Southeastern Utah might as well be the surface of Mars. Between the buttes and mesas of an arid landscape, where tumbleweeds blow across the roads, sagebrush grows from the cracked nutrient-rich soil, and prickly pears sprout under rusted, broken rock, there is little besides long stretches of open wilderness.
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, while much of the climbing community fixated on the Yosemite Valley, and the world’s attention was captivated by the Himalayas, a group of Colorado climbers, led by a Boulder climber named Layton Kor, ventured into a landscape of unclimbed sandstone towers, perfect parallel cracks, and established a unique brand of climbing in a wild, untamed environment.
For over 50-years the desert of Southeastern Utah, from the town of Moab to the towers of Canyonlands National Park and the smooth cracks and off-widths of Indian Creek, has been the sites of …show more content…
Armed only with a rack of hexes and rudimentary nuts, Wiggins slotted his hands into the flake, twisted his foot into the crack, and stepped off to change desert climbing forever. In this era, crack climbing was an obscure and fringe sport. Nobody knew if hexes and nuts would catch the soft, crumbling sandstone if one were to fall. Not wanting to risk finding out the consequences, Wiggins led the first 100-feet of the three-pitch route without stopping, gruelingly jamming his hands and using only his weight to find a secure stance where he could place another piece. Placing the anchor, he brought up Webster, and by the end of the day, the two were at the top of the buttress that was originally known as “Luxury Liner,” and then became “Supercrack” (5.10). In Webster’s words, established “a new frontier of desert sandstone crack
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, while much of the climbing community fixated on the Yosemite Valley, and the world’s attention was captivated by the Himalayas, a group of Colorado climbers, led by a Boulder climber named Layton Kor, ventured into a landscape of unclimbed sandstone towers, perfect parallel cracks, and established a unique brand of climbing in a wild, untamed environment.
For over 50-years the desert of Southeastern Utah, from the town of Moab to the towers of Canyonlands National Park and the smooth cracks and off-widths of Indian Creek, has been the sites of …show more content…
Armed only with a rack of hexes and rudimentary nuts, Wiggins slotted his hands into the flake, twisted his foot into the crack, and stepped off to change desert climbing forever. In this era, crack climbing was an obscure and fringe sport. Nobody knew if hexes and nuts would catch the soft, crumbling sandstone if one were to fall. Not wanting to risk finding out the consequences, Wiggins led the first 100-feet of the three-pitch route without stopping, gruelingly jamming his hands and using only his weight to find a secure stance where he could place another piece. Placing the anchor, he brought up Webster, and by the end of the day, the two were at the top of the buttress that was originally known as “Luxury Liner,” and then became “Supercrack” (5.10). In Webster’s words, established “a new frontier of desert sandstone crack