The Latest #48 - Ten Sleep Canyon, Wyoming

7TH EDITION
Northern Wyoming’s pocket paradise has a brand-new 250-page guidebook with more topos, more color photos, and completely revised and expanded information for the “terribly inaccurate Dry Wall and other midcanyon areas.” That’s guidebook author Aaron Huey calling his topos inaccurate, not us.

STYLE GUIDE
Huey’s guidebooks are one of a kind. Among other things, the previous edition replaced star ratings with icons for American flags and automatic weapons (5 stars); “sexy ladies” and fellatio (4 stars); and kitty cats (3 stars). Other icons alert the climber to “dirty dancing with Patrick Swayze,” geishas, cerebral moves, contact highs, or certain death. The book also includes a full page on fungi. Ever so helpfully, this page is printed in French. Says Huey: “The new guidebook is still full of lies and propaganda, but I assure you that it is more entertaining, more heavy to carry, more politically incorrect, and possibly a little more accurate.”

CRED
In addition to climbing 5.13, Huey is an internationally celebrated photographer (National Geographic, GEO, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, Harper’s, etc.). Now his dream has come true, and he has been published in Urban Climber. In 2002, Huey walked 3,349 miles across the country with his dog, Cosmo. He is very likely the only climbing guidebook author who has delivered a TED Talk.

DOWNTOWN
Since the last guidebook, 160 new routes have gone in. Just down-canyon from the Mondo Beyondo area is Downtown, a brand-new crag with 23 routes. “It has a few stellar 13s and a 5.14 open project called Big Bend, aka the Shit Storm Project,” Huey says. The Downtown area also hosts a freestanding pillar called the Cigar, with four new routes on its backside. From right to left: 5.12b, 5.13a, 5.12c, 5.12a.

6 RECOMMENDED NEW ROUTES
Big Bear Memorial (5.10c), Hound Dog
Slightly Toasted Cracker (5.11d), Back 40 at French Cattle Ranch
The Gravy Train (5.12b), Downtown
Crown Prince Abdullah (5.12d), Slavery Wall at Mondo Beyondo
Third Intifada (5.13b), City of Gold
F’d in the A (5.14a), Superratic

WHAT TO DO IN TEN SLEEP
The little town of Ten Sleep is about 15 minutes from the crags. Huey says:
• The two hotels in Ten Sleep have been redone and are very climber friendly.
• You can’t go to Ten Sleep without buying ice cream and a jackalope head at Dirty Sally’s (and maybe a bag of gold dust or sugar candy disguised as fake rocks).
• You must drink beer on the porch at the Ten Sleep Saloon.
• You are required to eat woodfired pizza at Sackett’s Fork.
• I command you to get your coffee and free Wi-Fi every morning at the 2nd Street coffee shop.
• I implore you to eat breakfast at the Crazy Woman Café.

“We really need everyone to be extra aware about your impact this year, especially disposing of human waste,” Huey says. “Try to bag it out, or the whole canyon will be a shallow poop pit. If we don’t take care of the canyon, the Forest Service will no longer extend their excellent hospitality, including the free camping along the old road.”