Utah Mountain Adventures

The Lisa Cottonwood Traverse  By Lead Guide Tyson Bradley  Ten minutes after leaving the trailhead we start climbing.  Water-polished granite in a steep-sided gorge requires our full attention. Scanning for hand and footholds with headlamps, our bodies and minds must wake up, although it’s only 4 am! Most big mountain scrambles require a long, boring slog up a trail before the fun begins, but not Lisa Falls. It’s one of the many great attributes that sets  this class 4 scramble route at the top of my Wasatch summer fun list.  It’s also cool and shady here, and we’re wearing extra layers, in spite of a forecast high of 100 in SLC. An hour into the odyssey the friction moves on smooth, white granite gets even more committing. To avoid the beautiful pour-offs along the watercourse, we must climb up and right, away from the creek and stem up a flaring chimney feature. Pulling out of it onto easier ground I traverse back left then up again, catchin...

Fall in Utah is amazing (as are the other 3 seasons.) But autumn is especially stellar when the yellow leaves of Aspen and Cottonwoods are juxtaposed against a backdrop of red sandstone cliffs. This feast of color is easier to appreciate when you get your feet back on terra firma after jamming them sideways into 2" wide, 100' tall, vertical cracks. This is Indian Creek: a paradise on earth, assuming you like crack climbing; i.e. assuming you like to suffer. But that’s what climbing is when you push yourself out of the "comfort zone:" suffering. Your success is dependent on your ability to suffer. No one actually LIKES it, but some people suffer better than others. These are the climbers who succeed, and everyone gets stoked on that! - Tyson Bradley Veteran crack-climbers drop their knee away from the crack, insert their foot sideways, and rotate their knee back in-line with the splitter groove. This locks the foot securely in place, making it a solid hold. It also hu...