Most of my first few backpacking experiences were solo adventures, partly thanks to the pandemic and partly due to my refusal to let midweek days off from an outdoor retail job go to waste. My second-ever night spent outside was a solo backpack through Georgia’s stunning, sandy Providence Canyons. Shortly after, there was a heinous night in Rocky Mountain National Park, where my poor Southern soul was surprised to be snow camping in late May with three-season gear.
Going solo was a logistical necessity; when I started climbing the opposite became true. Forced into human redundancy, I was surprised to find that I liked it — and maybe I needed it too.
Never was the demand for relying on others more clear than on a recent climbing trip in remote Indian Creek, Utah. The spot famed for crack climbing test pieces known simply as “the Creek” is an hour and a half drive from the closest showers and cell service in Moab. I had been wavering back and forth about even going on this trip. I’ve adopted my friends’ masochistic quirk of rebranding any less-than-luxurious experience as a vacation. Wind-whipped three pitches up on a climb an hour from home, we’ll scream “vacation!!” above the wind in a curious way of rebranding misery as fun. Somehow, it does work. But I desperately craved a real vacation; frigid tales from the previous year’s late fall Creek sojourn warned me this might not be my relaxing break.
To complicate (but also somehow streamline and add comedy to) matters, I carpooled with two friends, one of which was moving across the country. For anyone keeping track, that’s one person’s earthly possessions—plus three people’s camping essentials, climbing gear, food, and water for a week. I wouldn’t have my built-out Subaru with the comfy bed and safety net of hitting the road if shit really hit the fan. I mentally prepared to be a human popsicle far from creature comforts without any semblance of control.
I wouldn’t consider myself a control freak, but somewhere along the line I learned I could only rely on myself for safety, comfort, and needs. The desert was about to challenge that.
The vast and remote nature of the Creek—where Hopi, Dine, Ute, Zuni, Puebloan, Anasazi, and Fremont peoples have thrived for thousands of years—boasts little modern connection. Climbers find far-flung friends, lost gear, and rides through scribbles left on campground message boards posted like sentries. Attempting to find a friend on our second day, we rolled down the car window and screamed “Are you Finn?” towards a van in the darkness. It was. Each week, the climbing advocacy organization Access Fund carts vats of coffee to a popular parking lot. “Climber Coffee” is one of the few places to crowdsource a recent weather report, ask for beta, or borrow a guidebook in the absence of Google.
Mornings started with warm light illuminating the junipers outside our three-person tent; we’d rise with the sun, zip on a puffy, and lay a mat on the orange rock before boiling breakfast water. The climbing day ended when the sun sunk behind western rock walls, bathing the valley in hues of fiery red. On my favorite evening, we played like kids: tossing a frisbee, piloting a mountain bike over rock outcroppings, sprawling on the warm rocks chatting about life’s deepest thoughts — all to Johnny Cash tunes played on a trombone unearthed from the depths of Finn’s van. I found myself so accidentally in tune with the environment and the people I shared it with.