Indian Creek Landscapes

Looking Towards the Six Shooters from 2nd Meat Wall

I recently took a trip to Indian Creek Rec Area in Utah to do some climbing. I met up with a friend of a friend, Conor, and his two friends, Damien and Megan. Damien's an Indian Creek veteran and kindly showed the rest of us around on our first trip to Indian Creek, and my first time doing real trad climbing. More importantly he shared his plethora of gear, which without it we wouldn't have been able to climb anything, so thank you again Damien.

Indian Creek is at the south east end of Canyonlands National Park, about 40 miles south of Moab. The place is an unreal labyrinth of canyons, that seems to go on forever. It shares a lot of land with local ranches, and in fact used to be all ranch land. It wasn't until 1976, when climbers finally discovered and freed the first route on the Supercrack Buttress, that people started using it for recreational reasons. It was slow going, as far as climbing development goes, until the cam was invented. With the cam, good protection could be easily placed on any of the nearly parallel splitters covering all of the cliff faces. Shortly after climbers started flocking to the area the land was purchased from the ranchers and is now controlled by BLM with the help of the Access Fund and of course the Friends of Indian Creek(donations to either will help keep Indian Creek free and accessible to everyone, including climbers).
The landscape in the area is at once awe inspiring and humbling, especially as you discover just how truly massive the canyons and cliffs really are. I hope you enjoy these landscape photos of the canyons. The next posting will be filled with climbing shots from the area.

Enjoy,
Tyler Gates
Good Life Photography

Bridger Jacks and Six Shooters

Looking East down 211

Where it all started, Supercrack Buttress

Donnelly Wall

Sunset over the Six Shooters