open project beta #2: cedarville canyon/the pod wall

the second installment of this series is once again not a single route; this time, it's a whole canyon.

upon a tip from our buddy marc, teNgaio and i headed out past the town of howe, idaho, to check out a potential new area: cedarville canyon. the road back in there isn't too bad, unless you drive an old sedan, such as a saab 900. i somehow broke one of my side mirrors and possibly damaged my exhaust system.... but if you have anything with decent clearance, no problem. to get there, drive to howe, and head out the only road(the one by the school and general store) for a few minutes and look for a sign on the left of the road that says "cedarville canyon". sorry about being so vague on the directions... 

the trail is really chill, and a little bit in, we saw this deceptively good looking wall up to the left, which we named "the pod wall". i went out on my own a few days later to check it out up close. the hillside is very steep, with no clear path at all. the wall looked ok, although i was probably just seeing what i wanted to rather than what was actually there. i found a rather sketchy way to get up on the left side, and get around the back and up to the top, which is very densely forested(the wall above in the photo is much bigger, and could be worth a look). if you look to the left of the cave/pod feature near the top of the wall, there is a tan streak with a somewhat visible roof (well "somewhat" in the photo). anywho, i decided to bolt a route right there. (i had a new harness with me that turned out to be a bit small, this is important) about half way down the wall, roughly 30 feet down, i could no longer stand the discomfort from the harness, and i lost my mojo for this route. so in terms of an "open project", this route is all i got. to anyone out there, feel free to bolt the bottom half and go for the send. 

on the other side of the canyon, there is a series of large red walls. they could be good, but the approach is a rather steep and loose hillside.

there is a cave up near this red wall, and it looks a lot better/bigger from the ground than it actually is. the roof part is roughly 8 feet, and it's not even 20 feet off the ground, plus it's pretty devoid of useful features to climb. 

upon further inspection, teNgaio and i decided that there really wasn't much potential to this area. there are maybe four lines that look ok/good, and with a lot of cleaning, maybe a few more. near the mouth of the canyon there is a larger wall up to the right that we didn't take pictures of, and it could be worth looking at. there is also a very very large wall way back in the canyon that goes all the way to the top of a mountain(don't know the name).

basically, we found it very hard to justify spending the time required for all of this when the fins are closer to IF, and much better. 
who knows, maybe someday we'll be back.

all photos by teNgaio.