Because It's There

Why would someone want to climb up a shear rock wall?



Because it's there.

As we drove to our hike this morning we saw dozens of climbers ascending shear rock walls of the canyon.  We stopped and watched for a while and I can assure you I have no interest or courage enough to ever think of trying such a thing.

Nice rock....I'll let someone else climb it.

Now the ancient Indians must have liked to climb also because a little further down the road we came to petrographs carved into the face of the cliffs.

We didn't know any of this was along the road we were on but it's nice to be surprised.  We were headed toward a hike of 2.5 miles that would take us to Corona and Bow Tie Arches.

The switchback trail gained about 500 feet of attitude right away.  After that it was a combination of desert floor, climbing over slickrock (the name for the flowing sandstone), and cliff edge trails.

The desert floor may look plain until you get up close.

Even though it's Fall there are wildflowers in the desert.

Here I am standing on slickrock. 
The problem is it's usually not flat but rather slanted toward the edge of some drop off.

Terri is walking along slickrock that has a cable to grab as you slide by.
That was good for that 100 feet, the rest of the time you were on your own.

After an hour or more of hiking we made it to Corona Arch.

In the same valley was Bow Tie Arch.

We could have gone further to be under the arch but that required climbing a sandstone wall that had toe holds cut into it and than climbing a ladder to get over a cliff edge.  We might have made it up but the down part would have been the real challenge.

As we left the arch we added our rocks to a cairn wall to follow tradition.  The wall is about twenty feet long and has thousands of rocks carefully stacked.

How do you know which way to go?  There are cairns (Small stacked rocks) along the way.  You look ahead until you find one than walk to it and repeat.  Easy.

Terri trying to tip over a balancing rock with her hiking stick.  Not really she says.

And the last shot of the day was of an arch called "Jug Handle".  I was right under it and I couldn't see a thing because the sun was shining right in my face.  I couldn't move anywhere else so I just clicked a few shots and left.  When we got home this is what came out of those shots.

Cool photo, huh?  Gotta love my cell phone camera.