It all started innocently enough; the usual get-out-of-town-too-late, drive through the dark, heading south towards canyon country. James and I arrived in Moab around midnight, filled up on gas and water, and drove out to the end of Potash Road to the edge of Canyonlands National Park (no camping without a permit). Luckily, we were alone, far away from any people and any light pollution and enjoyed a beer or two before passing out in the warm night air.

Our goal this trip was the North Ridge of Monster Tower, which sits just off the White Rim Trail. The White Rim Trail is a 100-mile long 4×4 road that runs through Canyonlands and is a popular jeep and bike trail. After downing a quick breakfast of Annie’s Spaghettios (it has the preservatives a boy needs to climb all day long), we set off into Canyonlands and off towards our tower.

About 25 miles in or so, James spotted a piece of trash in the road, and asked me to stop so he could pick it up. He jumped out of the car, and I immediately heard a gushing noise. “My God,” I thought, “that boy really had to pee.” But that was not indeed what was going on.

“Uh, Chad, we have a problem.”

“How bad of a problem?”

“A very bad problem. Get out of the car.”

What I saw was, well, a bit of a bummer. Apparently at some point on the drive in, we had rolled over a rock and punctured a hole in our gas tank. Gasoline (at $4 a gallon!!) was flowing at a very rapid rate, out of our gas tank and onto the ground.

We didn’t waste much time on expletives, merely got in the car, did a hasty K-turn and headed back out of Canyonlands towards Moab. The gas gauge was already below a 1/4 tank (having been full that morning), and was dropping rapidly. After a few miles, we discovered something rather fortunate. Whatever had damaged the gas tank had also indented the tank, with the rent at the top of the indention, keeping the hole about an inch or so above the bottom of the gas tank. The fuel light had come on some time ago, the fuel needle was pointing practically straight down, and yet we were still moving. We stopped and checked the hole, and found only a small trickle of fuel coming out. James did his best to patch it using a handkerchief and some climbing tape, which worked for, oh, an estimated 15 seconds. Onward we limped, hoping to put as many miles behind us as we could before we had to start walking. It was 20 miles back to the start of the 4×4 trail, and then a non-trivial number of miles back to Moab. Ugh.

In a magnificent stroke of luck, we came across some bikers riding the trail with a chase vehicle. This SUV had a few 2.5-gallon fuel tanks tied down to the roof, and after a brief plea for mercy and about $20 in cash, we had ourselves 2.5 gallons of gas to help us along further. We drove until the car started to sputter, and then put in about a gallon of gas or so. Our hope was to put enough gas in to make the car run, but not enough to lose much from the hole. This gimmick seemed to work, as we made it further, and when the car started to stall, in went a bit more gas, and in this way we continued, not just to the end of the trail, but all the way into Moab, basically getting by on fumes and swearing.

In Moab we picked up 2 5-gallon gas tanks, filled them and our little 2.5-gallon tank, and set about figuring out what to do. After consulting with Markus Gullius and some jeepers we came across working on their fuel line in the hardware store parking lot, we decided to give JB Weld a try. We weren’t entirely sure how well it would hold up with gasoline sloshing around on top of it, but the jeepers seemed sure it would work, so we borrowed their confidence and picked up a few tubes of JB Kwik and went to work. My Sweet Lord this stuff is fantastic! I had never used it before, but the stuff sets up in about 4 minutes to this putty-like consistency that you can smear and mold into place. The instructions said that it fully hardened in about 15 minutes, and would fully cure in 12 hours or so.

Here’s what it looked like before:

And here’s the patch job:

After seeing at how well this all worked out, and that the hour had only progressed to 2pm, we decided that we could still muster up the gumption to go try a tower before the sun set. To give the JB Kwik as much time to cure as we could, we only put a little bit of gas in the car, and busted ass out to Castle Valley. We weren’t sure if any routes up there were open, so we racked for a few possibilities and ran up the trail. We got up there to find that few people were foolish enough to be climbing this late in the day, and since it was open for a change, we decided to run up the historically-interesting Kor-Ingalls route on Castleton Tower. This had been my first tower route an untold number of years ago, and I hadn’t done it since. Wideness. Burliness. Classic! On the way up the route I was beset with a very sudden attack of diarrhea, but despite this second setback we continued to rally onwards and upwards (dealing with such a problem when handing from a rope is, well, interesting).

As we reached the summit, we found that another team had been waiting for us up there. Apparently they had set out with only one rope, not realizing that two were needed to rappel off of the tower. Knowing that we were only a couple of pitches behind, they had just waited for us. Well, one of them had waited for us on the summit, and the other had waited for us at the end of his rope, as he didn’t realize he wouldn’t make it until he had started rappelling. We rigged up our two ropes, got the rappel going, and eventually made it all back safely to the ground. As it turns out, the yellow Alien we found on the way up was theirs too, so we were able to reunite Alien and owner too. Back on the ground, we packed up in the dark and headed down the trail, picking up the dog mat our newly found rappelling buddies had left on the ground. We caught up to them before the parking lot, and was able to return yet another forgotten item. All in all, it was fantastic to get in a summit after a day that could have gone much worse, as well as deposit a bit of karma into the universe after withdrawing some earlier that morning by getting hooked up with gas just when we needed it.

After a night camping out next to a drunken bunch of death-metal fans (don’t ask), we got up the next morning and hiked back up the trail to do Fine Jade. We arrived at the base of the climb to find another party high on the route, and decided to just chill in the sun while they finished off the route before starting ourselves. As it turns out, we were able to lend them our nut tool and some climbing tape, which helped them rescue a cam that had walked way back in the first crack system, about 15′ off the ground. After that we had the route and the whole afternoon to ourselves, to traipse up one of the most aesthetic lines I’ve done down in the desert. What a fantastic route! Every pitch was wonderful, and not a single move of offwidth or choss (rare for a desert tower)!

Once we got back on the ground and got the hike down to the parking lot over with, we made a quick stop in Moab for some Thai food and a full tank of gas (no leaks!) and then we headed back north to Salt Lake again. It’s not often you get to do two classic desert tower routes in a weekend, and certainly with the issues on the White Rim Trail I thought our weekend was going to be spent figuring out how to get back to Salt Lake while a way-overpriced gas tank was shipped to Moab. In the end the repairs will be a bit expensive, and I’m also ordering skid plates for my car so that hopefully such shenanigans can be avoided in the future.

Peace out y’all,

-c