A full pitch of perfect splitter. Your hands will remember every inch.

Splitter country.

Indian Creek runs through a canyon on the road to the Needles district of Canyonlands, inside Bears Ears National Monument. Its walls are Wingate sandstone, a hard, dark-varnished band of rock split by vertical cracks that hold the same width for a whole pitch. Climbers rack up with several of the same size cam and jam the same move over and over. Spring and fall are the seasons; summer is too hot and winter often too cold.

Tape gloves are part of the culture here, because the cracks take skin off the backs of the hands, the knuckles and the thumb web on every jam. The routine is nightly: clean the grit out, close the gobies, and put water back into the skin so it bends instead of splitting. Wingate is still sandstone, so stay off it while it's wet. Our crack climbing page breaks it down size by size.