American Alpine Club International Meet- Indian Creek
Ruth Taylor and myself have just returned from an amazing 3 week trip to the States. We started off on a 10 day trip to Indian creek and Cottonwood Canyon organised by the AAC and Brittany Griffith then tagged our own trip on the end.
We landed in Salt Lake City late one evening, met up with 22 other international climbers from all over the world, from Japan to Latvia. The next morning we were shoehorned into a pair of minivans and whisked away straight to Indian Creek. That evening was spent setting up the camp, checking out the amazing desert scenery and getting psyched for some crack climbing pain!
5 days later after much skin, tape, chalk and dignity had been lost we had dragged ourselves to the top of a rack of amazing splitter crack lines. New jamming skills acquired we headed back to Salt Lake for showers and the AAC organised Craggin' Classic being held in Cottonwood Canyon. This was like one of our climbing festivals similar to the one held in the Gower in August. Basically some climbing, some partying (as much as is possible with Utah regulated 3.2% Beer - thankfully free!) slideshows by speakers including Steve House and Andy Burr. The weekend and the International Meet finished off with some films in a small independent cinema in Salt Lake and much swopping of details between the host climbers and internationals.
We spent the next 10 days driving a huge truck on a whistlestop tour of Red Rocks, Las Vegas, Moab and Maple Canyon before we headed back home with tired arms and another dose of jetlag to welcome us back to work.
