took a breather then headed out. We drove North through Skull Valley. There were a few massive dust devils whirling through the valley. One engulfed our car and it was insane. We stopped by the Backcountry outlet in Salt Lake on our way back, and arrived back in Provo at about 4pm ready to take on our last few finals.