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My close friend and long time climbing partner Travis Kemp was recently transported to Washington D.C. while his wife does her residency.  A few months after their arrival in D.C. Travis severely injured his eye in an accident working with heavy gauge fencing wire.  I will not get into details because it is gnarly, but three months later Travis’ right eye is still healing.  He still has months to wait until it has healed completely before he can have an artificial lens put in to replace the one which was destroyed in the accident.  Until then he is pretty much blind in his right eye.  Great time to take a climbing trip!

A few weeks ago Travis made his way to Salt Lake to see family and friends but more importantly  to climb.  We lucked out, my schedule worked out perfectly and I had a couple weeks off to climb with him.  There is nobody I feel more comfortable with in the mountains or on a rope than with Travis.  So when the chance comes to climb together I have to jump at it.

We started off in the canyon we had climbed together in so many times since we were barely teeneagers,  Little Cottonwood Canyon.  We chose to get on this a relatively new climb that neither of us had either tried but everyone who had climbed it raved about it.  I was a 7 pitch 5.11a called “Stiffler’s Mom”.  Not too hard,  not too easy,  it was a good experiment to see of how Travis could climb with one eye.  The climb proved to be high quality.  Mostly very moderate climbing with a handful of 5.10 and one pitch of 5.11.  We cruised through it all swapping leads.  It was impressive to see Travis cruising pitches with only one eye.  I often closed one eye while following pitches and attempted to climb like Travis with only one eye and was amazed at how difficult it was to see footholds and usually only made it an easy move or two until I would open my eye.  We were both psyched to see that Travis could climb and quickly started planning out our next objective.  Time for some pristine alpine granite…

Lone Peak Cirque…