feet in de creek
November 30th, 2025
Last you witnessed me, I had been prophesied by some old korean guy to travel west and make my fortune. And who am I to refuse a quest! Since then, I have heeded his advice and my life has been a whirlwind of change.
My first stressful event of this long month was my single pitch instructor exam, which I had to pass in order to work as a rock climbing guide. The first day was not spectacular, as I was put on the spot to do an unweighted belay takeover, which despite weeks of practice and scouring the textbook cover to cover, I had completely missed? I went home that day unsure if I even wanted to attend day two, thinking I failed for sure. Luckily, the next day I had a smooth, flawless belayed rappel, the hardest system to master. My only mistake was tripping on some wet leaves, yeeting my nalgene so far off the top of bridge buttress that it almost landed in the river. Thank god no one saw this embarrassing misshap, and after a few minutes of bushwacking I was able to retrieve my intact water bottle. Despite my mistake on the first day, me and all the other students in the exam passed! TBH, I think I would have passed no matter what, just because the instructor was so bemused by my small stature. Being the only examinee who wasn't a middle aged white guy, I had non-stop comments made about my body, how tiny and petite I am, etc. I may have been graded with a penis instead of a pen, but at the end of the day I'm just happy to pass and be able to work in the guiding industry. Now, finding a job... that's a whole 'nother problem I'll deal with later.
My exam ended with a record breaking cold front in West Virginia, as the next morning I awoke to an absalute fat dump of snow. I spent that monday playing luggage tetris, as I tried to cram everything I owned into the body of a 2004 Toyota Highlander. Several questions arose from me to myself: Why do I own a boat? Why do I have so much useless crap??? Despite my attempts at a nomadic car life, I am dragged down by my inexplicable emotional attatchment to random pieces of trash. With a bit of work, everything fit, and the next day I was on the road to my very first trip to Indian Creek, Utah! Indian Creek is a crack climber's paradise, desert towers of wingate sandstone sliced into pieces like a birthday cake, creating perfect splitter cracks. Since I started climbing and fell in love with crack, it's been my number one place to visit. Gerry, the climbing steward, had posted on his instagram about a BIPOC meetup, and I found the dates sandwiched perfectly between my SPI exam and the start date of my new job in Estes Park. So, with all my life belongings shoved into in my shitty car, I headed west!
It took three days to get to Utah, the second day being a twelve hour sludge through Kansas, the most boring state ever. Around midnight, I stopped at a random, dilapidated gas station that happened to be the only one in the world with a vast collection of one hundred taxidermed deer heads hanging on the wall, gazing upon me with their dark eyes as I walked through the door. Spooky! I ended that day in a hostel in Denver, where I was dissapointed by their advertised hot tub, not nearly hot enough, and ran into my freshmen year situationship on Tinder. The next day I headed to Moab, jaw dropping at the amazing mountain views along I-70 out of Colorado. In Moab I met up with an instagram mutual, Dan, for thai food. We filled up our tanks, grabbed last minute groceries, and headed into the desert.
Admittedly, I am someone who rarely leaves their room, and has seen very little of the world. But so far, Indian Creek tops my list as the most beautiful place I've been. As I hiked up to the base of Cat Wall on my first day, I was mesmorized by the rock texture, gritty shades of black and red layered on top of each other like paint on a ceramic, glazed to shiny perfection. Looking out into the desert, I saw miles more of sandstone towers with their long splitter lines, fading in gradients of blue as they met the sky. On my first climb of the trip, a finger crack called Cat Woman, I was suprised by the round firmness of the rock I gripped, which is visuallly quite cakey, and I had always thought would squish underneath my fingers. The jams were bomber, lock-in-key. Yet the sandstone had this odd cradling feel to it, like hidden inside the rock was another person's hand, holding yours. I think it was Katie Brown in the climbing movie Masters of Stone IV that compared a good handjam to a belay, as they soloed up a splitter. I believe it now, and I soon became accustomed to the smooth style of Creek climbing. Hand, foot, hand, foot, in an alternating pattern. I was reminded of swim team back in middle school, hours of freestyle laps. I ended out the day toproping King Cat in the dark, a beautiful arching splitter that gets progressively wider, curling like a cat's paw to an overhanging roof.
The next day was more of the same, tall cracks with new friends. I ended the day with a handjam elevator ride up a skyscraper of a crack called 3AM, jam after jam into the sky. I had the thought when I was climbing that perhaps this might be the closest a land mammal like me can get to flying. Whee! But the high of the onsight was inturupted by an overcammed blue #3 cam, which took me two nut tools and a lot of swishing and spitting to get out. It was a frusterating thing, as I snapped my nut tool in half, and banged my head against the rock until I saw a series of white flashes. As the sun set, the cam gave way, looking a little wonky. That night, everyone gathered around the campfire as Cody enthralled us with tales of the Skinwalker, a Diné cryptid. I went to sleep in my car, dirty from a week of not showering, jumping at random bumps in the night.
On the third day, I joined a group that was projecting the finger crack Go Sparky Go, which has a heartbreaking final move, a dynamic throw from an insecure horizontal crack to a ledge. Satisfied, we cleaned our routes and arrived back at the parking lot just as it began to storm. Things could have not been more perfect. As the raging wind and rain drove all the employed people home, onward for their Monday morning jobs, me and a few other dirtbags stuck around. We took shelter in a stove-warmed yurt as the rain poured, realizing at some point that all of us worked as guides, funny thing that is. The next morning, we had breakfast before saying our tearful goodbyes, and I quickly scurried back east on I-70, to Estes Park, Colorado. Before I left, I took a peek at a local petroglyph in Indian Creek called Newspaper Rock. It was a message board for the Ute people, carvings of deer, people, bugs, and a LOT of feet prints. How does it feel to have your life and art preserved by the magic of the desert, seemingly flattening time and space? Good, probably, I thought as I read their message in the same way it's always been read. I noticied many of the feet had six toes intead of five. A mistake, or stylistic choice? It stuck in my mind until a week later, where I did a bit of digging. Turns out many of the skeletons found in the area had polydactyly, the condition of having an extra toe or finger, specifically having six toes on their right foot.
Leaving the magic and community of the desert for the freezing, suffocating, and lonely YMCA of the Rockies campus, it was a very hard adjustment, one I'm still working on being okay with. Ever since I've arrived here, I've been terribly sick. The sun is set by the time I get off work at 5:30, there are no lights in the dorm parking lots and the wind blows cold and violent, so it took me weeks to finally find the time to unpack my stuff. I've always been bad with change, and the stress of this move has caused me to shut down socially, not that there's many people on campus to talk to anyways. On the bright side, I love my new job at the craft center. We have tie dye, which has permenantly stained my fingers green and right foot red, ceramic painting, bead art, silk painting, jewlery making, glass fusion, etc. It's suprisingly advanced for a family resort, and I've enjoyed partaking in my own little projects. When it's not a holiday, the craft shop is a very chill place to work, and I've had time to dig into my book backlog, scan facebook marketplace for used snowboards, and work on my website. And I've really liked working with the kids that visit, shocking, I know. They are so strange and awkward, and straightfoward with their feelings. I like watching them waddle in through the door, bundled up in their little snowsuits. I see families paint together, toddlers gripping the brushes with their little hands, and I think I can see the appeal of this. Hm. The lodging here is very cozy, four wooden bunk beds of which only one is occupied by myself, and it has been convinient to eat at the employee buffet three times a day, as cooking is a huge hassle for me. The rent is pricey, but I think I've made my money back on grapefruit consumption alone. A struggle I think I will have is finding things to do. There's no gym, scarce activities, and it is too cold for hiking or climbing.
After a week straight of 9 to 5 work, I had my first free day on Tuesday. I decided to take advantage of the Gold Ski Pass that employees of the Y can borrow, and drove over to Winter Park Resort. I met up with a friend from Werk the Red, Spencer, who rented me a snowboard. As a Texan, a broke Texan, I had never had the oppurtunity to experience the ski resort life, and it was pretty shocking. Cardboard towns, hordes of arguing families, five dollar water bottles, very disney world-esque. I took the gondala up to my snowboarding class, where I mastered the art of turns and stops (but only after crashing into two instructors). I was burning up that bunny hill, taking the magic carpet elevator up again and again, as my thighs burnt from the effort. I am utterly in love with snowboarding! Perhaps I could battle my seasonal depression by spending every free day on the slopes, carving through fresh powder. Oh joy, another expensive hobby for Zia! I can feel the money draining from my pockets as we speak.
As of today I sit in bed, still very sick. Looks like my winter will be one where I spend a lot of time with myself, and of course I am happy with that. Although the mere minutes of sunlight and chilling winds of higher elevation Colorado have got me feeling not the best, it beats another year at my parents house in Charlottesville, which I've sworn I've left for good. Even if things are a little weird right now, I have a warm place to stay, food to eat, a job. Can't ask for more. As the climbing season is over, I think my blog is over too, at least until I get a new job and go on more adventures. Next year, I am determind to be Yosemite bound! Catch you when the snow melts!