Valley of the Moon, Climbing meet up

Headed out to the Valley of the Moon again for some climbing. As I made my way up the hill, I ran into two people hiking up. I gave them a ride and found out they were part of a rock climbing "meet up". They had about 12 people already up at Patina wall climbing. After parking at the top of the pass, we kicked over to join them.

Crowded belay area

Two climbers on Patina wall

All the meet up crew made for a pretty crowded climbing area. The good part was they were better climbers than myself, so I could climb top rope after they led. I only managed to re send tech 9, after about half the group left to climb at leaning tower.

On the hike back to the parking, I passed a boulder than needed to be climbed. I found two climbs on it.

Crack on the back of the boulder

Victory

-James

Lele Kawa

Desert ATV

Yet another thing I have been wanting to do since I arrived out here, but up until recently didn't have the opportunity, 4 wheeling. A large group of of all decided to go one Thursday morning, but as is expected here when the time to leave rolled around, about half the group dropped out.

The 8 of us headed out at about 10am out to the sand dunes, where there were a line of tents with guys renting ATVs. After a bit of haggling (their set price is 300 SAR/hour), we jumped on some 400 cc ATVs, got a quick lesson and heading out into the desert. Only 3 of the 8 of us had ever ridden ATVs before, so we started out slow as the rest of the group was regularly stalling and getting stuck in the sand. By the second hour everyone was pretty comfortable and we were able to cover some real ground.

We all tried to stay together, which was hard. If you traveled two dunes away from the group you got the sense that you were alone. If you went further than this it would often take a few minutes to find anyone else. Most of us had some small wrecks, but luckily nobody was injured.

The coordinates are +25° 4' 42.26", +46° 42' 31.90"