It's hot in the desert.

The temperatures in Moab soar to over 105 degrees in the summer. Its brutal out there, but the ripping spring winds have calmed and I can't spend a nice day not jumping. Being a bartender, I work nights, so early morning jumps are a rarity for me. I've been hunting down the exit points with shorter hikes or shady hikes to try and avoid heat stroke and such. Ha.

Over the last year, I've fallen in love with the low stuff. By low stuff, about 200 feet or less. One of my favorite low jumps is Looking Glass Arch, just south of Moab, UT. This beautiful structure is a red rock amphitheater. The west side of the dome has a hole where the light shines through at sunset. Casting a looking glass, perfectly framed on the other side of the wall. This is, by far, my lowest jump. At 127 feet to impact, its a mandatory static line or PCA (pilot chute assist). These are very fast methods for parachute deployment. When an object's height does not permit freefalling an object, these are the alternatives. A static line requires a tie off point to the object, whereas with a PCA, a person is needed to hold your pilot chute until extraction of your main.

I headed out to Looking Glass with a few friends. We brought along some webbing to make a new anchor to static line off of. As we got to the top of the arch, we realized the static line bolts had been removed by someone. Boo. Not a big problem when its only a 5 minute hike to the top. So Scott (our awesome photographer and fellow BASE jumper) gets a PCA by me. Then I go next, getting a PCA from Kevin. After a whole 5 seconds of canopy flight, I land and start my hike back up the arch. I PCA Kevin, the last jumper, then begin the scariest part... The ropeless down climb of the 5.4 rated climb. While going up this thing is a breeze, oh my, its a little bit scarier going down. Stoked I had my vegan guide tennies on! Couldn't have been happier to have Stealth on my feet for this decent!

Next super hot summer jump went down a few days later on my last day in Moab before a trek back east. After being winded off this awesome new exit 2 days earlier, I got my redemption jump! This little gem of a sandstone feature, known to jumpers as 'Lollipop', is in the ballpark of 275 feet tall. This unique structure is true to its name. A 6 foot wide rock atop a 15 foot tall pedestal. 

Scott and I headed out there around 11am. Another alpine start for this early bird! We hiked up the slightly shaded gully with our BASE rigs and Scott's camera gear. We geared up at the base of the pedestal and hand over handed the fixed rope to the top of the pop. Talk about exposure! Winds are great! Lets go! I go first. I get a decent running push to clear the 3-4 foot lip below the summit. Scott snaps the awesome photos. I decided to land on the sand hill off to the right.

Scott stashes the camera gear and heads up to the summit. The winds picked up a little. I see his pilot chute blowing in his hand. He waits for a few minutes. Its finally calm. Scott exits, turns and lands downhill from me. Awesome jumps. Awesome exit. I love the uniqueness of the features that I get to experience in Utah. Stunning red rock surrounded by green washes from the summer flash floods. Blue skies, white clouds. I remember again why I live in the 105 degree desert.

Scott and I start the hike back up for the camera gear. Unfortunately, our heat index to water supply ratio was way off. Good job, Moab locals. You know better than this. We get back to the car, parched. Lucky for us, on our drive out we pass a big white catering tent. Its some John Deere rally event. Fully stocked with cold water and lemonade. Score! The desert provides again!

Less Packing, More Jumping!

Hi everyone! Jill here. Spending the winter riding in snowy (finally!!) Colorado is making me homesick for BASE jumping and the warm desert. Reminiscing about the summer and fall jumps I've made. Here's a short of me doing unpacked jumps around Moab.


For anyone who is unfamiliar, unpacked jumps are those where your parachute is already out of your container. There are a few different types; rollover, TARD (totally awesome rapid deployment), TARD over and game over. There are also new styles being created whenever a jumper decides to get crazy and try something new. In this video you'll see me doing a few rollovers and a TARD over.


The rollover is executed by standing with your toes at the edge of the object, you then drape your canopy over the edge and let it hang below you. With a solid push, you do a slow front flip over your canopy, keeping tension in the lines. You pendulum under the canopy as it fills with air to inflation.


The TARD over is a combination of the rollover and the TARD. A TARD is done by holding your carefully looped lines in your hand along with the parachute at the base of where the lines connect to the nylon. You then jump flat and stable while tossing everything above you. What differs in the TARD over is the jump. Instead of jumping flat and stable, you do a slow front flip only releasing your parachute once you have finished flipping over it.


Hope you all enjoy my Moab daydreaming! Click Below for the video.
Less Packing, More Jumping!

Highlines in Colorado!

Hi everyone, it's Emily! I thought it was time to make an update on what I've been up to lately. I've moved to Golden, Colorado where I have already met countless slackliners and outdoor enthusiasts. I really can't believe how much of a slackline community there is here. Coming from Moab, Utah I really didn't think it would get any better, but it has! I've been out at least 3-4 times a week slacklining, highlining or climbing and already feel like I've improved as an athlete. I feel so grateful to be involved in the sport of slacklining. Everywhere I go there is a supportive community that immediately makes me feel at home. The one thing that I love the most about the sport is the people. So a BIG thank you to everyone that's been a part of my life over the past 3 years!




One of the highlines that we rigged lately was "The Elephant Buttress" in Boulder Canyon. There were 5 of us and it was a gorgeous day. I hadn't been to this highline before; it was a really nice hike and an easy rig. It was fun (and challenging) hiking up in about a foot of snow with friends and my dog (who disappeared for about an hour exploring somewhere!) Below are some pics! My friend Buck walked his first highline ever so it was a really special day! Take a look at the pure joy in his facial expression :)

Another highline that we rigged we named "The Slip & Slide Highline", reason being that it was VERY unlevel and when you were trying to stand up on one side you basically slid down! This was one of my favorite days recently. It was another clear day, a great hike up to the highline spot AND we hiked a boom box up with us ;-) I walked it on my first try in a Swami Belt ( an alternate harness with no leg loops, seen in the photos above). I choose to wear a swami belt because it challenges me more than a harness does. With a harness it's okay to fall. But what I want is to train myself to NEVER fall when I'm walking. A swami teaches my mind to focus on staying up no matter what. This day my friend Carissa got out onto the line and had some really great tries. I love getting other girls out there!

One last highline I will include in this post is a line me and some friends established in Ouray, CO. We went out to the Ouray Ice Festival in hopes of rigging a line over the gorge where people were ice climbing (a 6 hours drive!) But, it seemed that the people running the festival were very much against it beacause someone had "free soloed" the line last year (didn't wear any sort of protection). I understand that free-soloing is a personal choice and something that some highliners choose to do. But, it's important to remember the effect it might have on the community.

So, we went and found another spot to rig a line a little bit further away and ended up having a fantastic day. The line went from a bridge directly to a tree and right over an ice filled gorge. The line had an amazing view of the town of Ouray and we were all able to get on and walk. A few hikers stopped by to see what was going on and we gave them quite the show! I love how diverse the sport of highlining can be; the lines are all so different in their own way and I love how creative you can be in the rigging process. 

Thanks for reading! I'll be sure to update soon with more adventures :) Some friends and I are planning to rig a really long highline soon here in Golden. It's going to be about 180 feet long and if I walk it, it will be my new personal record! I'm super excited about this project. Stay tuned! 

Adventures Learning to Aid-Solo

To see my video of this climb, click here!

Hayley's FFFA on Vimeo 
Hayley's FFFA on Youtube 

The first time I climbed ancient art, I watched a party begin aid-climbing on Cottontail, a tower directly across the gully. I had climbed four pitches and summited before they reached their first belay-station. “That looks so boring” I thought, “Why are they moving so slowly?”

As winter rolls in, everyone seems to roll out of my town. Moab seems almost crowded in the warm seasons, but around December , when the days shorten and snow falls, I start to run out of partners. 

The male: female ratio is weighted toward males in any season, but in the cold months I start to feel like a rare bird, and since both of my Vertigirls teammates left town I’ve been doing a lot of projects with….. men.

So, Instead of hanging around at the belay, begging for the sharp end, I decided to try some aid-soloing. There’s a funny little unnamed route up a chimney between The King Fisher and Lizard Head Rock. I had never aided before, but it seemed easy. You just use your ladders to climb from bolt to bolt right?

Wrong. For my first aid-solo, I chose a second ascent, unlisted climb, a mile from the road and thirty miles from cell reception. Maybe not the safest decision, but I had watched my partner Andy Lewis establish the route for a highline earlier in the week, so I was pretty sure I could make it.

The system I have figured out for Aid-soloing is to anchor my rope to the first two bolts with a knot, then run the rope through a gri-gri at my waist and leave the free end hanging, with all the slack stacked in a haul-bag at the bottom. As I climb I run the rope through my gri-gri, protect at every third bolt or so, and pull in slack when I get scared (which is about every two minutes).

The Gri Gri is cool because I know it will catch me eventually, even if I’m upside-down or both of my arms somehow fall off. What I don’t like is the way the weight of the excess rope can pull itself through the device, short-roping you even after you’ve given yourself slack to climb.

This happened three or four times on the route, every time it switched from aid, to even the shortest section of free-climbing I had to hang a sling around my neck and use it to pull the gri-gri arm as I took both hands completely off the route to feed rope through the stupidly safe device.

Despite needing three hands for the gri-gri, everything pretty much went okay.  I found aid climbing to be scarier than it looks, which makes sense because you move at a snails pace, linking bolts. I shot some of the most boring footage ever, and I still can’t figure out how something so slow can feel so awesome. The project took me two days and I felt like I was racing the whole time!

 

The feeling of summiting, by myself is unmatched by anything I’ve ever experienced in the past. I could see to the parking lot, and there were no cars besides my own, nobody around me for ten miles at least. The sky had cleared completely and sun was shining on the white snow, which always makes the rocks look vivid, alien-planet red.

 I couldn’t believe I had made it all the way up here on my own, or that it had taken so long and been so painful. Every knuckle I have was skinned, my mouth was full of dirt, and I was physically exhausted, but as I looked out at the rest of the Fishers I couldn’t help counting how many towers I have left to solo this season J   

Welcome to our Blog!

This will be a place for us to write stories on our adventures, together or apart. Stay tuned to follow what we're up to.


Recently:


Hayley was featured in the Patagonia Winter Catalog! Check her out! She's walking a highline in at the Ouray Ice Festival.

Emily won a highline competition at The Spot Gym in Boulder, CO! She beat out 4 boys! ;-) 

And, Jill is Five Ten's newest Athlete!! We are so proud; click on the photo to see her whole profile!