Rattlesnake Run-in

The other night, I was walking around to the back of the van when I heard a sound. I jumped away immediately and grabbed a flashlight, only to discover I had been less than a foot away from stepping on a huge rattlesnake. It was my first time hearing the rattle in person, and the sound of it haunted me for the rest of the night. We repaid our gratitude towards him (for choosing to rattle instead of bite me directly) by blowing him to pieces with a shotgun (you can see the remains in the cover photo above). One thing for sure… there will be no more walking around at night without a light and I’ll be watching my feet closely. A few inches to my left, and I could have been in a dire situation.

I’m starting to learn what it’s like to be truly dirty. Until now, we have always managed to find access to showers every few days. Recently, however, we spent some time at a climbing area southeast of Flagstaff – Jack’s Canyon – where the climbing is great, but the dust levels are high and running water is non-existent. My hands are covered with a layer of dirt and chalk, and my ankles (the closest exposed skin to the ground) are turning a considerably darker shade. I’m starting to feel like Pig Pen from Peanuts, walking around in a constant cloud of dirt. However, I have also noticed that after a few days, the dirt simply stops bothering me.

Besides a few scrapes – namely a stubbed toe that tore a sizeable chunk of skin off my pinky toe and a nasty rope burn John got on a lead fall – we had a great time at Jack’s. The climbing is on highly textured limestone and there are over200 climbs to choose from. We picked a lot of the classic routes and we were never disappointed.


On our third day at Jack’s Canyon, we were (possibly overly) excited to finally have some company. A newly married couple from Wisconsin was traveling around Arizona on their honeymoon and came into the canyon for a day of climbing. Although the company was short-lived, we were eager to have people to talk to for once. Also, they fortunately had an actual first aid kit handy when I tore my toe open, and were kind enough to leave additional supplies at our campsite when they left. That evening (right before our planned departure, of course) five other groups showed up and we spent a while bonding with an older couple from Phoenix who have been climbing for 30 years.

We’ve made it a goal of this trip to focus on getting in shape and eating healthy. During the van renovation stage, we did a poor job of working out because – with the exception of the time we went to the gym to shower and felt obligated to put in a half assed workout first – we were spending all our time working on the van. Additionally, since we still haven’t set up any sort of stove system, we have no way of cooking yet. As a result, our diet consists of a lot of ill-advised meal options like energy bars and jerky (we have also been eating a lot of fruit and pre-made salads so it’s not all bad).

Now that we are really on the road, we finally have an opportunity to really work on the fitness side. Besides doing a lot of climbing and hiking, we are also trying to run and do ab exercises regularly. As a motivator, I decided I would try to get my average daily step-count above 10,000. Given my current lifestyle, I thought this would be a breeze. However, there are a few factors:

• My pedometer is on my phone, which I do not always have with me
• My primary activity is climbing, and I definitely don’t carry my phone with me on climbs
• Most of our hikes are steep approaches to climbing walls, but a really steep hike takes longer and registers fewer steps, despite the fact that you end up far more tired afterward

That being said, I finally crossed the threshold while in Jack’s Canyon (it probably helped that we couldn’t find the climbing area the first day and wandered for hours) and am now just working to maintain my average. With all these steep hikes, I better have amazing legs by the end of this trip.