Zebra Zion and the Monkey Face

Zeba Zion, 3 pitch 5.10b went well, unfortunately i took a rest in the crux ... could not commit to do a very weird balance move in the crux even though the green Alien i had protecting it was bomber. The second pitch had a pretty airy traverse with no gear and the third pitch, well the third pitch was stellar, such exposure laying back off a flake three pitches up but having easy climbing at the same time. A side note mentioned in the guidebook was that Fred Beckey lead that pitch at 78 years old ... i meet him a couple of times in Banff and the guy is my hero, a lifetime climbing bum and still going.
We had abit of a rest day after that ... at the carpark of the Park, they have a very nice picnic area with the softest green grass, tables and trees so we spent the day just lazing about there ... well actually we spent most days just lazing about there when it was too hot to climb. We've still got our hammock from Thailand with us so we'd string it up between the trees and have lunch, they also have sprinklers running all day, every day which kind of did away with the need to have shower at the end of the day :)
The next day was an early start and we headed off to climb the Monkey Face on the other side of the park, unfortunately we didn't take the camera but the climb was alot of fun. The third pitch is an aid climbing pitch(goes free at 5.13 or something), a bolt ladder going up the overhanging face. We don't have any aiders but the bolts were close enough(only just at the start) to haul on the quickdraw and clip the next bolt ... i thought it looked pretty simple but bugger me it was hard work, the top out onto the ledge in the monkeys mouth was a nightmare and i had a moment of dread thinking that i was gonna have to bail on the last bolt or do some awful, awkward flop onto the ledge so i opted for the last one. The last bolt of the ladder was on the lip of the ledge and the anchor out of reach so i was standing with one foot in a sling, heal hooking a slopey ledge, desperately trying to find anything i could hold to stop me rolling back off the edge ... if my reach was just 10mm shorter i would have been screwed. After that it was just a matter helping Ula haul her way up the draws. The 4th pitch, also very cool, stepping out of the monkeys mouth onto the face is refered to, in the guidebook, as the 'panic point' as you step out onto the top of an overhang that drops 60m onto a slope falling away even further. It made for a nice rappel, almost a full 60m of free hanging space.
Afew more climbs in the afternoon finished the day, one being a nice onsight of a crack climb i'd been checking out. I feel completely shagged now and my body needs a decent rest and lots rehydrating so today we've decided to pull the pin on Smith Rocks and start making our way across Idaho to Wyoming. More adventures to come.