An Ocean of Cobbles

By Steph Davis

Por KAVU

17 de August de 2021

Busy Livin'

Every summer, I make sure to do at least one good road trip to Maple Canyon—it’s not too far from Moab, and it’s easy to pop Cajun in the van and meet up with friends there.

Like all the best climbing areas, the camping is just as good as the climbing up in forests of pines and scrub oaks.

Maple Canyon is really unique—the rock is a conglomerate art project, made of polished river rocks that are cemented all together to form crazy-looking rock towers and giant caves. Some of the climbing is purely horizontal, for almost a rope length!

It’s a completely improbable-looking place to climb, and it’s also one of my favorite places to climb. I love the flow on the long, overhanging routes.

Those cemented-in river rocks do have a tendency to pop out of the conglomerate at unexpected moments, which makes for a little extra adventure, but most of the climbing is so steep that falling off is just a fun ride into clean air.

And the routes just get better and better over time as the rock cleans up.

Luckily Brittany and Nate came out to meet me, because there’s nothing better than seeing Kitty Kitty doing his little cat ascents and adorably napping around the crag.

They brought a few more friends as well, so we had a very fun crew hanging out in the forest, climbing steep rock and circling up the vans for dinner for a few days. We all climbed as much as we possibly could until we had no choice but to crawl into our vans and head home for some much needed rest.