The essentials for sending splitters in the desert.
There is no place like it on Earth. Towering walls of deep orange Wingate rise out of the Utah desert, holding over 1,500 climbs. Most climbs are awesome parallel cracks without face features, forcing climbers to jam, shove, and crank limbs to reach the chains.
You camp beneath the walls among other dirtbags—many of them are there all season long, unable to leave the splitter climbs—sharing stories and whiskey around the campfire. The season is as long as your hands can manage jamming, depending on how well you handle the heat in the summer or snow and long, cold nights in the winter.
It’s a trad climber’s paradise, often the area where people learn how to crack climb, and there is a reasonpeople make the desert pilgrimage from around the world. That unique style of climbing calls for slight tweaks to the standard trad rack, and in this article, we cover the essential Indian Creek climbing rack and equipment, so when you show up to the base of Supercrack, you’re not short on #3 C4's.
BRING YOUR FRIENDS, MAKE FRIENDS
Indian Creek is known for its splitter climbs: clean cracks that go on forever. Classic climbs of all grades need multiples of a cam in a single size. Some random examples: Jolly Rancher (5.10) needs 5-7 #3 Camalots, plus a handful of #2’s, Top Sirloin (5.11) needs 5-8 #1’s, and Six Fingered Man (5.12) spanks people, requiring 6-8 #.5’s. Even though it would help the BD bottom line, we are not suggesting owning an octuple rack (no shade if you personally want to own that; we know people who do).
So, in Indian Creek you bring friends or make friends at the crag. If you roll up to a crag as a group of four, and each of you has a double rack in your pack, that’s eight cams right there, and you are set for a day of climbing. If it’s just you and your belayer, Creek climbers are a friendly and social bunch (you have to be, with how popular the place is now), and most folks are happy to lend you a couple of cams at the crag. Be respectful when borrowing cams; don’t get them stuck or damaged and return them right after you finish the climb. And share what you have, too, because now you’re a Creek climber.
Molly Malone is Black Diamond Equipment’s copywriter. Her expertise in outdoor apparel and equipment comes from a decade-long love affair with backcountry splitboarding and climbing. She likes low-angle powder laps on high-avy days and sending long desert splitters.
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