City of Rocks, ID

We had a great couple of days catching up with Nat and Sally. On Tuesday morning we set out for City of Rocks in Idaho just outside of the bustling town of Oakley. Dodging eerie, staring cattle on the road, we got to our campsite overlooking the park around dusk.

We hit the rocks early Wednesday morning to get a nice overview of the whole area on a formation up high known as Jackson's Thumb (Theater of Shadows). 4 pitches of easy 5.7 slab climbing got us to the top.

As is now the tradition after Redmond, we had a little siesta over lunch and headed to Elephant Rock for a short sunset climb (Wheat Thin, 5.7). We jumped on a sport route, no idea of the name, but with no explanation needed we'll call it Chipmunk Crap.

The next day we headed for some shady sport climbing on Flaming Rock. Highly recommended, we got on Tribal Boundaries, some 10b next to it, and a 10c down the trail a bit. Really fun hueco climbing.

Dodging an approaching t-storm predicted for Saturday, we headed out to Salt Lake City to climb in Big Cottonwood Canyon, right down the road from the Deer Valley condo Jim and Nanci Bauchiero has graciously let us use. Thank you guys so much, it's wonderful!