.zion3. (Led by Sheep, Iron Messiah)

We both needed a day off from fingerlocks, so we took a partial rest day and headed up "Led by Sheep," a 5.6 800' bolted trad route.

We simulclimbed the route at a casual pace and topped out in 31 minutes.

The route featured easy slab climbing on very sandy rock with bolts every fifty feet or so on average.

It's a whole different world on the east side, once you drive through the Mt. Carmel tunnel and get above the canyon proper. Quite the "desert alpine" feel.

With somewhat rejuvenated tendons, we headed up Iron Messiah (5.10 800') the next day.

We third-classed the first 5.4 approach pitch, and then started up some delightful 5.9 thin crimping on Red Rock-esque patina protected by pins. Alex linked this into the second.

The crux was a funky rounded groove, like climbing a miniature halfpipe. That led into an excellent flaring squeeze.

Alex took the next linked pitches, a phenomenal three-dimensional chimney with features. The rock architecture was stunning. I consider myself a connoisseur of the wide and this was one of my favorite chimney pitches.

One last ropestretcher pitch took us through thin hands on excellent varnished rock. The quality deteriorates quickly from here, so we called it good at 800' and rapped, hoping we'd have time to link up Shune's Buttress.

We swung by the car and slammed some calories. Smoked salmon is our performance-enhancing drug of choice.

Spirits were high as we jogged up to Shune's, but bodies were weak. A hundred feet into the route, I bonked hard. The cumulative trip finally caught up with me -- We had climbed 12 out of the last 14 days for a total of 5800 vertical feet.

Neither of us were feeling like strugglebussing our way to the top in the dark, and Alex had sent the route before, so we decided to call it a day.

The next day, weather rolled in again and brought our Zion trip to an early conclusion. I really fell in love with the land of the Big Sand on this trip. It ticks all of my boxes: tall routes with a high adventure factor, splitter cracks, occasional heady face climbing, gorgeous environment. I look forward to spending more time here.

Back to GJ!