Crack is Wack

A few days ago, we left Colorado and headed to Vedauwoo in Wyoming, hoping the change of scenery would change my current opinion towards climbing. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

John climbing on the sharp rock

The Voo (as it’s called for short) isn’t made of the soft, forgiving sandstone we enjoyed at Indian Creek. It’s sharp granite – closer to that of Enchanted Rock – that came with the following uplifting warnings:

• “An abundance of off-width climbs… and pain”
• “The most painful climbing we have done”
• “Imagine wedging yourself in a chimney full of sharp nails and climbing it”
• “The sharp granite crystals of Vedauwoo rip up our hands and the relentless desert cracks leave us hyperventilating and trying not to vomit.”
• “On a particularly bad day we may get a foot stuck for long enough to consider removing it Aron Ralston style.”

People climbing at Vedauwoo

The Voo is particularly known for its off-width cracks. When climbing cracks, the goal is to wedge hands and feet into the crack to a point where they are solid. If the crack is thin, you may only be able to fit your fingers in, stacking them together to get them stuck. If the crack is a little bigger, you can stick your whole hand in, curling your thumb back in order to make your hand wider and get the jamming effect. It’s the larger cracks – called off-widths – that are a problem. In order to get leverage, you may need to stack two hands side-by-side, jam an elbow or a shoulder in, or come up with some other awkward body positioning. I think it goes without saying that these are tough, and can leave a climber bruised, scraped, and with many ripped pieces of clothing. Needless to say, they didn’t exactly give me a warm and fuzzy feeling regarding crack climbing.

Hand stacking in an off-width hand jam. Now try to figure out how to make the next move when both hands are occupied here.

On top of this, the grades are incredibly sandbagged. Now, I understand that when climbing, it’s important to enjoy the individual moves; if a climb challenged you, the grade shouldn’t matter. However, it’s also normal to want to feel some level of achievement by getting up a problem with a higher grade. At Vedauwoo, after getting shut down on a 5.9 and a 5.8, I finally made it up a 5.6. It’s hard not to be demoralized when your climbing skill drops eight grades overnight… even if the place is notoriously sandbagged.

Before you start thinking I had a miserable time, though, I want to point out that everything besides the climbing was fantastic. The area around Vedauwoo is beautiful and serene, the weather was fantastic, there’s actually cell reception, we befriended a number of fellow climbers, and you can camp for free within walking distance of the climbing areas. As a result, we ended up thoroughly enjoying some pleasant downtime (I started and finished another two books here). In fact, we may have abused relaxation time to the point where managed to kill our car battery for the first time on this trip. But no worries… John gave it a quick jump from our external battery and we were back on the road.

Crag-side camping at the Voo

Since John may not have shared al of my opinions of the Voo, he came up with this table to show that we aren’t always in agreement. Personally, I think it just makes it clear that I am dating a masochist:

At least John was excited to climb here

I’ve had some questions about what we have been eating on this trip. Unfortunately, up to this point, our diets haven’t been the greatest. We are good about cooking breakfast tacos a few times a week, relying on cereal the mornings we don’t cook. Our lunches are generally fruit, energy bars, trail mix, yogurt, and crackers… basically snack foods that we can bring to the crags with us. But we’ve been going out for dinner way too much. Leaving the Denver area, we made a pact to try to eat out less and cook more. The settled feeling in Vedauwoo made this possible.

Here are a few of the meals we had:

Cauliflower Chickpeas

Chickpea and cauliflower concoction

Saute chopped onions and carrots in oil, with garlic powder (chopped garlic is a luxury for people with actual kitchens). Add cauliflower and green pepper and cook until soft. Then add a can of diced tomatoes, curry powder, chickpeas, and spinach and cook until warm.

Southwest Chicken Skillet

This is a classic crock pot meal I have made numerous times, but it’s my first time making it on a stove. Still, it works great because you can dump all the contents together and then take it easy while it cooks for 30 minutes. Basically, you just dump cooked chicken, salsa, chili powder, corn, black beans, rice, and chicken broth in a pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Add cheese at the end and eat. Easy and delicious!

Breakfast Tacos

Breakfast tacos with egg, spinach, sweet potato, and green pepper.

Just a spin on our standard breakfast tacos, where I used sweet potatoes cooked in a little brown sugar and cinnamon, and then added spinach, eggs, green pepper, cheese, and salsa. Yum.