At 13,063 feet, Wheeler Peak is the second tallest peak in Nevada. The tallest by 77 feet is Boundary Peak on the California/Nevada border, and it’s not nearly as cool looking as Wheeler. The plan was to wake up early, drive to Nevada, climb Wheeler Peak, then drive back. And that’s pretty much exactly what I did.

I woke up at 5:30 and was on the road by 6. I got to Delta, Utah, a couple hours later and had breakfast at McDonald’s, after which I continued heading west. It took me about 4 hours to reach the trailhead, where there were a few other cars already. I’m a fast hiker and I expected to pass some people on the trail, which I did. The trail starts out in a pine forest for a while until the forest thinned and the ground became rockier as I neared the timberline.

The trail eventually led up to a barren, rocky saddle between Wheeler Peak and Bald Mountain. I turned left at the saddle and continued up the last couple thousand vertical feet to the summit on the rocky but easy-to-follow trail. The view from the top was great and I spent about half an hour on top eating and enjoying the view before heading back down.

One of the main attractions (to me, anyway) of Wheeler Peak is its massive, 2,000-foot high northeast face. I’m a rock climber more than a hiker, and this face is one of the burliest around. There are only a couple routes on the whole thing, none of which take a direct line up steepest  and tallest part of the face. I obviously wasn’t going to climb the thing by myself but I wanted to get a better view of it (you don’t get a good look at it from the hiking trail).

So I hiked up a different trail that led through a grove of some amazingly beautiful bristlecone pines, the oldest living things on earth. The oldest one I saw had a plaque on it that said it was 3,200 years old! That’s incredible to me. It was crazy to think that it was already 1,200 years old when Jesus was walking around. So cool!

But yeah, the trail eventually led me to the base of the northeast face and the only “glacier” in Nevada. I say “glacier” because it’s not really a glacier but more of a perpetual snowfield. There are no crevasses in it or anything. Still it was fun to see snow in the Nevada desert on early September. Wheeler’s northeast face is big and terrifying and I desperately want to climb it. The only problem is that officially, there are no bolts allowed in the area (which is part of Great Basin National Park, by the way) and especially no power drills. Climbing that huge face (which is larger than Half Dome and with much worse rock) without bolts is a very, very, very scary and incredibly alluring prospect. I’ve been invited a couple times on various attempts on the face, none of which have been successful.

After I had stared at the big cliff long enough, I hiked back to my car and drove out. I got some more food at the McDonald’s in Delta before making it home by about 9 o’clock that night.

I have to go back. That massive 2,000-foot face can’t go ignored, and I’ll have to do some recon trips to check out possible lines up the face. All in all, it was a successful and extremely enjoyable day trip!

Stats:
Wheeler Peak summit trail
0 miles – Trailhead: 10,040’ @ 10:00
4.3 miles – Summit: 13,063’ @ 11:45
Stayed on top until 12:15, back at car at 1:30

Bristlecone grove/Wheeler north face trail
Left trailhead 1:40, turned around under N. face @ 3:00, was back at the car at 4:00.

You can see Wheeler Peak marked just west of the Utah border.

Wheeler Peak with its awesome northeast face visible. The trail goes up the right skyline.

Looking up the last 2000 feet or so to the summit. It got really cold and windy right about then.

Jeff Davis Peak, the third tallest in Nevada.

On the summit.

A bristlecone pine.

The 3200 year old bristlecone pine. So cool!

The "glacier" and Wheeler Peak's massive northeast face.

What a pretty face!

Being super psyched about Devil’s Castle after doing Black Streak with Thomas, I suggested to Crisco that we go do a route on the face, namely Horns of Satan (III 5.10b/c, 8 pitches, 800′). I’ll just say that the route was fantastic. The third pitch was one of the best pitches I’ve climbed in a while. I think I liked the route as much as Black Streak, maybe a even a little more. The cruxes on Horns of Satan were a bit more sustained and a bit more difficult. Again, it was a beautiful day on a great route. I’ll probably head up there again (for a third time) before the week’s over… On to the pics (as always, click for larger versions):

A topo of the route with my notes on ratings and gear.

Crisco enjoying wildflowers on the approach.

Higher up on the approach.

Looking down from partway up the third pitch. Awesome exposure!

Crisco climbing up pitch 3.

Cool rock and cool crack on pitch 7.

The knife edge summit ridge of Devil's Castle (10,920').

Today Thomas and I did an awesome climb! It’s called Black Streak (III 5.10b, 6 pitches, 800′) on Devil’s Castle (10,920′). It’s mostly a bolted climb, but there are some gear placements in there, too. The approach and getting ready to climb took about an hour. The climb itself took about two and a half hours, and then getting down took about an hour and a half. The pitches are 5.10a, 5.10b, 5.8, 5.4, 5.10a, 5.9.

Overall, I loved the route. I’m going back next week to do another route on the same face. Here are two epic highlights of the trip:

1. Hearing the hum, then buzz of falling rocks. They sound like missiles, and you can’t see them. Then all of a sudden the rock exploded 15 feet away from us… It’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever experienced.
2. The road out of Little Cottonwood Canyon is super steep, and I was riding my breaks the whole way. Aaannddd… My tires caught on fire. I’m not kidding. I pulled over on the side of the rode to check out a cliff and I realized that my tires were smoking! I looked closer and saw that there were flames coming out through the holes in the hubcap! Thomas and I grabbed all of the water bottles in the car and started dousing the front two tires and eventually they stopped flaming and smoking. Crazy…

Here are the pics:

The route is marked in yellow, with the small yellow dots being the belays.

Getting closer to the start of the route. It goes up the obvious black streak in the middle of the picture.

Thomas in the bergschrund (the gap between snow and a cliff) at the base of the route.

Looking down from the top of the first pitch.

Thomas starting out on pitch 2. Beautiful rock!

Looking down pitch 3.

Thomas on pitch 4. The yellow arrow points to him.

Me on pitch 5.

Looking back across the big ledge at the top of pitch 5.

Thomas on the last pitch.

Cool rock!

Thomas moving from the anchors to the ridge top.

Me on the summit!

Looking through a sweet hole in the rock!

Me on top of the knife-edge summit ridge. Suh-weet!

Look how big and scary the face looks! The route goes up the obvious black streak in the middle.

Here are more pics from various adventures of the last couple months.

An angry rattlesnake on West Mountain.

Me climbing "Forsaken" (5.11b) in Rock Canyon

Dad and me panning for gold!

Jeff and the arch in Maple Canyon.

A beautiful part of the downhill mountain bike trail on Squaw Peak.

Crisco biking in front of Mt. Timpanogos.

Dad climbing on Freedom Peak.

Dad on top of Freedom Peak.

Me on top of Freedom Peak.

Me looking epic.

Dad with Freedom Peak in the background. The route we took goes up the two obvious snow gullies on the face.

My nephew, Max, and brand new niece, Lena.

Me on top of Deseret Peak (11,031'). The Great Salt Lake is in the background.

Some beautiful mountain scenery in the Stansbury Mountains near Deseret Peak.

Well, that’s all for now. Expect more shortly!

I’ve always wanted to do a marathon. It just seemed like it would be a pretty epic thing to do, something that I could cross off of my list of things to do before I die. I started getting serious about it a year ago. I was in great shape from climbing or hiking 5-6 days a week and figured that it was the perfect time for a marathon. I began by doing a 13.1 mile (half marathon) run on my own and managed to survive. I was pretty sore the next day, but I’d managed to do it in under 2 hours, which was my goal. I then figured I’d do a longer run, so I ran 20 or 21 miles. I don’t remember the time, but it was a bit more than three hours. Again, I was sore for a couple days but I felt I was ready for a marathon. I went online to register for an upcoming one but found out that all of the ones I was considering were full. Lame! So with that, my marathon goals had to be put on hold. I stopped running and kept climbing.

Fast forward to January 2010. I decided to register for a marathon then so that I’d be forced to train for it, and I signed up for the Utah Valley Marathon on June 12. I figured that 5 months would give me plenty of time for training. I guess this is a good time to say that I really don’t like running. I don’t like the strain it puts on my legs and joints and I don’t like taking time away from climbing.

About a month before the marathon, I reckoned that it was time to start training. I went on a seven mile run up Provo Canyon and it went pretty well. A couple days after the run, though, the outside of my left foot really started to hurt, and for a couple weeks I couldn’t walk without limping. I didn’t run any more because I didn’t want to hurt my foot any more. I didn’t climb much, either, due to the work I’m doing on a climbing guidebook.

I woke up at 3 am on the day of the marathon, wondering what I had gotten myself into. I had given myself five months to train and ended up going on just one relatively short training run a month before the race. I hadn’t even been climbing as much as I had the previous year, and I was generally not in as good of shape as the previous summer. With concerns about my foot and about whether I would finish the race or not, I drove to the finish line in the dark and caught a bus from there to the starting line. After a waiting around for an hour or so with hundreds of other runners, the race finally started. Oh, and it was cold and raining.

The first 8 or 9 miles weren’t bad. Every couple miles there were water/Powerade stations, along with stations that handed out power gels and oranges. It was weird to think after running 8 miles (which is a pretty healthy distance for a run, in my opinion), that I still had more than 18 miles to go! I was feeling good, though, and I ran with the 3:40 (the women’s qualifying time for the Boston marathon) pacer for the first half of the race (13.1 miles).  I made it past the half marathon mark at about 1:49. It was at about that time when my foot started to hurt. It started out just as a vague sort of dull pain, but by mile 20 (my 20 mile time was 3:01) it had grown into a quite noticeable, sharp pain. It was also about this time that my legs started to feel sore. By mile 23, I was in considerable pain. My legs were cramping, I was limping, and I was walking more and more. The last couple miles were even more painful, as I kept reminding myself that the faster I went, the sooner this would all be over.

Mom and dad were there to greet me at the finish line (and they’d also been at various points along the race to cheer me on, which was nice), and I ended up finishing with a time of 4:15. I had secretly wanted to get under 4 hours, but that last six miles destroyed me. I’m still really happy with the time, though. Not bad for not training!

How hard was it? It was hard. Those last 6 miles sucked. But I think some of the 20+ hour days I’ve done in the mountains were harder. Like the second day on Rainier that involved a 4000′ vertical ascent and a 9000′ vertical descent, or when I did the East Face of Mt. Whitney in 21 hours car to car. On the other hand, I wasn’t this sore after those days… The marathon was suffering of a kind that I’m just not accustomed to

I’m writing this the day after the marathon. My legs are more sore than they’ve ever been, and the pain in my left foot is worse than it ever was before. Any sort of movement of my lower body is excruciating, and I hobble whenever I have to walk somewhere. But at least I get to cross a marathon off my list. I told myself as I was running that I’d never do another one, and I say the same thing now, but who knows. I’ve said the same thing to myself on scary climbs, too, and I keep going back.

Oh, dnd an Ironman is still on the list of things to do before I die…

I'm in the blue.

Somewhere between miles 13 and 21...

Mile 21ish? I'm a few people back.

Mile 22 or 23??

Finish!

Feeling better already...

Here are random pics from recent travels and adventures in Utah.

Looking out to Utah Valley from Powerhouse Mountain.

Me on top of Powerhouse Mountain.

The Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island.

Me bouldering at Topus Mountain (Island of Stone). That's a dry lake bed and the Ibex Crags in the background.

Notch Peak, which boasts the second largest vertical cliff face in the US.

Beautiful Marjum Canyon. Like a little limestone Yosemite and one of the more beautiful Utah climbing areas I've seen.

An old abandoned hermit's cabin in Marjum Canyon. So cool! I would totally live here.

Awesome Marjum cliffs as seen from the hermit's cabin.

Ah... Utah Valley...

Park Avenue in Arches National Park.

Petroglyphs in Arches.

Me, Jeff, and Taylor in front of Delicate Arch in Arches.

A big, cool arch in Arches.

I was able to convince Chris to go down to the San Rafael Swell in central Utah with me for a day of hiking and sightseeing. It’s hard for me to justify trips to the desert when I don’t plan on actually climbing anything. But I’ve lived in Utah for several years now and I’d still never done a slot canyon, so I figured it was time.

First we drove down to the Swell (~2.5 hours) and hiked a canyon called Box Canyon. It was kind of lame. We thought it was going to be a slot canyon, but it wasn’t. Then we tried to find another canyon nearby, but couldn’t. We’d had enough of the lameness, so we decided to head for the big time: Little Wild Horse Canyon and Bell Canyon, two real slot canyons at the southern end of the San Rafael Swell.

I won’t give a detailed travelogue, but I will say the following: Little Wild Horse Canyon was rad. The several mile walk that connected the end of LWH with Bell Canyon wasn’t so great. It was hot and it was a relatively uninspiring hike, and Bell Canyon was cool, but not worth the extra hike.

Then, to make a long story short, we went to Goblin Valley State Park (which is even cooler than its name would lead you to believe), then drove through Hanksville and finally on to Capitol Reef National Park, which…  was OK. Not sure why it’s a national park… It kind of looks like everything else in the desert southwest.

Map of Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons.

Chris in Box Canyon.

Narrows of Little Wild Horse Canyon.

Me in the narrows in LWHC.

Some nice rock.

Goblin Valley State Park

Some couple hundred year old Native American irrigation ditches (still functioning) in Capitol Reef National Park.

Petroglyphs in Capitol Reef National Park.

Nice scenery in Capitol Reef.

I first climbed Cascade last summer, but it was just a hike up trails/ridges. Nothing too intense. The mountain has the good fortune of being covered in very appealing snow couloirs in the winter and spring. They’re obviously not super safe to climb in winter, but they’re great in spring. I decided last week that I was going to climb up one of them. The plan wasn’t to summit the mountain (the true summit is a couple miles north of where I had planned on topping out, and I’d been there last year), but just to go up a gully and come down.

After a couple days of false starts (not wanting to get out of bed when my alarm went off at 5), I finally decided to just do the thing. So I got up at 8, got ready, left at 8:30, and was out of the car and hiking by 9:30. One cool thing about the particular gully that I chose is that it starts right off the road. You park and start hiking up it. Very cool. There wasn’t any snow for the first ten minutes and 300 vertical feet, but then I hit it.

The snow was nice and hard and I put my crampons on. An hour after starting (starting elevation is 7,100’) I was about a thousand feet up. At 11:30 (after 2 hours), I was at 9,500’. After that I got out of the couloir and onto a ridge where the snow was softer and deeper, making for slower going. I also had to scramble up a couple fourth class/easy fifth class rock bands. At 12:50 I was on top of the summit ridge (10,600).

By this time it was getting windier and colder, so I was only too happy to be getting down (at 1:00). I didn’t want to have to go through that deep snow and downclimb the rock steps, though, so I decided to head down one of the gullies on the west side of the mountain. I glissaded (slid down on my butt) for the first 1,500’ or so, which was a little bit painful but was super fast. Then I had to down climb another couple rock bands (they weren’t as steep or tall as the ones on the ascent, though). The snow ended eventually and I made it back to the dirt road that my car was parked on (at 2:00; 7,600’). That’s coming down three thousand vertical feet in an hour! Nice! The only problem was that my car was parked 2.2 miles further up the road. So I set off and made it back to the car at 2:45.

On the way back home, I saw a moose by the side of the road. I ended the day with a bit of slacklining with friends.

My ascent and descent routes.

The ascent route. The middle and right toes of the "Crow's Foot" are the snow-filled gullies to the right.

Looking up the couloir from near the road.

Some nice unclimbed limestone about 600 vertical feet up the gully.

Looking up.

Looking down.

Again, looking down. The helmet is to for rockfall (I did see some basketball-sized stones come down).

One of the fourth/fifth class rock steps.

Looking down from higher up on the mountain.

Looking at some of the other 10- and 11-thousand-foot peaks in the area.

Looking down my descent/glissade route.

Foggy glasses.

Me slacklining.

Friends and slacklines.

Moose.

Ah… Everest Ridge… This route on Utah’s most famous mountain has tempted me for years. It’s looms over Utah Valley and I’ve seen it pretty much every day for several years. My dad climbed it back in the 60s. People usually climb it in two days, with day one being a 2.8 mile hike to Baldy Saddle (2,890’ elevation gain), spend the night at the saddle, then take off early the next day for the summit (3,409’ elevation gain). I hate camping when I don’t have to, so I decided the best thing for me to do was to knock the bugger off in a day.

Oh, and it’s called Everest Ridge because a team of Utahns in the early 90’s trained on the ridge as part of a training plan for Everest.

I had wanted to climb Timp on a Monday, and I went to bed early on Sunday night. I couldn’t fall asleep, though, because some annoying and ridiculously loud freshman girls came over to visit one of my roommates. Ugh. College… So I put it off to the next day. I still only got a few hours of sleep on Monday night, but it was more than I would have gotten on Sunday.

SO. Yeah, I woke up at 2 a.m., got my stuff ready, and was out the door by 2:30. The drive to the trailhead was uneventful and took about 25 minutes, and I was hiking by 3. The hike up to Baldy Saddle goes through Dry Canyon. I’d hiked up Dry Canyon before, and something about the trail I was on this time didn’t seem right. It was wider and trended more to the left than it should have. I ended up going for about 15 minutes and half a mile before turning back. By the time I got back on the right trail, I’d gone a mile and wasted half an hour. So, for anyone reading this: don’t take the wide trail at the north end of the parking lot! Take the narrower trail at the far right (south) side of the parking lot! The right trail starts off relatively steep and there are some large railroad ties making steps.

The first mile and a half or so of the trail was pretty pleasant. There wasn’t any snow and it wasn’t too steep. There was a lot of snow on that last mile and the going was slower. I made it to Baldy Saddle at 5:15 (~1:45 after starting). I had left the trail and cut straight up to the saddle, making the distance from the trailhead to saddle 2.75 miles instead of the 2.84 if you stay on the trail the whole way.

The weekend before, a large group of people had climbed Everest Ridge, and they had carved out several tent platforms in the snow. I sat in one of them for a few minutes and rested while I put my crampons on and took my ice axe out. Up until that point, I had felt pretty good. But then the wind started to blow harder, prompting me to put on a long sleeve shirt and shell jacket.

From Baldy Saddle, I followed the footprints southeast through a grove of trees. Everest Ridge at this point is split into two ridges, and I went up the wide gully between the two spurs to gain the ridge proper. I felt like I was going really, really slowly. That’s one bad thing about carrying a GPS… I call tell how fast or slow I’m going. But I could definitely feel the lack of sleep from the past couple nights. In fact, at any given spot on the climb, I’m confident that I could have just sat down and fallen asleep.

It got bright enough sometime between 6 and 6:30 for me to take my headlamp off. It was beautiful being able to see the sunrise from up there. I followed the ridge upward for what seemed like miles until I reached the crux of the route: a cliff band at something like 11,200 feet. It’s possible to climb directly through the cliffs, but most people traverse around them to the right, and that’s what I did. The slopes before and after this part are the steepest of the route, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! The exposure was a lot of fun to.

I eventually made it to the summit ridge, but still had to traverse about .4 miles to the summit proper. This took a lot longer than I thought it would. I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but maybe 30-45 minutes? I finally made it to the summit at 9 on the dot, meaning that it took 5 ½ hours from the parking lot.

Climbing mountains is a funny thing. I spent all that time and effort climbing this freaking mountain and only spent about 15 minutes on top. I ate a snickers, some peanut brittle, and a Clif Bar. Immediately after, my stomach starting feeling a bit unsettled. I hoped for the best, took some pictures, and started down at 9:15.

The descent down the ridge sucked. The sun had softened the snow considerably, and I postholed up to my knee or higher with almost every step. It seemed to take an eternity to get back down to the saddle, but it really took about two and a half hours. It was horrible. I glissaded when I could, but it was just slow going down that stupid thing. The postholing destroyed my knees, too. I made it back down to the saddle at about 11:45, so it took about 2 ½ hours to get down.

From the saddle, I ran down the trail as fast as I could. A lot of the snow on the upper portion of the trail was melting fast. As a result, the trough-like trail had turned into a small stream, soaking my feet even further. Getting off of the snow and onto the dirt was a mixed blessing: I could move faster, but it also jarred my knees more. I made it back down to my car at 1 o’clock, for a total round trip time of about 9 ½ hours. I’m ok with that time. This was my first big hike/climb of the season, so I’m not in perfect shape. Also, the horrible snow conditions and gastrointestinal problems (which I was constantly dealing with the whole way down) definitely added some time.

I’m writing this the day after my climb. I got 13 hours of sleep last night and needed every minute of it. My legs, butt, and knees are sore, but I’m feeling pretty good. The whole experience at the time was, to be honest, pretty terrible. I was hurting the whole way down. But now that I’m sitting in my comfortable chair typing this up, I realize what a great adventure it was. I swore yesterday that I would never do it again, but I’m already having second thoughts. I’ll probably do a different route next winter. I’m thinking of doing the one that comes down directly from the summit. It’s narrow and has a couple more rock steps. Should be fun! Anyone want to join me?

A photo of Timpanogos with the Everest Ridge route marked. I stole this pic from Wikipedia...

Click here for the original version of the above photo.

Starting to get a little bit lighter now...

You can see the rock band near the top of the ridge that is the crux of the route.

Looking down the ridge.

One of the steeper sections. Fun!

The rightward traverse that avoids the rock bands.

Looking north from the summit ridge to the summit. You can see the small hut (with the point on top) that is on the summit.

Me on top.

Looking south from the summit.

Looking down onto the Timpanogos "glacier."

The ridge, the suburbs, and Utah Lake.

Looking north.

The scar of a massive slab avalanche.

The trench-like trail that turned into a small stream.

I’m currently working with James Garrett on the second edition of his Ibex and West Desert guidebook. I had a few questions about Ibex, so James and I headed out there to clear some things up and maybe even do a little climbing. The weather called for rain and temps in the 50s, so it was hit or miss.

I’d been bouldering at Ibex before, but had never done any of the routes. The one time I went bouldering there (in spring 2008, I believe), I couldn’t stop staring up at the cliffs. I mean sure, bouldering is fun, but I’d rather get a bit higher off the ground.

I woke up at 5 and James called me a couple minutes later, and we agreed that he would meet me at the Wal-Mart in Orem at 5:45 and then we’d drive down in his car. The drive took about 3 hours, which was a little more than I remember it taking. Sure enough, the weather was a bit blustery, but still sunny. There was a group of older women there climbing (James knew a couple of them), and we stopped and chatted for a while before checking out the crag. To make a long story short, we pretty much walked the entire Ibex crag from left to right. It took a couple hours, since we stopped to talk about certain routes and walls along the way.

By the time we were done, the clouds had moved in and it had gotten significantly colder. There were even a few scattered raindrops. We stopped by to say hi to the women again and they made us some amazing sandwiches. Thanks, ladies! Then they left and James and I decided to get on a route. The route James wanted to do (I didn’t care what we did; I hadn’t done any climbing there so I was open to anything) was one put up the week before by some visiting Tyrolean climbers. It was called Light and Shadow, checked in at 5.11b R, and was three pitches long (plus two more pitches of an existing route to the top of the formation). The route goes up the beautiful slab to the right of the beautiful crack/corner of Absorption on the Shadow Buttress.

James wanted the first pitch (5.9) and I obliged. It was a long pitch and a bit runout, even with a few small cams supplementing the bolts. I got the second pitch, which started with some sweet moves over a roof (with some serious ledge fall potential if you fall before clipping the second bolt!) to some more runout climbing on easier terrain. The crux third pitch was also runout, but James kept his head together and fired the sucker. The climbing was really cool; beautiful little crimpers on bullet-hard quartzite.

The fourth and fifth pitches were mine and I combined them. The fourth pitch involved some really cool climbing on an arete. I even got to use a toe hook on the arete, which is always fun. The next short pitch goes out over a bulge. It goes free at 5.12, but I French freed it at 5.10/5.11ish. The view from the top of the route was pretty amazing. We could see all of the Ibex dry lake bed below us, and through breaks in the cloud cover we caught glimpses of Notch Peak to the north.

I forgot to mention that the wind started to really kick up for those last few pitches. And by kick up I mean 50 mile an hour winds! It was intense! The plummeting temperature didn’t help, either. We had to make several rappels down the face, which were somewhat unpleasant in such strong winds. I had a lightweight shell jacket and James had a softshell. I was afraid that I was going to get hypothermia or something, I was shaking uncontrollably and my hands were frozen.

Anyway, moral of the story: it was an epic climb. Great rock, sweet climbing (though runout), crappy weather, Two out of three ain’t bad, right? The weather didn’t get any better on the drive home; it was actually raining harder than I’d seen in a long time in Utah. But least we weren’t climbing in it by then…

The crag and the car.

The route climbs up the middle of the face to the right of the arching crack/corner.

James on pitch 1.

Mr. Ibex himself.

Looking down onto the hardpan.

Looking north. Notch Peak is the obvious peak in the distance.

Looking down at the boulders that Ibex is so famous for.