Iceaxe
01-10-2006, 04:52 PM
Sunday Rock Gremlin and I climbed Elephant Butte. It was perfect weather for the route with only a slight breeze and a high of about 50 degrees. We were the first names in the summit register for 2006...... Happy New Years!
This was my second time on the summit and Gremlins first. We signed below uutah.com regular Scott Patterson who had signed in on Christmas Day. Looking through the register there were a lot of names from uutah members. There are two registers on the summit, the first from 1978 to 2005. Its pretty fun to read through the names. Hank Moon and I were the last entries in the old register from when I had climb EB a year earlier.
Here is a route description for anyone wanting to do Elephant Butte
http://climb-utah.com/Moab/elephant.htm
Sometime in the next week I will update the route description to clarify a couple of confusing items.
Only thing I found strange was the the first rappel has grown into a very large bolt garden. What was three bolts with hangers nicely positioned to rappel the crack has grown into 6 bolts spread crazily across the top of the platform. The new bolts are really poor and the rope pull from the new bolts really scares the rock and is a crappy pull. I'm guessing they were a piss-poor attempt at eliminating the easy down climb at the bottom of the rappel. Anyhoo.... we cut all the webbing from the new bolts and rigged a nice anchor in the corner that provides a safe rappel and easy rope pull. It would be nice to see the trashy, rock scaring, extra bolts removed.
I didn't take many pictures on this relaxing climb. I had used up all my energy the day before playing with Fire. But a couple of pictures from the route are below. I did get a couple of cool silhouettes of Gremlin.
:bootyshake:
This was my second time on the summit and Gremlins first. We signed below uutah.com regular Scott Patterson who had signed in on Christmas Day. Looking through the register there were a lot of names from uutah members. There are two registers on the summit, the first from 1978 to 2005. Its pretty fun to read through the names. Hank Moon and I were the last entries in the old register from when I had climb EB a year earlier.
Here is a route description for anyone wanting to do Elephant Butte
http://climb-utah.com/Moab/elephant.htm
Sometime in the next week I will update the route description to clarify a couple of confusing items.
Only thing I found strange was the the first rappel has grown into a very large bolt garden. What was three bolts with hangers nicely positioned to rappel the crack has grown into 6 bolts spread crazily across the top of the platform. The new bolts are really poor and the rope pull from the new bolts really scares the rock and is a crappy pull. I'm guessing they were a piss-poor attempt at eliminating the easy down climb at the bottom of the rappel. Anyhoo.... we cut all the webbing from the new bolts and rigged a nice anchor in the corner that provides a safe rappel and easy rope pull. It would be nice to see the trashy, rock scaring, extra bolts removed.
I didn't take many pictures on this relaxing climb. I had used up all my energy the day before playing with Fire. But a couple of pictures from the route are below. I did get a couple of cool silhouettes of Gremlin.
:bootyshake: