October in the Creek

October 2025

Early start to Fall in Leavenworth

I had been to the creek once over 10 years ago on a road trip with Ilana from Maine to Seattle. We were pretty new to climbing and were moving pretty quick through the central states on our way to Yosemite. We stopped through to climb supercrack, bagged Ancient Art, and then continue West - so this really felt like my first trip to "The Creek", a seemingly sacred climbing ritual where every Fall climbers from all over the world head to Bears Ears National Park to climb splitter cracks in the middle of nowhere.

Feeling Fall down the Icicle

Fall in Leavenworth was beautiful as it always is but we basically went from Summer where we were surrounded by kind of intense forest fires to a very wet start to Fall. It is always hard to leave town but the climbing conditions hadn't been great and we've heard for years how amazing October in the creek is from friends who were going this year. I was in the middle of a pretty big launch at work but we decided the only smart move was to full send to the desert.

First snow flakes heading out of town over Blewett Pass

Lets go to the Creek Creek, lets go get away!

Beautiful desert sunsets every day
Great camping at Hamburger Rock, getting real dirty out in the desert, this was a new deck of cards after one game of Euchre.

Splitters!

Friends climbing great cracks!
Jupiter Crack delivered 100%
Great friends in great places <3
Unknown climber climbing the popular Annunaki under some cool lighting.

Canyonlands

Ilana and I drove over to Canyonlands twice during the trip. On the second time we joined Max and Monica up to the Druid Arch.

Druid Arch
Beautiful amphitheater rock on the way up to Druid Arch.

We'd never hiked around canyons like this and were completely stunned. We got to Druid Arch pretty early and decided instead of doing an out and back we would try and do a loop and get to see more of the park. We broke off from our friends and started what was to be an amazing day jogging through canyons, over plateaus, passing a whole lot of beauty along the way.

View looking back down the canyon we had just hiked up from the Druid Arch.
On with the journey towards Chesler Park!
Passing through a slot we came out on the other end to see some new scenery, still dotted with towers, but now in grassy plains.
Tower blobules as far as the eye can see.
One moment you'd be hiking down a rocky gully and the next you'd pop out some hole in the wall to a completely new and serene landscape. This is probably the most scenic and action packed 14 miles I've ever traveled.

By the end of our two weeks we'd become accustom to the slow mornings, long steep cracks, and beautiful sunests. As always the time was just not long enough but it was time to go home, to our two cats "the cute baby munchkin meows", and to other less desirable adulting obligations.