climbing with kids: a day in the life of a new utahn

many of you have asked "how do you climb with kids?" Others of you have wondered how the climbing has been going since we moved to Utah. Here's an answer to both: a brief description of what a day of climbing is like down here.

It starts like this: I pack the night before. put everyone to bed early. make sure Halloween candies are handy and the laptop is charged.

wake-up. drop ben off at his work, and then pack up. when it's time to leave, receive notification that i won't be carpooling. wait for the stragglers, whom i find out are too lazy to pull of the freeway to have me follow them. so i meet them at the mouth of the canyon (after confusing texts and phone convos on directions).

get to the base of the climb. friend "A" knows me and likes me, and has offered to help with the kids. Other two climbers glare at me. They laugh when I ask them how to get my kids across the river.

Yes, river. because we don't climb at some kid-friendly crag, I'm beginning to wonder if they even exist down here. no, we climb at this leering limestone wall that has a river at the bottom. With one pair of gators.

Two sneering climbers leave. Fortunately friend A takes a kid for me so I only have to make 27 trips across the treacherous river in waders that go up to my crotch and have an ankle that is wider than my foot while carrying screaming child and gear.

the approach doesn't end there. because i mean, it was only a river crossing. too simple, right?

that's where the 200 yd mud slide begins. at about a 60 degree angle. so to start i crawl up it pushing Indy's butt up. slide down. play hot potato with friend A carrying Fisher up. Only dropped him once, and fortunately a tree branch grabbed his ankle. whew.

Hmm, so that's were the fun begins? Well, the warm-up is a .12a. It's the easiest climb there. so all the macho men onsight the thing... yikes! I take TR on it, fall at the crux, and finish wondering why I didn't lead it. oh yeah, that's because my kids are screaming at the base of the cliff (all 18inches of the ground) while said sneering climbers continue sneering.

Then we work on 5.13s. You know, since I send stuff like that all that time (right!) Fortunately kids are now busy eating chocolates, dirt, and whatever else they find while watching a movie. When they do cry (halfway up the 13a) sneering climberss kindly ask me to come down, so that they can have a turn (sheesh!) and the kids can stop crying.

So i come down (I'm whooped anyways) and pack up. Then begins the descent. I decide to make a head start before the kid-haters do their last climb. Going down the mud-slide carrying Fisher my little (new) cooler slides down the cliff. Slide is the wrong word. This thing bounces once, and then gets mega air and FLIES into the water. it catches a teeny branch in the water, we're talking twine-sized branch here, and waits.

so that's what would happen if I dropped Fisher.

then I fall. fortunately i land on my (very muddy) bottom and ungracefully slide to the bottom. whew, that's over. Friend A much more gracefully brings Indy down.

oh, and the cooler lost its branch. it's not a couple hundred yards down river. crap.

I slip the gators and start running through the deepest part of the river: we're talking mid-quads here. fisher tries to jump in after me. Friend A stops him, which means that he has to touch him, and if you know Fisher you know that that is an invasion of his personal space which results in high-pitched screaming.

oh well, i got the cooler. lunch and snacks are now total mush.

i take the kids across the river one at a time. then the gear.

Indy poops his pants. then pees on them. but, AHA I am a genius and packed extra pants. One sippy cup and one pack of wipes is lost to the river (a minor inconvenience with poopy diapers and poopy pants) but we are all safe.

Fisher keeps trying to jump in the river while we watch glaring climber try to redpoint 13b. So i strap him in his carseat, toss Indy in too, and shut the car. Then I lock it. Then I sit my muddy self down and talk with friend and watch the send, enjoying the quiet.

they want to hit up another wall. with only 2 hours of daylight left, i decline. said wall is supposed to have deeper river and a cattle-guard in front of it- tricky they say because you jump the fence and land in the river. doesn't sound fun in giant gators and screaming kids. i bail.

so that's how climbing with kids goes. does it suck? yeah, pretty much. but is it worth it? totally.