We decided to do a couple of quick peaks up along the Kolob Reservoir Road, in mid-Zion. I chose Moqui Peak since it was a 4-star route in Courtney Purcell's guidebook. This was a mistake. I've met Courtney in person and traded a bunch of emails with him. I like him. He's a nice guy and he has put together a very nice list of peaks to do in Zion. I also have his Las Vegas area peaks book. All that said, I find his guidebook frustrating. It doesn't really provide much information beyond: Hey, I've done this peak and it goes. Now, that's a lot more than I've done. I haven't put together a guidebook of any sort. I don't regret paying the money, but it does motivate me somewhat to put together better information.
Courtney's favorite expression is "route find upwards." We did so on Moqui Peak. We went up the wrong summit first. Or rather, the lower, eastern summit. We retreated and then climbed up to the highest summit. Ironically, CP listed this as a 4-star route because of the route finding challenges. We didn't find the hiking/scrambling to be that classic, nor the summit that appealing, but it was some good exercise. In search of something more inspiring, we headed a bit further up the road to the very beautiful Tabernacle Dome. This 3-star route had much more interesting route finding, more technical climbing, and some fun slaboneering on the final rib up to the summit.
We reversed back to the car and then headed into Springdale and our RV campground, just outside of the main entrance to Zion National Park. We cooked up some dinner and prepared for the next day, where I'd do the Trans Zion Run, with Loobster supporting me.
1 comment:
Great, now I have his guidebook too :)
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