apAdventures

posted by ARR

posted by ARR

…in the pines.

posted by ARR

Even at the bottom of Meteor Crater.

posted by ARR

Ancient ruins and a giant meteor crater.

posted by ARR

Get out of the desert.

Posted by ARR

For years we’ve dismissed Mt. Lemmon for out-of-town rock. Hueco Tanks in El Paso Texas, Priest Draw in Flagstaff in northern Arizona, Yosemite in California. Well this year was going to be different. With a week’s vacation lined up and the coronavirus underway, route climbing and camping on Mt. Lemmon was looking very attractive. That is…until this happened:

Literally 5 days before go-time, the mountain shutdown. Time for Plan B:

Hello Jack’s Canyon! Limestone pocket-pulling gym-climbing in an outdoor setting anyone?

Posted by ARR

Coffee doesn’t have much of an effect in terms of waking you up once you’ve had a million cups during the work week. I tried drinking an additional coffee on the way to Jacks Canyon last Friday night, to stay awake but it didn’t do anything for me. April and I were both exhausted. We bailed on the idea of driving all the way to Jacks to camp. My driving reaction time just wasn’t good enough to deal with elk dodging on the dark road. So, we stayed at Motel 6 in Payson.

Our weekend objective was to escape the heat of Tucson and get away from hot stuff, like the neighborhood blaze that nearly burned down our house. Since I’m so honest I told the attendant at Motel 6 that we have a dog and they kindly said, “Sure we allow pets. But, we’ll have to put you in a smoking room.” After a night there I smelled like “that guy” who sits down next to you after a fresh smoke. I always had that luxury when I was in lecture, in college.

Anyway, we left Payson on Saturday morning and drove up to Jacks. Since we were in total coffee withdrawl we got to the rocks around 12PM, lazy and with nice pounding headaches. Getting to the crag so early allowed us enough time to get in 3, count em, 3 Jacks Canyon routes! With just three routes to brag about at least April can say she…..onsighted a 5.11a!!! Nice.

Once the afternoon monsoon lightning storm passed we surfaced from the canyon to see that several forest fires were starting to burn on the horizon. Wow! Actually, once you’ve been living in Arizona for a little while, you see one fire, you’ve seen them all. Forest rangers were on their way in to put out the blaze as we drove out.

Drove out? Yeah, we bailed. We decided to head back to Tucson. Not! Ha ha. That’s not us. We stopped in Pine AZ and had dinner for starters. When we realized that there was a little cabin in the back that you could rent we couldn’t resist. Check out our photos and you’ll see, our weekend was all about chillin’, relaxing and then climbing hard at Jacks on Sunday.

The fire that is in the photo above is the view from highway 87 coming into Phoenix from Jacks Canyon. We saw the amazing forest fire as we drove back on Sunday. As we left the cool temps and returned to THE DESERT BLAZE.

Yep, we finally made it to Jack’s Canyon, finally! Miles, Matt, April and I loaded up the car after work on Friday and headed out.

We made a quick stop in Phoenix to pick up a new (nice and thick) thread. I decided to go with a more expensive than usual 10.5mm, 60m, non-dry rope. We picked it up from REI on our way, with our GIFT CERTIFICATE.

After picking up the rope we met up with some of Mile’s friends at a Thai place near Scottsdale, AZ. It was really awesome. April and I have been in search of a place that serves some Pad Thai that gives Spice Island Tea House (our favorite Pittsburgh Thai resturant) some competition. This definately does. It was very good. Of course I forgot the name…someone post it in a comment.

After the Thai place we were back on the road. Wait, after a quick coffee break at Starbucks we were back on the road. The road to Jack’s from Phoenix was very uninteresting at night except for THE ELK! Geeze. Every couple of miles I had to slam on my breaks to avoid scaring huge elk that were right on the side of the road. Around 1:30AM we managed to find the dirt road that leads in to Jack’s Canyon. We set up camp and quickly went to bed.

Saturday and Sunday were spent enjoying the cool temps in the shade and the super fun climbs. We all had a really fun time. I sat out both days due to a tweaked middle finger. No biggie. Talking with Matt, April and Miles was great. Plus, little Morgie and I played all kinds of games. Check out our pictures. Notice how green everything is in the Canyon. This is yet another place that I can’t believe is in Arizona.

posted by pjv