The Titan with the Climbing Club

I need to type up this post and be done with it... 

I have been putting it off. so here goes

We drove down to Moab to the area know as Fisher Towers.  We hiked in 3 miles to an amazing camping spot.  We set up camp in the dark.  Slept and got ready for the next days adventure.  

My pack weighed 70 pounds.  It had food, water, camping gear and lots of climbing gear in it.  It was interesting to feel that extra weight crushing my knees, my back... It was eye opening.  Don't carry extra weight around... it hurts!

Our campsite. 

This is what we were going to be doing.  We had to place little cams in the rock... expect them to hold and then climb on.  We were secure with a rope attached to us but I was not ready for this.

Luckily I wasn't hauling up this much gear on my back for 900 feet 

but I still had plenty and it WAS heavy!

There is me in the purple coat... don't I look nervous!  My rope tied to my back would slowly come loose ( I didn't realize it until it was slipping from my back) and at 400 feet would fall to the ground. At that point I started to get really scared.  I had just watched  a movie clip of the Vertical Limit movie right before I came and instead of a rope falling in the movie it was a person dropping to the ground... I started to shake.  I should not have watched that silly movie clip....

This spot where the people are sitting is 600 feet up.  That is where I lost it.  Ang is amazing and brave. I am not so much.  I thought I was... but I am not!  I had just watched my rope fall of my back.(yes I was still tied in) and I had seen two people take some good falls and heard some scary screams from others who had fallen.  No one was too hurt. In rock climbing you just fall but being up so high was not good for me. 

I started to cry and wanted to go back down.  Thanks to Ang and AaronWhite, I kept going but only using my ascender to go up the rope and no rock climbing skills. 

800 feet above the ground.. I was shaking.  A LOT!  (another guy had just fallen here)

That is our camp site down there. 

This was the top.  I was so glad to get there.  Sadly I had left our head lamps in our back back at the duck- 300 feet down. so since it gets dark at 5:30 we had to descend down 300 feet in the dark.

Once my head lamp was on it was fine.  slowly rapping down 600 feet takes some time but when you cant see the ground it doesn't matter.  

Aaron was my hero.  He and Ang got me down.  Because of my loosing it... Aaron hauled down all my gear... which had a bad ending.  He accidentally dropped it 600 feet to that ledge in the picture below.  It fell in the dirt which was good but it fell on a ledge of another tower.  Not to the ground.  

So on Saturday morning Aaron was amazing... he climbed the whole Titan Tower again. Then he did a 650 foot repel down to this tower, got the gear, then repelled down that tower to get our gear safe.  If you look up three pictures to the one with a foot in the left corner, you would look down on the huge repel Aaron did to get the gear.  The gear dropped a  LONG way!

You can see a little tiny white helmet by the big crack. Aaron coming off the 650 repel, got our gear and now coming down the second tower. 

This is the picture zoomed out.  

So .. wimpy me stayed on the ground Saturday.  Ang in the center of the photo, went up with our friend Jennifer.  I was so relieved.

Here is the Titan.  900 feet of glory.  Those are carpet squares on the tower so our ropes wouldn't ruin the soft sandstone.  There were 22 of us on this on Friday.  High traffic!

It was a beautiful place. and an amazing campsite!

But I liked the campground from this view at the base instead of 600 or 900 feet up.  

The day ended great.  Aaron saved the gear that was dropped.  It was at least 500$ worth of gear. So we were so happy.  This is Ang with her arms up celebrating Aaron safely getting our dropped gear...

People were coming down in the dark again on Saturday which meant we hiked out in the dark.  That burger in Green River was amazing!

So for now.. I will keep my feet on the ground for a bit.  I seem to be getting soft in my old(er) age!