First, My Partners: Sean & Anne H., Jason C., Rob M., Scott C., Josh J., Shane N.
Onsight grade: WI4/4+, rock grade 10b/c sport, 10a trad at Pearly Gates, 31 July (though it felt harder at the time...).
'Gotten Spanked' grade: 10d (Slip Not) at Monitor Rock, 27 July, 6 (my ass it's a 6) (Stinkzig) at Vedauwoo, 20 Aug.
Best clean lead grade: 10c (Unnamed) at Parachute, redpointed project 28 Jun 03, WI4 M3 at RMNP, 7 Dec 02, WI4/4+ at 10Mile Canyon, 12 Jan 03, 10c at Shelf, 18 Jan 03.
Best climbing grade (so far): 11b at Shelf, 27 Dec 02, 10d (Slip Not) at Monitor Rock, 27 July (as in, well, I finished the route).
Lead airtime this season: 20'.
Total airtime this season: 20'. Back to 2001 Season climbs and photos Back to 2002 Season climbs and photos
Next, a tick list and Goals for 2003: The Petit Grepon in RMNP, the Prow on Kit Carson, the Northwest Butt of Capitol Peak, traverse the Gore Range from Silverthorne to Vail in 24 hours with Sean H., lead Mighty Thor (10+) at the Garden and Funkdemental (11b) at Shelf, and be comfortable stepping onto multipitch WI4 leads. More as my thoughts evolve and I have time to think about it. I would like to climb Casual Route (10a) and Directissma on the Diamond/Chasm View in RMNP as test climbs with Sean H. for an August roadtrip to the Bugaboos.
31 Dec-01 Jan - Backcountry (hut trip) skiing w/ Sean and Anne: A most excellent tele tour up to Harry Gates near Reudi Reservoir. Of 16 beds only five of us are there (eight girls from Dartmouth that had reservations ended up leaving for partying in Vail earlier in the day, unfortunately), and we cook a gourmet steak and chicken fajita dinner for 10. It snows a foot on us overnight and the skiing out is exceptional. Best New Years ever - definitely doing some more backcountry skiing this and next seasons.
4 Jan - Shelf w/ Jason M. and Jamie: Another 'net pick-up partner and his brother-in-law met me for a day at Cactus Cliffs, and I got to play rope-gun for a change. We warmed up on Crynoid Corner (7) in my street boots, then wandered down to La Cholla Jackson (8) which was conveniently open. It looked like it would be a lighter day after these two climbs, so I picked out the next few to give Jamie a good intro to Shelf (his first trip) - Chompin' at the Cholla (9) which we all enjoyed, then on to Spiney's Toxxxic Entertainment (10a) for my 10 for the day, and Cheers (8+); in keeping with the crack/lieback theme we established, and late we headed back over to pick off Raven (9+) for a final. Another warm (60 in the sun) day into January, wondering where the rest of the world was and what they were thinking to miss something like this. As usual, others at the crag wondered and actually asked about the trad rack I carried in but didn't get to use. I really, really want to hit a couple of those OWs and the 10b/c/11b corner routes at Funkdemental - next time. This was a great day for some more mellow routes.
5 Jan - Vail Ice climbing with Rob M.: The grandiose plan was to see how many cool, harder ice climbs we could hit in Vail and 10Mile in a single day, starting with a warm-up on Pumphouse, typically WI3. Today, not too cold but snowing, and very wet, Pumphouse was in fully at WI4 - argue amongst yourselves, but 85* ice for 80 feet is called WI4, not 3. I was expecting an easier lead than I got, and I felt wigged on it, but Rob told me I looked cool and collected through the whole thing. We TRd it a couple of times to see how it felt, and ended up staying the whole day. Rob got 4 laps and a nice blowout/flying session, and practiced placing his new BD screws, and I took 6 laps on everything I could find. The wet blue column in the middle was as vertical as anything got and running with water - I have to imagine it looked pretty awesome from the road and skate-track below. We (again) scoped the 10mile ice we wanted and made plans to go bag some of it soon.
11 Jan - Tele day at Vail w/ Sean & Cheyenne: Just a fun day; worked with Sean on crud and bump techniques, and enjoyed the several inches of new snow in Blue Sky and China Bowl.
12 Jan - 10Mile Canyon Ice climbing with Rob M.: Finally got out to the climbs we really wanted in 10Mile that I've been working up to. As we got out of the truck and dressed up, we noticed that somewhere getting off of the highway we'd blown the right front tire; properly decided that it could wait and went climbing! I took the lead on the Shroud (WI4), and ran the 50m ice cord to about 45m up sustained hard WI4/4+, the most vertical (85-90* sustained) and technical climb I've had yet. As we only brought the one rope, I brought up Rob and we made two shorter raps down, unfortunately not able to TR it for practice. We wandered on over to Tony's Nightmare (WI3/4, multiple pitches) in the next gully, and Rob took his first full pitch lead up some WI3 for a rope; I followed and we wandered another 1/4 mile up the gully to the next pitch. Rob wanted more, and led out on the straightforward WI4 pitch; he had just finished all of the hard vertical climbing and decided to lower, completely pumped. He only had about 5 more feet of climbing until it eased over into easier stuff - next time. I ran up and placed one more screw, then ran it out to the end of the rope and the top of the double pitch and bolt anchors. We made two half-rope raps down and started heading down the gully, free downclimbing the WI3 first pitch, and headed back to change the tire as the sun went down. Another long, long day on the ice; we're sunburnt but happy, and I've led all of the test pitches that I wanted to to be ready for harder WI4+ climbs later in the season. Happy, sunny, warm day and low avie risk in the Canyon. :)
14 Jan - Silver Cascade Ice Climbing w/ Jason M.: Jason has significant alpine experience, including Orizaba last year, but this is his first outing for pure ice climbing. I run up the first pitch of WI2+ and set up a tree belay on Silver Cascade, and lower down. After a few pointers and talk-throughs, up he heads. As he goes, his dog Chipeta, so well behaved at Shelf last week, runs from side-to-side around the ice, wondering where Jason is going. I think the ice is freaking her out. After talking Jason through proper efficient screw cleaning technique, he heads up a bit further, climbing quietly and cleanly; Chipeta, off on the upper left of the pitch now, decides to take a faster way down. She slides, somersaults, and lands upside down flopping onto her back and head sixty feet down at the base. It was kind of disturbing to watch - that would have killed a human outright. I rapidly lower and untie Jason from the middle of the pitch. Chipeta appears okay, no guarding or obvious broken bones, so I solo up to clean the pitch to get us out quickly; I finish the second pitch out solo as well and we move out to the cars. The day was shortened a bit, but Jason still got a good start to an intro and x-rays don't seem to see anything obviously broken in Chipeta. Probably, hopefully, just some bruises and maybe some dislocated ribs. We'll repeat this, but Chipeta's a rock crag dog, not going to be accompanying us on ice anymore.
18 Jan - Shelf Road w/ Rob M.: Taking a week off from ice climbing, we instead decided upon Cactus Cliff at Shelf for a warm day in the sun. As it was Rob's first trip to Shelf, I started with some ease-in warmups on Oscar de la Cholla (9) and Chompin' at the Cholla (9+) to show some of the variety of rock and steepness that we'd be expecting during the day. Happily bumped into Jeremy and his GF Cindy from Denver as we wandered down the cliff for the next climbs. Rob picked a pleasant 8 for his fun lead of the day, La Cholla Jackson, and then we moved back down to my playthings. A couple of nice 10a's on Spiney were taken, as was Dihedrus, so we went back to the Funkdemental corner system and I put up a crack route I'd been eyeing, Poquito Mas (10b), and then redpointed Relampagos (10c) for an encore. Back down to Dihedrus (10b/c), now open, and I redpointed it as well - harder than Relampagos, and much more strenuous. Rob was completely spent after topping it, but I wanted a warm-down and hopped on Kodachrome (9) while chatting with a nice couple from Woodland Park. We left early, but happy, and Rob definitely got his money's worth; his first 10 climbs ever, and he really enjoyed the day to boot.
19 Jan - Eldo w/ Scott C.: Another pick-up partner from climbingboulder gave me a call about Sunday; his wife and partner just had shoulder surgery and is out of commission for a few months. I met him early at the stoplight on 93, and the wind was howling - throwing around small gravel, bending trees right over - not quite ideal conditions for attempting the longer routes we had considered for Eldo. We drove in anyway, hopeful but realistic about our chances. The wind was actually a bit (a bit) calmer up in the canyon, so we decided to give it a shot. Hopping across the river to the West Ridge (thinking that the routes here would be less committing in case the wind was too harsh) we hiked up to the Unsaid Wall and racked. I started out up a warm-up on the first pitch of Break on Through (8), and we decided to keep linking pitches; Scott took a short traverse up to the third belay of Long John Wall and led through pitches 4 & 5 together (8), and I took the final (5) pitch to the top and a beautiful view of Redgarden - with one party on it, rapping down. I guess a 4-pitch route qualifies for 'long,' kind of. The wind was still raging, and a large thin cloud kept the predicted 60* temps away as we considered the next route, Unsaid (9), and Scott led out. The sun came out and the wind died down as we finished it up, and we figured we had a few more in us; I put the the first pitch of Chianti (8+), scaring myself on the first move with a foot coming off of my stem under a #3 wedge in the thin crack, and Scott put up the short second pitch neatly. Two raps down and we were in shade from the setting sun; the winds were gone and it was a warm sunny day - just as predicted. Just had to wait and persevere for it. Great day at Eldo - and I stick with my consideration that this place is about a grade harder on average than the other places I typically climb at.
20 Jan - I just sat on the couch and ate donuts, lazed around, and enjoyed a sunny day not having to work. Okay, not really, but Anne wanted me to say that anyway. I was too completely spent from climbing and tons of driving over the weekend to go meet Andrea skiing today in Vail, so I took it easy and soloed a couple of pitches on Cowboy Boot at the Garden. Pretty freakin' windy, but nice sun. I wasn't feeling 100% and took it really easy and slow. Note to self: remember to eat more frequently.
26 Jan - Eldo w/ Scott C.: Scott emailed me Friday when I was wondering what the heck I was going to be doing all weekend; everyone had to work on Saturday, for some reason, and I figured some people might be lured into the football television day on Sunday. Fortunately, not Scott. His plan was to climb Handcracker Direct on West Ridge, a 5-pitch 10a that he's had his eye on. I told him sure, as long as he led the overhanging crux pitch. I took 1, 3, and 5, and he took 2 and 4; the first was cold and windy, and I was pumped and dead when I reached the belay - Scott couldn't feel his hands when he got there either. Both pitches 1 and 2 seemed harder, technically, than the crux 4th pitch, and I French freed a move on each to speed things up. It wasn't as strongly windy or as cold as last weekend, but the winds were sustained at 20-30 all day, and it just drained us, fast. Scott put up the overhanging hand crack pitch amazingly quickly, and after a short jaunt to the summit we sorted around finding the raps down to the base. Almost done, but not quite, we decided to go up Verschneidung (2-pitches, 7) to finish out the day with a mellow route. The second pitch felt pretty 8-ish for anywhere but Eldo, but wasn't too technical to push through and enjoy. The wind wasted us; Scott loved his new windstop fleece jacket, and I stopped at REI on the way home and got a great sale deal on one too. The wind shall not have me again at Eldo!!! :)
27 Jan - Ooh-la-la, got the Kayland Revolution ice boots I'm supposed to demo and report on today came in the mail from Italy!!! They fit right out of the box; probably a 1/4 size too large, but that fits nicely with my heavy wool climbing socks; the fit initially seems to be about right on for US street sizes (I'm a 10, and a US 10 fits just about perfectly). The toebox room is slightly higher volume than I'd love, but it's a heckuva lot better than the too-tight fit in my Karakorams. The overall bulkiness of the boot and perfect padding across the tongue lets me lace them directly and securely without skipping eyelets, and they're just freakin' comfortable. Gotta go give 'em a try in the next couple of days. :)
1 Feb - Tele day at A-Basin w/ Sean & Cheyenne: The Memphis crew came out and visited Sean & Anne this weekend, and we took them skiing for a couple of days. Sean kept busy shepherding the flock (10 of us) around the mountain all day, and I skied with Cheyenne all day, playing on perfect snow in light winds and beautiful 40* temps. Just like spring skiing, and I got to wear the stylish new windstop fleece instead of the typical Feb full winter regalia. The upside to the day was a great BBQ on the beach for lunch; the downside was hearing the news of Columbia and knowing exactly where I was and what I was doing when it broke up - I immediately lost all motivation to ski, but as there wasn't anything we could do anyway, we just enjoyed the world still being here.
2 Feb - Eldo w/ Sean H.: Sean and I had considered skiing today, taking one of the Memphis boys up to Breck or Vail, but he had had quite enough from one day of getting beat up on his board; our plan was going to be to get in a pitch or two of ice for an hour or so and then to ski the rest of the day. After no one else was planning on going, Sean and I took the lower energy route, slept in, and headed over to Eldo for some rock instead. We started out on Touch and Go (8) on Redgarden, after a return trip to the house for forgotten shoes and learning that we could only get an Eldo pass with a credit card at King Soopers (not at the park?). Stout for an 8, interesting hand traverse start. I pumped hard as the temperatures dropped quickly on the lead; It was near freezing by the time we found an anchor to stop at. It started snowing ten minutes after we got off the climb, ending the day almost before we got started. Fun and worthwhile - only 2 other cars at Eldo on a weekend is pretty rare - and we still got out and did something interesting.
8 Feb - Tele day at Vail w/ Sean, Anne, & Cheyenne: Just another day of skiing, this time in bitterly cold (-8*) conditions. All the new snow in the past week (17") just couldn't make it nice enough to really enjoy the day fully - but we sure tried. And the coverage was great. Had a last minute invite to ice climb today with Fran, but it was way too cold to be stuck to a giant icecube or belay under one.
9 Feb - Another cold, cold day; Anne went for a long run and Sean and I went to the Spot for a couple hours of hard indoor bouldering. And yes, it really is as good as the reports say it is. This is one gym that I actually wouldn't mind coming back to - pricey, but excellent. We'd all decided to hash for the afternoon, so I borrowed some shoes and tights and we went running through the mud and fields and neighborhoods around JeffCo airport, drinking beer and making lots of noise with a bunch of wacky folks. My first hash was brutally cold and windy - the down-down was cut very short because of the temps (-10* windchill) and we ended up partying and playing quarters with the Bud girls at OC's in Arvada for the evening. Hey, it made for an interesting day. :)
13 Feb - Silver Cascade, solo: Finally it's time to break in the new Kayland boots. It's just been so cold and nasty that I really haven't been highly motivated to get out there on the weekends. Went in early to work so I'd have most of the afternoon off, and drove up to the local solo ice for some climbing. :) Got in about 7 pitches and gave 'em a feel; except for a crampon-off episode traversing after the first pitch (quickly corrected the tension), they felt pretty good. Warm, comfortable, responsive, and nice and flexy in the ankles. Wearing rigid cramps (Footfangs) with asymmetric boots is interesting; you have to mismatch the heel bails to get a good fit. I would think that semi-rigids would be a better fit for these boots. Good afternoon, chatted with the Gravity Play guys about some desert routes and possibilities for some guide work in Golden and Eldo later in the year.
15 Feb - After a long night dancing to disco, I got up early and waited for Rob to email or show up for some ice; he didn't (the email was bounced, I later found), so I drove over to Silver Cascade and soloed the climb a couple of times (4ish pitches) for giggles and more time in the new boots. My brand-spankin' new ice gloves for warmer days work great, but the cuff-tightning keeper sling is ripped out when I finish - too bad they were a sale item. Time for gear repairs. After a big tacqueria lunch, it was time to hash again, this time right in my neighborhood. Kneedeep and Lowlife had invited me for the run and drinking fest this weekend, from Beau Jo's through Bott Park, Bear Creek, and eventually back to the bar. A fine time (and many beers) were had by all.
16 Feb - Eldo w/ Scott C.: Time to break in the new Aliens. Got up (too) early again and drove to Boulder for some more fun rock time. The frontside of the mountains were pretty clear, but there were a couple of inches of fresh snow and lots of ice up in the canyon. Undeterred, we warmed up on Mister Natural (8+), a short bloody-cold-on-the-hands crack, and as the sun peeked around the corner headed further up Redgarden to Rewritten (7, ***, with the optional 8+ Zot start and Rebuffat's Arete finish, 5-6 pitches). We swung leads, dancing around the ice and snow on the ledges and belays, but the crux was traversing ankle-deep snow on the slabs leading to the 'walk-off' up top. Rewritten is an exceptional climb - this was my first full climb on the super-imposing and scary looking Redgarden Wall, and I am totally impressed with the caliber of the rock. It sure looks menacing from below, but it's quite fun and mellow (route-dependent, of course) once you're up on it. One of the best pitches of 7 I've ever led was the 4th, hand traverse to finger crack. At one belay station, Scott is changing out gear in his jacket pockets and the keys almost fall out - nearly lost them, but caught it. Finally I'm out in my new all soft outers - windblock and Schoeller, and I'm quite impressed with it all. It was cool to cold all day, but never frigid; gloves at belays, hats all day, and I had to wear my mittens up after a snow-seat belay for the top (combined two) pitches. The new small-size set of Aliens meets all of my expectations as well; now for some #1 Camalots for the mix. The sun came back out as we crested and downclimbed onto the north slopes, too late for us to climb in. The snow and ice conditions haven't improved in the canyon all day; an AWD Volvo is in the ditch opposite the creek with a number of people helping push it out as we descend the trail. It certainly kept the crowds away, though. When we get back down to the parking lot, though, the keys are indeed gone, again; somewhere on the last pitch and descent they went AWOL. So it goes.
17 Feb - Tele day at A-Basin w/ Andrea & Chrysauna: A cold, windy day - well, afternoon, the morning was pretty nice - skiing with my teacher friends at the Basin. Big realization for the day, yet again, was 'need to eat more often.' I was so tired from not eating the last two days that I could barely ski; five or so harder runs (and I remember being able to do 20 of this in a row a few years back) and I was so finished that I felt unsafe on the slope, for myself and others. Fortunately the bar at the lodge is a friendly place for tired single burn-out tele skiers. :) More food commitments at the beginning and end of each play day might really, really help me out.
22 Feb - Lincoln Falls w/ Rob M.: We had planned on driving to Vail to climb some ice in the Dez area, but the snow reports this morning indicated 10 inches of fresh at the resorts; the drive up was slow due to poor road conditions, and as we approached Hoosier Pass we decided we should just stop and get a long day on good, known ice rather than screw around in the car for an extra 3-4 hours. After starting down the road to Lincoln parking I decided it was a bad idea to try in the low-slung Honda, so we tried backing back out - good thing we stopped where we did. After putting on chains and spending a half hour extricating the car, we hiked the extra half mile to parking and headed up towards the ice. The lot is surprisingly empty - only three cars - and we decide that it's due to everyone wanting to ski with the new snow and poor weather. The first pitch of the left gully was brittle and rotten, brown, and definitely not confidence-inspiring. Hoping the second pitch (WI3+/4) is better, I start up on bluer ice with two other parties at the belay ledge. The first run goes smoothly, breaking off trap-ice from the surface to get decent picks, but I feel like the pro is sketchy anyway. I set up an anchor on the top boulder and we decide to TR the second pitch with the other parties. We all share ropes for the day, taking six or seven rides each on all sorts of interesting combinations, the weather alternately pleasant but overcast to windy and blowing snow. No one else comes up the first pitch to bother us all day, and we all have our fill of climbing; the ropes and belay devices are barely moving by the end of the day, frozen solid, but we're all quite pleased with the quiet day at Lincoln.
1 Mar - Silver Cascade w/ Sean H.: Sean & Anne finally make it down to the Springs for a weekend; we are hoping to go climbing at Shelf and Anne has a race in Pueblo, but the weather is atrocious. For the 7th, 8th, and 9th days in a row we are reduced to shoveling snow and trying to do something, anything, outside. Sean and I head for the easy solo ice in Cheyenne Canyon to play a bit and take pictures and video with the new Bugs camera setup, as it starts snowing - harder and harder (eventually about 14" new, on top of the foot or two we've already had). We make two laps (4 pitches) and try to take some interesting photos, but the battery charge is exhausted before we can get everything that we want. Here's the first pitch, WI2+, in unattended video (5.14Mb .avi). We make up for it with a big Irish dinner and a decent bunch of photos from the GoG with snow on Sunday morning. Considering getting sick sometime this week for some Vail days...
6 Mar - Tele day at Vail w/ Sean & Cheyenne: I've been skiing for 25 years now, and I've never seen myself (pics or video) skiing. That changes today - and apparently, I can ski a little (As 'Drea says, "poetry in motion type smooth snowy stylin'"). :) The snow was too good to go to work today, and this was a lot more fun anyway. The wind kept China Bowl and Blue Sky closed all day, restricting us to less than half of the mountain - not that it matters at a place like Vail. We spent most of the day playing in Sundown Bowl on perfect windpack and several feet of fresh snow, and taking video with the new digital minicam. Exceptional conditions, and now I don't have to brave the crowds for a ski fix this weekend!
8 Mar - Shelf w/ Sean & Andrea: The excitement started before we even got to the cliff. The approach road to Cactus Cliff, under the Dark Side and heavily shaded, was muddy and covered in snow from the dumps of the last two weeks. Depite cars beginning to park below the road, I figured to give it a try - and made it about 2/3 of the way up the crux pitch before the tires were spinning in the icey ruts. Uh-oh. Full brakes were useless as we started sliding back down the steep road, picking up speed, towards the corner (and dropoff below it). Needless to say, my passengers were not pleased at this point. We finally stopped in the mud just above the corner, after a wild 20mph ride down the hill backwards. I parked low and tried to put it out of their minds. :)
A short, pleasant hike later (watching a black SUV try the same thing, with an even faster end result - and seeing them drive off afterwards) we moved along the cliff looking for an easy, suitable warmup and decided upon La Cholla Jackson (8). Sean (new nickname, Gassy) put it up, and Drea worked on the harder early moves to pump-out (tricky foot smears are the key to getting to the first ledge). We moved over to Spiney Ridge and I went up a route that I've had my eye on, Travis is Soul King (10a), and decided I probably wouldn't be climbing it again; just not that good, but I'm glad to have gotten it done. For Sean's lead he picked a mid-grade 10, Black Man's Burden (10c) and then had me pull the rope to lead it for a photo opp - when I remembered, oh yeah, I don't lead 10c's. Whoops. I made it up, but not without excessive groveling, several takes, and some instances of grabbing gear. We put Drea on Crynoid Corner (7), one of the more fun routes, and then finished off with Got a Hanger? (10d), which I again couldn't put together cleanly in one attempt. Oh well. Beautiful mid-70*s day with tons of sun, and a big tendons blowout for me.
9 Mar - GoG w/ Lance B. & Greg T.: Went over to the Garden to explore the west face of Grey Rock with two local climbers I hadn't met before, and played around on some mellow terrain with no routes on it. The rock wasn't of good enough quality to really climb, but it was a pleasant scramble up to the north end of the ridge for some nice views. Lance and I toproped a thin sandy hard face in the south end TR area, and I called it a day to come home and relax in the sun.
15ish Mar - Boulder: The plan was to get some climbing in after the Denver FM hash and some work on Sean's front door and deck this weekend; the hash went (too) well, and we spent Saturday morning, and into the sunny afternoon, painting, cutting, and generally being useful. My exhaustion level from lack of sleep on Friday told me climbing wasn't probably a great idea today, so Sean suggested we take an easy mountain bike tour down to Eldo and back. Just to show that I was a good sport, even though I don't and don't like biking, we did; and on an easy, almost-not-technical section on the way back I rolled over the bike, the bike rolled over me, the rock steps didn't care, and I bled all over poor Anne's bike. I avulsed a good piece of the skin formerly known as my left hand, and tweaked and bruised myself all over. Soooo... instead of climbing plans for the weekend we continued to work on the house projects (which are looking really good), ate, drank, and checked out the weekend club scene in town. Could've been worse. Snow blows in on Monday, so it'll most likely be a ski weekend to give my skin some regeneration time before any more climbing.
22 Mar - Tele day @ Vail w/ Sean, Dan, & Jo Ann: After another night of Disco w/ Drea, I got up early to partake in the new snow of the week with Sean and some Boulder friends. We took it easy (Dan has his second orthro surgery this week, and Jo is six months pregnant), enjoyed the snow and sun, and just had a good time being mellow on the teles.
23 Mar - Bouldering @ Carter Lake w/ Sean & Cheyenne: Another day, another dollar. With all of the snow in Boulder, Eldo and the Flatirons were kind of out of the question; to get on some rock we went and played on a bunch of V2s at Carter Lake near Berthoud. I finally almost kind of got up one, but couldn't really link all of the moves on any of them. I was told not to despair as they're supposed to be harder than what I'm trad climbing, so I just tried to enjoy the sun and experience. This was a great afternoon, made all the better by Anne's jumbalaya back at the casa for the Academy Awards dinner. Note to self: eating better, now focus on climbing harder - bouldering days at GoG after work?
27 Mar - Tele day @ Breck w/ Drea & Chrysauna: Spring Break! Spring Break! Okay, but there should be one for all the rest of us non-teachers. The roads were nightmarish from Wilki Pass on, but the skiing was fabulous with 8+ inches new and snow all day. We very much skied hard, everywhere, everything, until last chair - and there was no way we could stop with the fantastic conditions. Boom, boom, boom. Gheee. Jeep. What a heckuva day. :)
28 Mar - Tele day @ A Basin w/ Drea & Chrysauna: Ouch. We apparently overdid it yesterday, just a wee bit, especially Drea's spectacular flip-crash on 10 at 3:45 - but, nevertheless, out we went. A Basin had 1.5" new, but that's enough on a weekday. Anticipating an easy warm-up run, I was quickly distracted by a hot tele girl heading towards Exhibition... I followed, of course. Good, cute, but apparently only a year or two into tele. Warm up on double blacks, everything else is cake all day. Then, a few hours of bumps and jumps, and an amazing thing happened - they opened the North Pole, for the first time in like three years. Of course, I hiked. And who should be right there at the top when I got there? Hot tele girl. Cute, good skier, and friendly to boot. But in tow with male snowboarder friend. But that's okay. It was a great run, lawn-darting 4 time by the upper traverse in bomb-heavy snow conditions, and another time at the bottom of the steep before Lenawee (long slog out to the trails there...). Afterwards, we blew it out completely - anything steep and covered in snow that I could find, Rollercoaster (Pali liftline), Radical, Upper International, Exhibition... I can barely walk up the stairs now, and it was so worth it. When the Basin gets snow, go. And now, to plan the weekend. ;)
29 Mar - GoG w/ Jason C. & Brian C.: A cold day, but we decide to go to the Garden anyway; it's 30* and flurrying lightly as we start up West Point Crack (8), a new climb for me - I don't explore too much at the Garden, 'cause it scares me. I get the first lead, and the rock is cold. Jason's friend Brian shows up as I approach the anchor, and we all take a turn running it on TR before the cold gets to us. No more for today, and as we leave the winds pick up a bit more and the snow starts flying again. The second pitch of this climb looks like fun.
30 Mar - Eldo & Bouldering @ Carter Lake w/ Sean: We gave Eldo a try first, with the forecast for mid-60s (the forecast deteriorated quickly as Sunday approached, of course), and hiked up to Rincon to give a shot at some nice dihedral routes. After putting in the trail (apparently noone had been up this high in a couple of weeks) and noting the six feet of snow at the base of the climbs, Sean tried out Over the Hill (10c); thirty feet up in the wind and on shadowed rock, he called it - shoes sticking to the rock like dress shoes and unable to feel anything from his wrists out. Well... In cases like this sometimes it's just better to go low-commitment and boulder. We had some fish tacos and tacquitos (yum) and headed back up to Carter Lake, north shore this time. Exploring the offerings, we played on a couple each V2s, V1s, two mellow and fun V0s, and a V3ish traverse that was supposedly rated V5. I couldn't stick everything on the V2s or 3, but the others, with some work and trial-and-error, eventually went. A much better performance than last weekend - with the hand mostly healed and less skin to abrade off my tips. And, I'll eventually get the strength to work through the V2s smoothly as well.
2 Apr - GoG w/ Greg T.: Spent the late afternoon bouldering at the Snake Pit; the rock is much friendlier than at Carter or Flagstaff, and maybe just maybe my fingers are getting tougher as well. The problems went down, V0, V0, V0, V1, V1, V2, V2, V2. The last two V2s took some work, and the second to last still needs to be linked from the ground - but the parts are all there. Definitely need to spend a day a week doing this after work. Tele weekend with Florida Bill looms large in the scope now.
4 Apr - Tele day @ Vail w/ Florida Bill: Gaah! All of that nice new snow apparently froze after the warmer temperatures during this week, leaving a nice inch-thick shell of ice covered by about an inch of fresh blow-in. It reminded us of skiing back at Whiteface in college. Still, a day of skiing is still better than a day at work, especially if you hail most recently from Florida. We played, we explored, we went and sat in the hot tub after a traditional dinner at Eric's. The second floor room at the hotel we'd found was right over the boiler room, so we had in essence a heated floor in our room; the room temperature, about 90* when we came in, was moderated for the next two days by simply leaving the window wide open day and night to let in the cold air and (hopefully) snow.
5 Apr - Tele day @ A Basin w/ Florida Bill: Hoping that the sun shining brightly in through the window would bring warmth and less-icey conditions at the Basin, we headed up the valley. No such luck. If not for Bill, I would have called this one right away - instead, we tried to find something skiable, lucking onto the Lenawee liftline's sort-of protected aspects. Pali was insanely firm, so after a barbeque on the beach we headed back up and practiced classical (one-pole) tele technique on Lenawee for the rest of the afternoon. Please, more snow tomorrow!
6 Apr - Tele day @ Vail w/ Florida Bill: It actually snowed. After watching the reports and deciding we had more on the car than any of the ski areas, we stuck with our initial plan and drove over the pass to Vail again. A report of 6" of new was wrong. There was more like a foot, and it kept snowing until 2. We started on Forever in SunDown Bowl, and it was good enough that we didn't leave all day. Continuous fresh tracks in good light powder, under a liftline - does it get any better than this? I practiced and practiced the classical technique, and my somersault stops. After a short break for sustenance, we came back out to find that the sun had warmed everything up about two degrees and made perfect snowball snow out of the entire pitch - very much more difficult to turn in, at that depth. And, at the bottom of the run, snow balling up under my boots, I looked down to see that I had blown out my third tele binding in five seasons. Damn. I really need to stop turning so hard. :) Anyway, the new plan was to take the binding to complete failure on the way back to the car, but the front side runs didn't cooperate. Classical technique is almost down now, except in larger bumps and on ice, and it is good. Plus, we worked both Bill and I to complete muscle failure several times during the day, completing the primary ski-weekend mission.
11 Apr - 11Mile w/ RC.com (climbing w/ Fran & Charlie): The Shelf trip didn't generate the interest I'd hoped for, so I took up Fran on her idea of joining the rc.com gathering at 11Mile for the weekend. Everyone else was from elsewhere around the state, and literally noone that came had ever been there prior - so I got to play guide a little bit too. :) Fran and I climbed on Friday, before she had to go down to town to meet a friend for dinner; we played on Overleaf (8, 2 pitches, **), Moby Grape (7, **), and Original Sin (9+, **) on 11Mile Dome until the early afternoon. I linked up with Charlie afterwards for a quick climb up Captain Fist (8 sandbag, *) on Arch before dinner; and afterwards, a good time was had by all around the fire and kitchen.
12 Apr - 11Mile w/ RC.com (climbing w/ Charlie & Fran): Charlie is a cool guy. He's a student at Western State in Gunny, and completely deaf. His dog Mort is pretty cool too. It's very interesting climbing with someone that doesn't communicate the same as you, and is funny as hell to boot. We warmed up on Schooldaze on Turret Dome (5.5, 5.4. 5.9+) for starters - my favorite pitch of the weekend, probably, was the second; one piece in at a roof, run out 60m on fun easy rock in 4 minutes flat. Looking for others, we wandered down to Arch Rock and hopped on Obscura Direct (8, 7) and picked up Fran at the first belay station. After a mellow topout, we headed further down the rock and hopped onto Waiting for Staircase, amidst a group of other RC.commers; I left my ATC on the rope to pass the knot on lower, and got all the way to the top before figuring out that the knot wouldn't pass through the pro I'd placed. Instead, I brought up Charlie with a trail rope for a rap; but of course, without a belay device, I had to resort to a solid sitting belay on the high-angle slab. The group of newbies that Matt was teaching on the adjacent Staircase wondered and watched; I told them not to do what I was doing. We were tired and getting more so after this, so we headed back to camp for a big community dinner.
13 Apr - 11Mile w/ RC.com (climbing w/ Brad): Charlie left last night, so we were down to 5 for the last day; Fran linked up with Andrew and Craig, and Brad and I took off for some harder stuff on Arch next to them. Brad put up the first pitch, Captain Fist, and I continued up Arch Rock Route above (7R) with big consequences to the top anchors, below the roof system. We decided that since we were there we'd just stay high; Brad climbed up and put in an anchor under the roof and I lowered him to the top of Village Idiot (9R), and then he pendulum traversed me over. We each TRd the route, and then headed up out the roof to the top; there's a killer roof with jugs just above Village Idiot, 9ish, that's just great. Therefore, 5 pitches on a traverse tour of Arch! Everyone else was from further away than I, so we decided 'just one more pitch' on Hollow Flake (6) before heading out; Fran put it up first, and brought up Andrew and Craig, then while they played at the anchor I blitzed up to join them with another rope to bring up Brad. Great sunny day - need better sunscreen, though. :) This was a highly successful weekend trip, meeting cool new climbers from around the state.
20 Apr - GoG w/ Rob M.: Brad and I aborted a trip yesterday to ice climb in RMNP because of a threatening winter storm, but today started bright and sunny, begging for some climbing to be done. I talked with Rob, and although we're not crazy about the Garden, there were 5 inches of new snow at his place in Divide, effectively closing the SPlatte to us for a few days. We headed to West Point Crack (8, 2-3 pitches), which we'd both climbed the first pitch of. Rob took the first pitch nicely, and I followed up with a selection of large cams and random small stuff for the second chimney pitch. The ancient pitons beginning the second pitch were not inspiring, but probably represented the best protection I had in the run-out, sandy chimney above. More pro would have just been psychological and drag-inducing. The top of the pillar above Kor's Corner, with two manky and un-trustworthy pitons, served as a belay and rap station as we decided that the step-across onto nothing 'third pitch' wasn't in our plans; instead, down behind the corner we went into the water-gully. We broke this into two short, unprotected pitches of climbing on rock that literally turned to sand when touched or weighted. Finally I decided to commit to a face-climbing, licheny, sandy several moves that turned out to be particularly dicey, but the only apparent way out (at 5.8). I just can't recommend this route, really; but if I were to do it again, I'd take two ropes and use the Kor's Corner chains twenty feet down in front of the pillar-top (with the short rap to them very, very necessary). The Garden's just a scary place, as it keeps reminding us.
26 Apr - Flatirons w/ Sean: Not sure what the plan was for the day, we waited at Sean's, weeding the gardens, until a couple showed up to buy his old kayak. Tony was due to arrive shortly from Memphis, but we got out of the house before he arrived to get a quick simul of the first flatiron (6R, 11ish pitches) in car-to-car in 2:30:36 with delays at the rap station. A girl soloing with her BF just below me peeled at the smooth slot about 6 pitches up, and ended up rolling and tumbing about forty feet to a fortunately big bathtub/flat spot. Kinda interesting. Tony wanted to go biking at the Fruita mountain bike festival, so we loaded up the Subaru and took off, arriving at an Unaweep pullout around 11, and slept under the stars.
27 Apr - Unaweep w/ Sean & Tony: We woke up to big boulders, all around us. I hadn't been here but once before, a year and a half ago, but hadn't even noticed the boulders on that trip. Sean took us to one concentration of them at another pullout, and we played around on some problems for an hour or so. Not being the primary purpose for our trip, we cut the activity short, had some breakfast, and drove on down to the Kokopelli Trail trailhead for some light-moderate mountain biking. I actually enjoyed it, after an hour or so of figuring out how things worked and how to ride single-track on rocks, dirt, and sand. Happily, no wrecks. More silliness on the road home, with a range rover right behind us careening and flipping outside Glenwood Springs, but it was a pretty much no-injuries weekend. And a fun one.
3 May - GoG & 11Mile w/ Greg, Rob, & John: A long, long day of climbing ensued. I had plans to meet up with Greg and Bill at the Garden for some scary sandstone climbing, and decided that I should make a full day of it by starting off with some solo bouldering at the Snake Pit. The easy V0 problems on the Lunge that I'd worked so easily a couple of weeks ago turned out much more challenging without a spotter; even with a pad, several times I was worried about sticking harder moves, even just off the ground. I finally sent along three of them, and hurried back over towards the main parking lot for my scheduled linkup. After waiting for awhile and no one showing up (at 10 I was still the only car in the parking lot, strangely), I grabbed my gear and wandered down into the park to see what I might find. A group of three young soldiers were just getting started up on Credibiilty Gap (9+), our planned route; their gear consisted only of QDs, and with the first pin 40 feet up I decided to loan them some gear to get up to it more or less safely. It was their first day climbing in the Garden, and asked me what they should expect. "Expect it to be way harder than it's rated, expect things to come off in your hands, and expect to be scared silly ten feet off the ground," I said, not jokingly. I spied Greg walking up the path and went down to meet him, and wished the party on the rock a safe climb. Greg and I wondered where Bill and John were, and wandered about the central park for a bit watching some other parties starting out on other routes now, all with just QDs and no supplemental gear (we agreed that it was too close to town and got too many novices getting in over their heads too frequently). Bill showed up as we were watching a party on Finger Ramp, and we headed back towards the Gap.
As they were still on the route, Greg and I considered running up Zuma's for a warmup while the other party was on the Gap. When we arrived back to pick up my gear, mayhem. The first kid had gotten up to a small roof, that appeared from the ground to be the crux, placed his draw on the next pin, and fallen while clipping. He had some ropeburn and a broken thumb from the incident (it's not a very clean fall). Leaving them to their devices to finish the climb, we went towards the base of Zuma but were in line behind another party that was intending to do the route in 2 pitches instead of the cleaner and faster single that it should be done in. Ah, beginners. Well, that line was too long for us, having waited an hour already for partners and a route, so we walked back to West Point Crack (8) and I put up the first pitch with Greg following and rapping. We were on and off long before we could have started Zuma's because the other parties were still so taking their time. John had showed while we were climbing, and he and Bill started working on finishing the Gap route. After one apparently unsuccessful attempt, we pulled the army guys' rope and showed them over to some easier climbing more suited for their learning how to climb on this rock. Bill finished the route nicely, but had to grab one piece of gear at the real crux, fifteen feet over the route. We all took turns following it as Rob came back from work to join us. Our two reasons for this climb had been waiting for Rob to get out of work this morning, and John's impending departure for points east and wanting to climb this route that had pitched him off late last year; it's fairly rated at 9+, and disintegrating as we climb it.
The afternoon was earmarked for a trip up to 11Mile, and some granite cracks. Rob wanted to get onto the right side of Arch, and it sounded like a fine destination to all of us. The weather was much cooler and windy as we arrived at the canyon, and was to stay that way until the sun set. I pointed Rob at Obscura Direct (7, 2 pitches, with an optional 8/8+ direct start), and set to belaying Greg on Arch Rock Regular Route (8) next to it. Getting off the ground and past the first bulges are cruxes of both of these climbs and took several attempts. Rob reached the belay and started bringing up Bill, who had just a horrible time with a couple of stoppers that got too well set in the rough slots. I followed Greg up to his high belay and passed without taking any gear beyond what I had cleaned, heading on an upwards and left-angling traverse towards the topout for Obscura. I quickly wished I had taken more gear, and by the time I reached the top platform, a short scramble from the top, I was down to a #4 camalot and two #7 stoppers. That wasn't what I would need for an anchor, so I scrambled to the top and dealt with the unbelievable rope drag from the zig-zags in the made-up route I'd just set. As we topped the second, Bill was still cleaning stoppers on their first pitch below, probably not very happy. We walked around to the base and looked up to see Rob heading up the second pitch, and yelled where we'd be further left on the rock.
Greg and I walked down to Hollow Flake (6) to set up a TR on Sprout Route (11b), and were happily invited to hop on by the party already TRing the hard sport/slab. We looked at the its-not-an-8 Captain Fist, but the rock was brutally cold and it didn't fit Greg's idea of a good time for the evening hours, and Greg started up Hollow Flake, sewing it up and climbing nicely. As I topped with Greg, the other party was pulling their rope, so we fixed a rap and headed down just as Bill and Rob came walking around the corner from their climb. I TRd the hard, thin route absolutely cleanly, very happy with myself for it, and began belaying Greg up just as Bill began leading up Hollow Flake. We packed up while Bill topped out and Rob started, and went back down to the truck in the gathering twilight. Bill and Rob got down as EENT hit us, and after some maintenance, gear packing, and a well-earned beer each we hopped back in for the ride home. An excellent long day, but not enough food to really see us through the whole thing. These guys are good to have around; not super-fast, but I have no qualms about their safety systems (me being the token single guy), and that's really more important.
7 May - GoG w/ Greg: Went bouldering at the Snake Pit with Greg to take the edge off the afternoon. No worries with the V0s/1s, but a couple of those 2s are still not onsight material. For me, anyway. This is a great way to spend a couple of hours on a weekday afternoon.
9 May - Parachute & GoG w/ Marilyn: Marilyn is moving from Phoenix up to Denver, and part of her house-hunting trip got dedicated to some 'welcome to Colorado' climbing. We were hoping to find some warm, sunny climbing conditions, but the weather just didn't cooperate; the best we could find was heading up Rampart to some trad at Parachute. It was cold and damp in town, but sunny as we drove through the mountains toward the crag. As we hiked in on the still-snowy road, though, the inversion layer from the Front came up over the mountains and bathed us in swirling misty fog that would stay with us all day. We warmed up on Texas DJ (8R), and then moved over to The Caped One (9,*) to set up a TR for (Unknown) (10c), which I've been working for a long, long time now. Marilyn followed both routes well for the cold temps, in the big green-blue down jacket (just call her Veruca), and I TRd up the 10c to retrieve the anchors, too cold to attempt a redpoint on it today. The temperatures were below freezing by the time we called it there, and it just wasn't a good enough day for my attempt. We headed back down towards town, hoping for some warmth; Cheyenne Canyon looked too committing with the weather conditions, so we drove to an almost-empty Garden parking lot and walked down to Zuma (6-7, the classic). I put it up in a single pitch, my first time on it in a couple of years, but Lyn couldn't reach the first moves of the boulder-start. I got mighty cold up there in the wind, but she eventually made it up and we rapped at 1930, nearing dark. I bet I won't ever get her out in the Garden again, climbing on the nasty cold windy sandstone. :) Not as warm as we'd have liked, but a good day nevertheless.
10 May - Tanner (Fremont) Dome w/ Marilyn: Again looking for warmth (and this time not trusting the forecast), we headed south to a new, sorta hidden area not in any guidebook. After the drive, not really knowing what to look for, we found it after 30 minutes on back roads by glinting bolts on a big rock over the road. A minute or two up the trail I decided we were going to be on the wrong side of an opening ravine, and we crossed to climb a few hundred feet up towards a big crag; an hour of bushwhacking later, we arrived at the base, bumping into a guy I knew from cb.com asking us how the hike was (Ben Brustle, from Alamosa). Apparently, if we'd kept going up the trail another couple hundred yards, there's a nice trail. Oh well. Bushwhacking builds character. :) There's no guide for the crags and climbs here, so I picked something that looked like it would go. The opening moves to the second bolt were sustained 9+, and the rest of the traversing climb was solid 8; an absolutely beautiful climb. Thank you, whoever you are that bolted these fine climbs. Lyn TRd up the climb, finding the moves thin and hard, but moved through them without the wet slips on lichen that we had yesterday. Knowing that these weren't putting her in her happy place, we went down to some easy stuff and did a 'teaching' 2-pitch route on 5.6ish rock for some multi- and rap-setup practice for Lyn. Quite successful day, a great new place to climb, and some solid training for Marilyn today.
11 May - Shelf w/ Marilyn: Again, we didn't trust the weather forecast up north; the Shelf-area forecast looked much warmer and nicer, so we headed down for some sport climbing. That turned out to be the right answer, as I'm very sunburnt and tired as I write this out... :) I started off on Crynoid Corner (7) in my tennies, to get her a feel for her first climb on limestone. After an impromtu lesson on how to set up a rappel from on-top, which would come out as immensely important all day, we moved on. Still morning, and the corner being cold, we headed further down to find some pockets and sun-drenched climbs; White Punks on Pockets (9) was a breeze and fun, playing in the left side crack system. I went a bit further to Chompin' at the Cholla (9, *) and had a fine time; as Lyn went up and set up the rap some friendly visitors from North Conway came by and set up to get on it after us. I had a pleasant time talking about eastern climbing and this year's ice conditions, and just enjoying some good camaraderie. Next I wanted to push it up a little, and chose Toxxxic Entertainment (10a, *) on Spiny Ridge, a fun lieback flake; I wasn't sure that Lyn would make it all the way up the strenuous second half, so top-belayed from a hanging belay. I felt more and more uncomfortable, on the hang, with the flake not really all that attached and the bolts above a crack that didn't look too healthy; I kept feeling like the whole thing might just come off and plummet us both a hundred feet to the deck with a house-sized piece of limestone on top of us, and wondering how bad that fall would be (for the second or two that I was still able to think about it). It didn't come off, thankfully. Lyn worked her way up to the anchors, surprising me with her tenacity. As I was bringing her up a gentleman showed a group over to my next planned route, Damn Right I Got the Moves (8,*) nearby, and they declined the offer of a TR setup. After descending I found that they were the same young lads I'd met the previous weekend in the Garden, from Carson. They were happy and having a great day as well, but tired; I helped them out by finishing set up a TR of the 8 route that they were too tired to lead up, and chatted for awhile. We were pretty burnt at this point, and headed back towards Cactus for another climb or two. Raven was taken, and we watched two attractive girls throw through the crux dyno on Funkdamental before I chose the unknown 10a next to Oscar de la Cholla. I felt kind of rubbery on it, and Lyn took her time heading up on TR; the couple from Nederland, first day at Shelf, on Oscar were cool and fun to talk to as well as I shared some beta and belayed Marilyn up. By the time she came down we were both dead tired and decided to call it a day and weekend, thoroughly happy with the whole thing. Of course, the rope got caught thirty feet up in a crack and I had to solo up and down in my tennies to clean it, but the weekend was an unqualified success. New partner, good teachings, and great climbing. Looking forward to summer so much now.... And, as I got home the email tells me that Hayman has opened back up and Turkey, reachable on foot anyway, is open to climbing again. Happy days.
17 May - Turkey Rocks w/ Rob: Yay! YAY! Turkey is open again, my favorite climbing spot. For right now you still have to park at the intersection of Stump and FR360, and hump your gear in down and up the hill (about an hour, hour fifteen via the campground), but it's just so worth it to get back to my favorite place.
Ah, offwidth day at the crags. And much groveling ensued. Rob and I were the first ones there this morning, and as it was Rob's first trip I felt compelled to give him the warm-up on the Perch. His first lead was up Honky Ass Jam Crack (7), and I put up Left Handed Jew (8+) next to it for an encore. His big plan for the day was to hop on Ragger Bagger (8 OW), which had been featured as a 3-star of the day on cb.com last week, his first OW. I followed it up with Steppenwolf (9 OW), pausing at the crack disconnect, not knowing how to link the cracks, scared and whiny. And, for good measure after making the moves proceeded to run out the last 40 feet of fist crack to the top. Go figure. Not ready for another OW lead, Rob took on Reefer Madness (8), and decided he was done leading for the day. This was fine with me, but I felt the need to lead Gobble Up (8 OW) because it was open and the crag was all ours today. If my hands were just a tinsy bit bigger this would have been a fine fist crack all the way up; but they aren't, and it was a nasty OW the whole way for me. I was so happy to have carried all of that extra metal up the hill that morning. We walked out along the normal drive-in road, photographing the devestation from Hayman and checking on road conditions for a hopefully upcoming reopening of the area. I'm beaten, bruised, bloody, bloody tired, burnt, and looking forward to more crack fun here all summer long.
18 May - Eldo w/ Sean: Not wanting to get out of bed this morning, I hit the snooze several times; but, of course, that was planned and I'd made certain to set the alarm extra early so that I wouldn't miss my scheduled revendous with Sean for some Rincon time. The route for the day was Over the Hill (10b/c, 2 pitches), high above most everything else in Eldo, where we'd been weathered off a couple of months earlier. A good crowd was on all of the surrounding routes, but Sean stepped right up and led the two-crux first pitch. I had a tough time following - the first pitch wore me out, and after three failed attempts I aided the crux move and kept heading up. At the second crux, just below the anchors, Sean wouldn't allow me to do the same, and I finally picked it off on my fourth or fifth attempt. Eldo 10 is freakin' hard. I took the second pitch, with a low 9 crux moving from face into the crack system, and only whined making the seemingly very thin step across move. I sewed the rest of it up without incident, and felt pretty good, although tired from yesterday and my exertions here. Not quite finished, we wandered even further up the hill to Cadillac Crags for a go on Gonzo (8, 2 pitches). The weather threatening, Sean again led the first pitch, and brought me up and through. I passed the belay quickly and kept on around the corner to the diagonally climbing crack. About 20 feet out, it started raining, and didn't stop until I was 30 feet from the top. Persevering without the gear I really wanted (30+ foot runouts due to only having one #3 camalot) on the slick rock, one arm buried in the crack for security, I made it to the top with one knee-lift and no other problems. We were too tired to attempt anything else after active weeks, and down we went, happy to have gotten on the climbs we had selected.
(DAY #35). 24 May - Sheep's Nose w/ Rob: Knowing that the afternoons this weekend were bound to be wet, Rob and I got up early and, after a quick meal at the Donut Mill (mmm, biscuits and gravy) headed over to Sheep's Nose to repeat a route I'd done a couple of years ago. Lost in Space (9, ***, 4 pitches, III) is a fabulous way to spend a few hours on great rock. Rob led the first pitch and made short work of the bulge problem I threw myself off of two years ago, but I vindicated myself by freeing the second, scary and facey, pitch, including the hard stem-to-face crux at the top with a neat series of finger locks that I didn't know how to do last time I was here. The last two pitches were icing, fun and quick, and we raced down ahead of the approaching thunder-boomers, quite satisfied and happy that we'd made the trip. I'd love to take some more 5.8 climbers up this later this summer for an airy, fun challenging climb.
25 May - Boulder Canyon w/ Sean, Anne, & Allison: Anne invited her friend from work to do some single pitch stuff in the Canyon today with us; Allison is getting back into climbing for her upcoming lead class with CMC, and Anne hasn't been on-rock in a year and a half or so, so we looked consciously for some fun and more moderate stuff to get on. We started on the Dome's East Slab (6), having to leave Sean at the base to watch Loki, and then drove a bit further up to Happy Hour for a more dog-friendly environment. Sean put up Grins (8) in it's current seeping wet state, and I put up Nightcap (9, **), probably easier today than Grins because it was dry. I followed part of the way up Grins to remove a directional interfering with the double's knot just below the sloppy crux (having to employ some cute soloist techniques for the last 15 feet of the climb when the knot did indeed get fixed at the upper pro), and then we set the girls off on the climbs. I belayed Sean up Nightcap, and then started setting up Malign (7) in a steadily increasing rain that finally petered out, as Anne followed up Nightcap. I brought Allison up Malign, and then went back down to belay and follow Sean on Dementia (10a), the finger crack/slab that's always busy on the face. It was exceptionally stiff today, the crack wet and slidy, and the smears on the face just not happening with the humidity and damp rock. In different conditions this would be a really fun, and very continuously sustained 10 climb - it felt like hard 10 today, and I couldn't link the move at the top (I'm saying) because of the damp conditions. I think we all had an excellent day out.
26 May - Eldo w/ Sean: Bike-Climb-Drink. What sort of sport is this again? :) Too tired to get up early and go to the Indian Peaks for a ski (heck, the weather's not all that great for it anyway, with midday storms and 100% humidity) we watched the first part of the Boulder Bolder and took off on the bikes down to Eldo instead. There were very few climbers out today, probably all excited about the 28,000-strong run going on up in Boulder, and I put up the first pitch of Werk Supp (8+, ***). I've been wanting to reclimb this one since Sean brought Jules and I here a year and a half ago, and it was as good as I remembered. If a little slimy from the fairly running humidity all over the slick sandstone. This is an under-appreciated climb, to be sure. After the ride back we finished the gable shingling on the west side of the house, mixing power tools and cold beer, for a great afternoon.
29 May - Ironclads w/ Jen: Hottest day of the season yet, we set a new temperature record of 94* in Denver. Of course, that's far too warm to have followed through on our earlier plan of climbing in Golden, and so I decided to head higher. Up into the mountains near Allenspark we found more moderate temperatures and nice breezes at the Ironclads. I put up Shake Hands With the Unemployed (7) and brought Jen up, and then led Shaking the Pope's Hand (7, ***). Jen's exploits at the karaoke bar the previous night unfortunately caught up with her now in the still-hot direct sun, and the remainder of the day was set aside for just enjoying being outside and not working. It doesn't have to be fun to be fun.
31 May - North Table w/ Sean, Anne, & Allison: The weather this spring is freakin' me out. Humid and hot, just plain hot, rain all day... What's going to happen today? Who can say. It started overcast and we expected rain today, and dressed for chill and humid. Alli's mom is in town from Long Island, and we all headed for a lower-commitment day climbing short routes in Golden. As we hiked up from the parking, we apparently topped out the clouds/fog, and started into the broiling sun that we really should have expected here - without nearly enough sun protection, and too-warm clothes. We decided to try everything onsight, without book beta today, to make things interesting. Sean put up Henry Spies the Line (6) for the girls to TR on, and I took my sweet, whiny time heading up Dennis Spies the Line (9+/10a) next to it before heading back to speed-clean Henry (not nearly fast enough for Sean's liking, either - at least a full 3 minutes). Anne had seen an (unknown, 7-7+ish) problem in the TradLands next door with an interesting-looking roof, and Sean and I put that up for something for the girls to get onto after finishing our other routes, experimenting with doubling over double-rope techniques on the short routes to save time and have a spare rope to climb on. Sean wanted to get on Mind Mantle Arete (10b right variation), and remembered the moves after having climbed it as something he had done before - I followed and enjoyed it greatly. It was totally my turn for a lead, and I selected Brain Cloud Arete (9, ***) a bit further down, something that I hadn't led before. Sean was anxious to get on something fun and hard (for him, meaning way over my head), and as I rapped he set up for a cool-looking run up Feeding Frenzy (11d); it turned out to be as hard as I'd imagined it. I couldn't feel my fingers after I'd gotten past all of the mid-10 stuff on the first half of the route, and had to aid the last three pins, with no idea how I would ever be able to lead something this thin. As I thought and said, a classy route but over my head for the foreseeable future. We broke it down after hangdogging me through the thin shite on the route for a near eternity, and called the day, sunburnt and hungry, just before the rains set in. Dinner with Alli and her mom at the Ethiopian restaurant was fabulous. Looking forward to climbing with Alli next week after she starts her CMC lead class.
3 June - Silver Cascade Slabs w/ Bill & Dani: Work's been slow this week, so when Bill called and said he was on vacation this week I jumped at the chance to go get on some under-utilized local rock for the day. I remember climbing on Silver Cascade's super-polished granite when I was first learning, about three years ago, and I really haven't been back since; putting a foot up on the slabs on a 6 and just sliding back down to the ledge is one of those memories that just won't go away. Today I started off on Reality Check (8, ***), on the sort of slab climbing that always gives me pause - no hands, slopey slick feet, and hard-to-find moves. Fortunately, the first half of the pitch, to a set of anchors before the runout easier climbing on top, is exceedingly well-protected - 9 bolts. From there, Bill rapped over to set a TR on the Johnson Route (10d, **), and we took turns inspecting and attempting to pull the crux roof and through the much nicer hard slab above (good little edges, and decent friction). Bill pulled the roof on his first try, and I banged myself up in a slip on my first try but got it on the second go. I worked the route to the right, Black Science (10b, *) as well, and inspected but couldn't even touch a further over route not in the guides (hard 11 or better, from the feel of it). Another beautiful day outside.
15 June - Dream Canyon w/ Sean & Cheyenne: After a lazy non-climbing weekend and some more time off from climbing this weekend, Sean, Cheyenne, and I decided we needed some sun. Dream Canyon has a reputation for having lots of harder sport climbs, most over my head in lead ability, so I hadn't been there before; we wanted something with some shade to keep us cooler in the hot afternoon sun, but the creeks are still too high to cross safely for north-facing climbs in the Vrain or BC. As we hiked in, Sean spied a nice-looking line on the first rosk that we encountered and decided to give it a shot. The Mantra (11b) was considerably harder than it appeared from below, and I had to French a couple of the moves (at the cruxes) to get up the climb, although the in-between bits were fun and within my level. Moving past the crowds at Oceanic Wall, Sean took us over to a climb he'd remembered enjoying, Tales of Power (11b); although we weren't able to enjoy the upper pitch's slab climbing because we had a team of 3 today, it looked like something that we would definitely want to come back to sample. I really enjoyed pulling through the roof on this problem and figuring out the stemming moves above it to the anchor, and climbed it cleanly (albeit on TR), surprising both Sean and Cheyenne heartily. Dream really is a very pleasant place.
24 June - Wigwam Creek, SPlatte, w/ Rob: We both felt rather under the weather today. At least, that's what we told our respective workplaces. An absolutely beautiful day in the Colorado summer, with the promise of some inclement weather moving in in the next few days (again, argh!), led us to this decision; we wanted to explore some more fabulous granite in the SPlatte's burn area. Wigwam Creek was the destination, and Rob picked out Bush League Buttress as it had a couple of climbs that he felt comfortable with the grade on. Smartly, we hiked through the far NW-ern edge of the Hayman burn-out and saddled up for User Friendly (9, **), an apparent long multi-pitch that didn't look as clogged with undergrowth in the cracks as the other routes on the crag. The guide book shows 8 pitches, but we ended up just leading 3 long tech ones and enjoying a good deal of 5.easy scrambing, unbelayed, in the mid-upper reaches. We were obviously the first party on the route since the fire a year ago, and I spent significant time cleaning the fire-exfoliated surface of the first, crux, pitch, trundling off what used to be the edges that I'd have liked to have used for my feet. The last pitch was a runout 8 slab with a hammer-in and 1/4" bolt in a full rope length of climbing, and gave me the adrenaline rush I needed so badly before heading back to the office tomorrow. There's a pretty sweet looking crack on the buttress that I think we'd both love to go back and FA sometime this summer or fall... stay tuned.
28 June - Parachute w/ Steve N.: Another CoS pickup partner and I headed out for Steve's introduction to the SPlatte granite. As usual, we warmed up on Texas DJ (8R), and since Steve looked and felt good on it we moved over for my further warm-up on The Caped One (9, **). I previewed the cruxes on my project route, and then pulled the rope and sent Unnamed (10c, **), after several bad weather and wrong partner project days over the last year. Most happy. 10c trad in the SPlatte is nothing to sneeze at for me. :) Giving Steve his fair turn to lead now, he led up Unnamed (7) in the middle slab, and I looked at the book before I went up; 'Wouldn't it be nice to top out for once on the pinnacle, since we have time for one more climb???,' I thought. The only front-side route in the guide looked crappy, so I traversed out right on the ledges from the anchor, and saw a pretty-looking crack line, all lichen-covered and orange. WTF. It turned out to be better, ***, than anything else on the whole gol-darned rock, about an 8, with perfect hands-to-fists jamming the entire line, and a beautiful vertical section with thinner fingers on the crux. The lichen was everywhere, so if it's been climbed before it hasn't seen much traffic. Here's my future recommendation to Parachute leaders: CLIMB THIS. It freakin' rocks. We both had huge smiles when we topped out. How much better does a day get than a standards-raising trad redpoint followed by a 3-star not-in-the-book possible FKA? Probably not much. (Follow-on note: A couple of my friends have said they've been on something in this area, not in the book, so no FKA, but still a great climb.)
5 July - Ironclads w/ Alli: Too hot to climb in the SSV, we went higher to the mellow single-pitch environs of the Ironclads. We started off with Dirty No-Goders (6) and Shaking Hands with the Pope (7,***), then moved over to try out Rip-off Ranger (, **) and Thieving Whore (8) before wandering up the hill when the crowds and afternoon sun arrived to Wobley Wall. The rock (and solidified bird poop) there wasn't very good, and directly southfacing and hot, so we only did one 7 route there and hiked back down past the redneck ATV and motorcyclists, picking up trash. I hadn't redpointed Ranger before today, and it fell very easily; I went back up it barefoot to see how it would feel, and except for a little slippery on the feet it was quite fine (just for the heck of it).
(DAY #45). 10 July - Jackson Creek Dome w/ Bill: With the weekend climbing activity (or minimal amount thereof) leaving something to be desired, I used some comp time and went on vacation with Bill, to play on the notoriously runout slabs at Jackson. The trails were nearly completely overgrown with the forest being closed last year and low use this season so far, and we ended up looking up at the single-pitch west face routes first. I selected a warmup route, Cold Frize, an 8 that I hadn't been on, and headed up. Somewhere where it and Alien Elite (10a) diverge, I took a wrong turn, and ended up climbing 10a runouts of up to 40 feet all the way tot he end of the rope. What a warmup! For Bill's lead, we took the other 8 on the face, One Track Pony (8+), which went very well; at the obligatory right-left ledges to keep the grade moderate I decided to push it out a little and pulled through some roughly 11a/b vertical slabs, surprisingly cleanly, for a fantastic TR; Bill missed the bolts five feet to the left and three feet to the right and built a trad anchor on top, apologizing about taking so long until I pointed out the bolts just on either side of him, embarrassing him for looking too high. After a quick lunch break, I put up both runout pitches of Consenting Adults (10a, **) on the south face, and we called it a day after inspecting the Creaturistic chimney variation (9), which looks stellar. I hate to say it, but I'm starting to like both slabs and runouts.
12 July - Turkey Rocks w/ Rob: God I love crack. Rob warmed up on Left Handed Jew (8+, **), and I decided to show him further down the formations to get some ideas for future climbing trips; I wasn't highly motivated in the morning, so we didn't hit Gobbler's Grunt on the main rock, but instead I put up the first pitch of Captain Fist (8) on the Leftovers, with Rob putting up the second. The walkoff kinda bit, but it was still worthwhile. On our way out after a nice lunch in the shade at the base of Turkey proper, I felt the strong desire to do Eclipse (9, **) on the dark side of the Tail. Talk about a vertical hard crack! Being all manly and all I only carried about a half rack, foolishly, and used most of it before I got to the anchors, running things out when I felt I could. Nicely sunburnt, we did some trail maintenance on the way out and headed back to the car, the absolute only party at the crags all day (what's the walk dissuading you wieners???). Fab climbing day.
13 July - Lumpy w/ Sean: Here's a training/warm-up day for our upcoming Bugs trip. Anne's dad was coming into town this afternoon, and the bike race circuit is about to start - we only had a bit of time today to go and get nuts. We hiked up to the Book from the road and saw that the party just ahead of us was leaving on Osiris, while the other 7-9 routes on the face were either too much in the sun or too crowded already. As soon as it was clear, I put up the first chimney (yuck) pitch of Osiris, as it looked as though the 5.9 start to George's Tree (9, 5 pitches, **) would be extremely greasy in the sun. Instead of following directions, we just started swinging leads on what looked feasible, and ended up far to the right of Osiris on a variation to George's; the pitches went 7,8,8,9,9 and were awesome. We didn't get back to the base until 5, when I was supposed to have Sean home, and when we passed through Estes at 6 it was still registering 90* - far too hot especially at altitude. A few more practice days like this and we'll be all happy and ready for some moderate long MP classics in the Bugs.
19 July - The Specimen w/ Shane: I've been looking at this route for a long time from my backyard, high up the hills behind town. Shane's hiked up to it but hadn't gotten onto it until today. The only guides we know of with it are Hubbel's old '88 book and a mini-guide from R&I, so we knew that it wasn't much visited; nevertheless, it sounded like a good idea a couple of days ago. Directissma (10c, 6 pitches) is a heckuva long, steep hike in on broken scree and duff. Don't be fooled by the simple topos if you look for it, either - you have to hike way around a flake in front of the route that's not shown, or climb a crumbly first pitch over the flake-boulders and then downclimb to the base of the route. The first pitch is described as a spectacular hand-to-fist crack at 9+; doubles of 3, 3.5, and 4, and a number 5 were used in the very wide crack when we went up. After thinking about it for awhile at the first belay station, the only one we knew we could retreat from, we made the right decision and bailed off for the day. It just wasn't the right day for this, and we weren't either in our best form. I can only imagine what the rest of the route is like if the '9+' hand crack was that wide and stiff. We'll come back some day later in the summer or fall when we're feeling 'on' more. As it turned out, we made the right decision as it started raining heavily about 1730, when we'd have still been near the 10c offwidth pitch. The views and position are spectacular, if awkward, and I would love to get up it one of these days still. The guide-noted closures for raptors are incorrect - it's 1 April thru 15 July annually.
26 July - First Flatiron w/ Danhedonia: Dan's office sent him out to their Louisville operation and he asked if I had a day to spare at the end of his week to get in some climbing and views. Of course!!! We took on the 1st (***, 5.6R, 9-11 pitches) in multi-pitch fashion, about 9 pitches with a little bit of simul and simul-solo thrown in when it looked mellow enough for Dan's liking. The day was hot, sunny, bright, and we had great views and scenery all day. Sunburnt but happy, we retired for a couple of beers. Mellow long fun days with good company like this don't come along nearly often enough.
27 July - Monitor Rock w/ RC.com Leadville crew: (Kelly takes a whipper.) The rc.c Leadville gathering started Friday night, but my prior obligations with Dan put me there a bit after 1900 last night - in time to meet back up with some old partners, and meet a bunch of new people before Bob D's slideshow. This morning we all slowly worked our way out to Monitor on the Independence Pass road; the only 8 climb on the wall was occupied with others from our group, so Kelly (kcrag) and I decided to warm up on Grave Line (10a, **), with me getting the honors (best quote, "I just need 2 more inches..."). The direct start was too committing for the first lead, with a big drop before the first bolt, so I took the alternate line to the left and traved in a bit. The rest of the route went clean and fairly quickly, and I was quite pleased with the warm-up. We pulled the rope and Kelly put it up again, using some very graceful moves to get through the difficulties that I'd encountered. As the rest of the crew played around on other various climbs (Jeff put up Slip Not next to me as I belayed Kelly, and Geo worked on the crux moves to the second bolt afterwards), I headed over and snagged Skibby to belay me up Baby Doe (8) which had opened up. Kelly led up Slip Not (10d, **) as I rapped, and Jeff convinced me to give it a shot on lead. The same problems that Geo had found, I had several times - popping a half-dozen times just above the bolt as I worked the thin face moves. Eventually I got them, and moved through the middle of the problem to the upper crux, below the last bolt. Working the problem a dozen times, I couldn't find anything I liked; so in the end I just went for it, fingers pumped completely. As I grabbed for the gear at the top of the crux, bang. 12 more feet, and my first lead fall of any significance in a year and a half. Annoyed, I went back up, and pulled it on my second follow-on - completely pumped, not even able to hold huge jugs above, after an hour and a half on route. Not at all clean, but led. Kudos to Jeff for keeping my belay safe for so long - thank you so much for the support, everyone. Ceremonially awarded the "the order pizza and line up some belayers award" for this climb. I belayed another climb for the crew, but most of us were just done at this point. A fine group gathering with some great people. I so look forward to the next one.
31 July - Aiguille de St. Peter & The Pearly Gates w/ Josh: After a long bushwhack in due to conflicting directions, we spied the Martyr, on the north ridgeline extending from St. Peter's Dome. The views from these formations over South Cheyenne Canyon are enough to make it worthwhile, and the climbing is even better. Leaving our gear on top, we hiked to the base and Josh started up The Martyr's (9+, ***, 2 pitches) sustained first pitch. I felt a little 'off' following, and took my sweet time moving the belay around to the second-pitch belay ledge, and figuring out the opening moves to get on P2. P2 was just as good as P1, maybe a little longer - it just kept going and going, always sustained and fabulous climbing. With the new 70m we figured we could just barely set an anchor and rap back to the base in two steps - with about a foot to spare. Josh TRd Athenian Arete (12-) after a rappel inspection, and we decided to move over to the excellent-looking slab west of the Aiguille while we were in the area. More bushwhacking ensued. From the exposed base anchors on Pearly Gates, we looked up at our choices - a 9 bolted slab, or the classic and harder Pearly Gates (10a, ***), a steep slab with a very small crack/seam running most of its length. About this time I'd remembered that I hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday; although a little shaky, I picked the harder classic line (after all that work to get here, I'd have been a fool not to). The route went, and it felt mid-10 to me - protecting with gobs of small aliens and RPs, shaking from exhaustion the whole way. And went, and went. Somewhere past 40m up, with the last 50+ feet turning back to pure slab but easing off as you went higher, I finally topped and brought up Josh, as boom! booooom! from the approaching dark clouds taunted us. Shortly after topping, we made our wise decision for the day, as the rain started spitting, to collect our anchors and boogie off the exposed pinnacles. It blew and drizzled for a while as we found a more direct bushwhack out to the car; before calling it completely, though, we thought to drive down to Cheyenne Canyon and show Josh the best solid line in the area. As we viewed it from the road above, Josh kinda smiled, looked over, and said, 'Can we go do it?' Sure. It's not raining anymore. I gave Josh both leads up Crack Parallel (7/7+, ***, 2 pitches) and followed up and out the direct finish, and we surfed down the scree descent back to the car, and home for me to much-needed sustenance. These are probably the three best climbs I've found in town - all highly recommended, and even Eldo climber Josh agreed. Most excellent.
9 August - Boulder Canyon w/ Amber: It's been nearly a month, really, since any of my partners have been available for climbing; afternoons, weekends, anything. I've resorted to random web hookups. After today, I'm resorting to rope solo aiding. What the hell. At least I can go climbing. I climbed with Amber this morning for a couple of hours at the Castle, practicing basic starting aid on Country Club Crack's entry bolts before heading up to Leadville to watch Sean on his bike ultra.
10 August - Indian Peaks Wilderness w/ Skibby: A little training and recon today, we hiked into Hiamovi Tower (8 pitches of 5.4 that we didn't have time for).
16 August - Leadville Trail 100 w/ Sean & Anne: Went back to Leadville to crew and pace for Anne's dad and his friends from NC. I paced the Hope Pass return leg of the run for Rick, but we didn't make the cutoff coming back into Twin Lakes; the rest of the night Sean, Anne, and Frank paced Dave back to the finish for his first 100-miler completion. Congrats, Dave!
<Roadtrip - climbing vacation>
See the photography essay for the roadtrip here for some most excellent fullsize images. 19 August - Vedauwoo w/ Josh & Fran: We warmed up on Edwards Crack (7) which works in a single pitch with a 70m, and then headed back towards Hassler's Hatbox (7) for some more intro-to-Vedauwoo climbing. Josh worked out (and got worked) on Roofus (11b), and I got worked over a bit on Cat's Cradle (8+) before we headed back towards the front side. Josh wanted the nice-looking slab of Water Streak II (9+/10a) with the Kopishka finish, and Fran and I followed him up before calling the half-day a day and heading to camp for chow.
(DAY #55). 20 August - Vedauwoo w/ Josh & Fran: Hot day - according to Joe, one of the locals from Laramie we linked up with, it only gets like this about ten days a year up here. I put up an 'easy' route, Stinkzig (6MA), using nothing smaller than a number 4 BigBro and having problems with the #5 Camalot walking, and found that there weren't anchors when I finally struggled through to the top. Josh and Fran worked on Flying Buttress (10b) for their warmup; the main attraction for the day was Friday the 13th (9+/10a), in the sun. Josh led the first pitch and started working on the 11a second pitch, but gave in after several valiant attempts.
21 August - Vedauwoo w/ Josh & Fran: A long day away from the offwidths on the Fall Wall. Josh and I led Unnamed 5.9, an excellent friction climb on the far right of the wall. Josh put up Fall Wall Route (10a) and then tried out the Spider God (11b) direct start to the problem on TR, and I had my eye on 5.11 Crack (9+). Josh TRd Gunga Din (11a) from the 5.11 anchors, and Fran and I played around on EO Friction (5) and Cold Finger (7) to set up a rap from the upper platform. The rope fell into a big chimney system during the pull, and I ended up free soloing around in the it's-not-a-route area of OWs and chimneys, getting in well over a pitch up and down both of 5.8 or so rock. Josh finally wanted to get on Space Oddity (12a), a vertical slab on the right side of the Coke Bottle, so we let him go to it. Pleasant day - proving that Vedauwoo doesn't have to be nasty all the time.
22 August - Vedauwoo w/ Fran: We started out back at the Nautilus; I wanted to climb the whole formation and top out on the Parabolic Slab, and Mother #1 (7) was the most direct way to do it. After quickly moving up the anchor on the Parabolic Slab (2), we tried rapping all the way to the deck with the 70m - and it almost worked. The last six feet of easy chimneying got us down quickly. We pulled the rope, and it of course snagged in the offwidth top crux of Flying Buttress, two pitches up. This necessitated climbing up Right Etude (5) with the spare rope to free the primary, for another fun little pitch. We took a couple of hours in the afternoon to go to town and let the weather decide what it wanted to really do that afternoon, and after it decided it wasn't just going to open up the heavens we went back to Poland Hill for some more climbing in the evening. Fran led Kim (6), and I decided to have a run up SW Friction (4) a couple of times just for fun. Fantasia (9/10) was calling me, but I opted to lead up Sugar Crack (7-) first, with Fran putting up the short second pitch; this put us on top of the hill again, at the Fantasia anchor. I asked for a TR belay and gave it a go. Hard. Quite hard. Protecting that climb on lead must be amazingly difficult.
24-25 August - Grand Teton w/ Josh & Fran: After a driving day to the Tetons, we linked back up with Josh for an afternoon hike to the Lower Saddle. Next morning, we went up Direct Exum (7) with some variations on P5-6 onto the Gold Face (10-, although we didn't get quite over that far), and topped out with Upper Exum.
26 August - Middle Teton, solo: Josh boogied down this morning, and Fran was cooked from yesterday afternoon's up-and-down in the Wall Street couloir, so I took a little run by myself up the Middle, something I'd been wanting to do for awhile. Loose, nasty, scary climbing on the NW face, probably as ugly as anything I've soloed anywhere. The views from the top were great. We hiked back out for dinner at Bubba's and bunkspace at the Ranch.
27 August - Yellowstone w/ Fran: Waking up to full clouds, cold, wind, and general nastiness (the mountains completely obscured from even right there at the base) we decided not to go climbing again today, and took a roadtrip tour up to Yellowstone instead, driving the grand loop and stopping for short hikes at all of the various sites around. I got in three short free solos on Sheepeater Cliff to say I had some climbing for the day. (28 August was called when two of Fran's friends were killed in a small plane crash in MN.)
29-30 August - Wind Rivers w/ Fran: Aiming for some more alpine climbing in the Cirque of Towers area, we hiked into Big Sandy Lake. It started raining about an hour and a half into the hike in, and didn't stop until 9 the next morning. After 16 hours of continuous rain and a snow level 500 feet above us (right at the base of the climbs), we decided to bag it and hiked back out, for the long drive home. No technical climbing for this little trip, but it looks like an interesting enough place to try for again.
You did check out the photography essay for the roadtrip, now didn't you? </Roadtrip - climbing vacation, 2182 vehicle miles later>
6 September - Sheeps Nose w/ Rob: A wet forecast for the weekend; it was spitting on me as I drove up the pass to meet Rob at 0645. The road to Turkey is still closed, so we opted for something less committing in case the rain started up in earnest. The approach to Sheeps Nose is convenient, and the rock excellent - we put up the nice little two-pitch Ten Years After (9, ***) and eyeballed the Lamb and Manta Ray before deciding to come back in good weather for a big enchainment day. The sustained layback on Ten Years is a hoot.
14 September - Cross-training day w/ Sean: The Basic is coming up in six weeks, so some other physical activity to get me ready is in order. Sean and I ran the Marshall Mesa - Doody loop today (9.2 miles) and then went for a bike-break-in ride near Boulder Reservoir (14 miles).
15 September - Cross-training day: More to see what it'd be like than anything else, I rode the new bike across town to work and back today, 16.1 miles. This is not a particularly bike-friendly town.
17 September - Flagstaff Trash Bash and Cross-training w/ Sean: I missed this event last year, and it needed to be attended this year. The rain started as we left Chataqua to run up the Flagstaff trail to the ampitheater, but kept us cool on the climb. Torrential downpours during the trash pickup made us cold and wet, but Willie came through with beer and barbeque afterwards, followed by a swagfest of unrivaled proportions (I got a resole and a copy of Colorado Bouldering 2, along with tons of chalk, Mojo bars, and all the beer we could drink, followed by some buildering around the cold, wet shelter after everyone else left.
18 September - Eldo w/ Jeffers_mz: We started out late, but parking was easy midweek and we headed up to the Great Zot start (8+) to Rewritten. Jeff couldn't pull the low crux move on the route, and I decided it might be better to find something a bit easier and less committing than the remainder of the route for the day. After retrieving a booty stopper and sling from Flakes (9), I put up West Crack (4) on Whale's Tail with a direct right chimney start (9ish), and we headed off for camping in the Roosevelt.
(DAY #65). 19 September - Lumpy w/ Jeffers_mz: An early morning start today got us up to the Pear, first party on the rock. I intended to climb Magical Chrome... (7, 5 pitches), but took an alternate not-in-the-book start that turned into a 9PG start to Salud (8), and then passed another party that had taken the 5.6 start by angling right onto the Pear's face for some 5.7 OW. We turned off below the last 5.7 pitch on the route to head to the cabin for the Gathering that evening.
20 September - Lumpy w/ Josh: I made a poor decision last night and stayed up drinking and partying until 0430, even with my plans to meet Josh at 0700 for a harder Lumpy day. Not deterred, Josh intended to bag Turnkorner (10b, 7 pitches) on Sundance Buttress; I was sober and almost feeling human by the time we arrived at the wall. Josh led the route in three rope-stretcher 70m pitches; I freed the 5.9 pitches but couldn't even begin to get the .10a and .10b roofs into the heinous offwidths. Too tired, I leapfrogged #3 and #4 camalots and eventually pulled through. Plans for a midnight naked fixed-rope ascent of MacGregor Slab were waylaid by lack of sleep and overall wooziness.
21 September - Lumpy w/ Jeff Reno: Feeling much better this morning, Jeff, Skibby, and I went back out for some more mellow climbing on the Pear. I wanted to start with something easy, 5.6R-ish perhaps; East Slabs looked pretty good from the ground. Unfortunately, the route (which has been rated as hard as 5.7X I learned afterwards) left something to be desired, and I felt that my wandering path was closer to 5.8X. A second 5.easy pitch took us off, and we'd had enough adventure. Jeff put up the first two pitches of Magical Chrome Plated Semi-Automatic Enema Syringe (5.6) for the standard first walk-off, and we both felt that we'd had more than enough fun for the day. Tired, sore, bruised, and bloody, I came home to the hottub.
26 September - Cross-training day: The ride back and forth to work today went much more smoothly with a more bike-friendly cruise along the surface streets. I think I'm getting old, though; boy, the back and legs are worked a little!!
27 September - Cross-training day: Ran (okay, I mostly hiked - it was steep!) the Devil's Thumb - King Lake trail in the IPW with Sean and Dave, about 16.5 miles and 3000' vert, to keep working up to the Basic. Perhaps some more smaller runs would be in order before attempting big stuff like this... Ow. The Libra Bash birthday party (complete with the 'angry slideshow') was another complete success afterwards - thanks to Scott and Janet for the killer margarita vat!
5 October - GoG w/ Tara: Took Tara out for her first day rock climbing at the Garden today. We headed for an excellent beginner practice area, Cowboy Boot (6/7, **), where I started out; I put up the pitch with my soloist, and set the climb up for Tara to toprope. She climbed well, not ever asking or aparently even wondering what to do with her hands or feet. The only interesting part was lowering her - neither of us knew that she might be uncomfortable sitting back on the rope and walking down backwards. I gave her a quick rudimentary belay lesson and went up to clean the route. It was a pretty nice afternoon, but enough for a starter.
9 October - Cross-training day: Cut off an run off the road on the way biking to work today... this town is not very cycle friendly. I didn't chase him down and beat him, but felt like I should have. Other than that and the headwind on the way home, it made for a couple of good rides.
11 October - Sheeps Nose w/ Rob: We'd been planning on doing a longer day at Sheep since last we were here, to try a few new routes and play all day. That didn't quite happen, but we still had a helluva good day on Lost In Space (9, ***, 4 pitches) and Ten Years After (9, ***); Robbie wasn't quite up for the leads he wanted so I took the hard pitches (4/5), and we were smoked before we could get onto the new stuff we've been eyeing. I looked hard at the Ozone Variation to finish up LIS, but a big bush thwarted me. That's okay, 'cause it looks like it's not climbed very often - no chalk and lots of lichen on it. A beautiful fall day in the SPlatte.
(DAY #70) 16 October - Bouldering in Central Park, NYC: When in the city... My college buddy and old alpine partner Pete is getting married on Saturday, and I'm making the most of my weekend-plus trip out east. Along with a nice 2-1/2 mile run in the park, I swung by Rat Rock for a few minutes and played around on Flakes (V0) just to say I had not been there and not sampled it. It's not worth a trip for itself, I don't think, but it was a neat thing to do while hanging in the City for awhile.
17 October - Gunks w/ Katie & Rich: Here's the meat and potatoes of the trip. We started off with Laurel (7+, *) in Uberfall, an obvious crack line that looked like a good warmup; the moves off the deck stymied me for awhile as I got used to moving up on polished marginal feet; Molly's (a local belaying her friend up Rhododendron to our right) help with the opening moves was great, and gave me a really nice impression of right coast climbers. After Rich followed and cleaned, we moved down to look for something else interesting, settling on Shockley's Ceiling (6, ***, 3 pitches); I got to lead all three pitches including my first real roof, which I attempted and pulled in the ugliest fashion possible. Rich said afterward that he made it look even worse, though I think he was just being nice. Katie had bowed out of both of these two climbs, telling us she was content to relax and read at the base and just not be at work. When we got down, she was cold and miserable, and we set back to the Uberfall area looking for some easy 1-pitch climbing that she could enjoy as well. Ken's Crack (7, **) looked quite inviting, so I stepped up. After a false start and lots of 'I dunno' from twenty feet up, I came down to rest, went back up, hesitated some more to nearly muscle failure, and then as Rich was offering to lower me fired the in-the-crack ring crimp move I'd finally figured out and sent the rest of the route. Rich followed it and moved the rope over to Boston (4 OW/chim) a few paces to the right and we sent Katie up, unwillingly. I ended up going up after her work on the route to clean and take apart the anchors, and we adjourned for the day. Katie didn't have a lot of fun today, unfortunately, but Rich enjoyed getting back onto rock after a four year hiatus from injury. I loved it; birthday climbing in the Gunks. I hope to make it back here for a few days with some good strong partners again someday not too far away. See pictures of the Gunks birthday trip here and here.
18 October - Pinnacle Mountain, Plainville CT, solo: In between Pete and Kathy's wedding and reception up the road in Simsbury, I drove quickly back down to Metacomet for a little bit of rock that Dawn (Tradgirl), her friend Lisa, and my partner Rob had recommended to me as being 'right in the neighborhood' of the wedding. Unfortunately time was tight, and I didn't have a partner or inclination to break out the rope and gear for a more interesting line. Having only about a half hour to kill, I went up and finally figured out, with a little help from a few locals cleaning up their stuff, where Sixth Sense (6) was located for a little free solo action, my first on rock. Traprock is interesting stuff, and I'd figured out yesterday not to get in over my head, particularly alone at a new area, where no one knew where I was. I soloed up the line, a bit nervous but never in trouble, took some pictures from the top, and soloed back down a 5.0 route on the southern end of the formation. Back in time for catching up with old friends at the reception - I had planned on another Gunks day for Sunday, but it rained all day on me and I made it into a tour-photo day along the Hudson instead. See pictures of the Connecticut climbing, Pete's wedding, and my sojourn along the Hudson here.
25 October - Mt. Sanitas, solo: Whilst Sean ran the Cardiac Arete, the first and probably only approved race on Boulder's OSMP land, I hung out alongside the trail and bouldered, stopping to take pictures of the runners (I'd possibly have run, but there was mandatory trail work ahead of time when I was at Pete's wedding). I hung out with some people I didn't know, played social, and traversed around a bit on V0s and V1s in the sun. Afterwards we rode our bikes to the Hill for the awards party at the bar and back. Yah. We're hard-core like that.
28 October - Cross training day: 16 more miles on the bike.
29 October - Cross training day: Yet 16 more miles on the bike, in what might be the last nice day of it for the year. The current approximate times to work and back are 38:04 and 41:39.
1 November - BBMM: Well, after 36 hours of freezing rain in Boulder, the trail was coated in 1/2" of ice. Those hardy enough to even start it turned back after a mile and a half and called for an earlier (as in, October, not 9am) start for next year. Bummer. I was really looking forward to getting in a good long run that I'd been halfway training for. :( Instead, we finished wiring the structured media in Sean's house as part of the basement remodel project. Thank god that's all done. Looking forward to movies in the new theatre!
8 November - Cross training day: Went for a little trail run from the Breck condo up to the ski patrol shack atop Peak 9 today, 6 miles and 1794' of gain in the round-trip. People looked (and told us) at us a little funny as we ran down the snow-packed slopes as they hiked and skinned up for early-season poached runs, but I think we had more fun all in all.
9 November - Cross training day: Another, shorter training run this morning took us up the Blue River bike trail from the condo to the Boreas Pass winter trailhead, a fun run up and down in the woods south of town for about 4.85 miles roundtrip and 895' of gain total.
15 November - Skiing and cross training day: Before a little run on the Boreas Pass road, we went out and tele'd a couple of runs on Breck's newly opened run that we'd run last week, confirming that running down it was far more satisfying than skiing it with the increasing crowds. The lift lines got out of control after two laps, and we went back for a nap and then a run from the Boreas Pass trailhead that we'd ended up at last week to Baker's Tank, a wonderful 6 mile out-and-back on the old railroad grade with about 500' of gain on snowshoe and x-country track. The combined run from last Sunday and today looks like fun for a longer day, 10.6 miles RT and 1382' gain. Someday...
21 November - Skiing, Breckenridge solo: Working too many hours the past weeks with the company move and all that jazz; I took today as comp time and headed up to the ski huas for a few turns this afternoon in early-season windy conditions. Good teleing through the little trees still poking up around the Mercury area.
22 November - Skiing, Breckenridge, w/ Phany: After a disappointing night of no new snow, the storm arrived by lunch and started laying down new, cold snow on the manmade base. We spent a few hours this afternoon sampling the nicely ungroomed natural conditions around Gold King, excited by the snow's excellent coverage this early.
23 November - Skiing, Breckenridge, w/ Phany: -25°F wind chills are nothing to be skiing in; the snow from yesterday was all we had to work with, and the high sustained winds had forced the cats to groom out what remained of the beautiful snow from yesterday. It was really too cold to be out there, so we made a couple of runs on Gold King, freezing our patooties off and called it a morning. I was really hoping to get out on the ice with Sean today, but it was obviously too cold and nasty to be contemplating what we wanted to get on in the Park. It'll still be there after Turkey Day.
27 November - Skiing, Breckenridge solo: A cold afternoon at Breckenridge was warmed up by turkey, mashers, and stuffing, card games, and some bowling at Dynah's condo in Wildernest. I happily had decided on Wednesday to not play at work on Friday, and began to really enjoy my spontaneous long weekend today.
28 November - Skiing, Breckenridge w/ Dynah: We found some ice, we found some nice early-season packed, and we even found some fresh tracks on newly opened terrain today. This really, really beats working.
29 November - Long slog up Quandary w/ Sandbag: I had a major bonk at 13k, not too surprising after two days of skiing hard and staying up late last night. Neither of us was too disappointed in not summiting with the 40 knot headwind; I had other things on my mind to get back to in town.
30 November - Skiing, Breckenridge w/ Dynah: One more day for the weekend, and we spent it well. The sun and lack of new snow has begun to take a toll on the conditions, but the holiday crowd had all gone home and we had the lifts to ourselves. I could barely get the motivation up to head home after this weekend; wow. I hope I can figure out all the whys and hows that are running through my head now sometime soon. :)
1 December - Cross training day: 5.35 mile hike, 5.35 mile bike to support vehicle preventative maintenance operations. Now I know why I don't like biking in the cold; all the cold fingers misery of ice climbing and none of the fun ice bashing.
4 December - Rolled the battle wagon over 250,000 miles today at work. Still going strong on the first clutch with good maintenance.
(DAY #75). 6 December - North Table Mountain w/ Dynah: Got out for some introductory climbing with Dynah today, just to get back on the rock and to enjoy a beautiful day outside. We only did one route, Henry Spies the Line (7?), but it was enough; making the first clip wearing approach shoes a size too big for me gave me plenty of adrenaline for the morning. We finished up the day with an hour and a half of biking at Matthews/Winters, and went for sushi.
7 December - North Table Mountain w/ Dynah: Just a little more climbing this morning, on an unnamed 8/9 problem that gave me more problems than I'd care to admit. Dynah followed up it and I took a more direct line on TR before we'd had enough; we wanted another multisport day, and called it early so we could explore some of the biking paths around Golden. Biking around town, so much more convenient than the Springs, was quite fun even though it was mostly pavement riding.
11 December - Playing hooky at Breck with Dynah: A cold, humid day limited our time on the mountain, despite the good new snow that had fallen, and we did some xmas shopping, eating, and hot tubbing instead to fill out the time. There's not as much snow as this time last year, but the quality is pretty good and I'm looking forward to some good powder days in the next few months with the base we've accumulated.
13 December - Cross training day: Dynah actually suggested we go trail running - a departure for her, despite her x-country running days in HS. We ran up Chimney Gulch and down Lariat Loop (the Lookout Mtn road), cold and frozen all the way. Nice 6.35 mile run with some fartleks thrown in for me; next time, a flatter, more mellow intro run for us, though.
14 December - Cross training day: The trails were too muddy from last week's snow to actually go off-road much (as we found out), so we did a nice long ride from Golden to Morrison on the bike path system, about 18.25 miles. The drive home on Monday bit with the unexpected blizzard, and I had to use my (believe it) hair dryer to get the bike and skis off of the rack.
18 December - Cross training day: The long cross-town bike commute is not fun when it's 20° out there. Added 20.5 miles to the bike milage today, and feeling stronger than a month ago on long rides.
20 December - North Table Mountain w/ Dynah: The weather this morning was cloudy and cool, not quite what was forecast, but by shortly after lunch it turned nicer and the clouds broke up over Golden. We took advantage of the pleasant weather with some climbing, first a trad jaunt up Heidi Hi (8) and then a more sporting climb on Brain Cloud Arete (9+). I'd gotten over my frustration with losing a cam in Heidi by the time I reached the top of Brain Cloud, quite over-excited. Bleagh, sport climbing.
21 December - Cross training day w/ Dynah: We started off with a short loop on the Betasso Preserve trail, which turned out to be too icy for my real enjoyment, and had some time left in the afternoon; another go on Betasso didn't sound like fun to me, so we headed out to Boulder Res for a long aerobic dirt ride on Eagle and Left Hand trails.
24 December - Ice at Silver Cascade, solo: I needed to get back on the ethereal medium so I'd be ready for upcoming adventures in RMNP and Ouray in the next few weeks, so I headed to the local spot. It was hard to get my head back on straight for ice soloing, and I stuck to the WI3 stuff for 2 laps (4 pitches) instead of being overly ballsy and risking a big fall. The ice is in fat and wide, but the conditions are just a little strange still. Or maybe it's just my head. Anyway, it was wet and warm, and a good way to spend an hour after the empty office today.
25 December - Silver Cascade ice w/ Sandbag: Jason came down and we took him out to the local ice spot to scuff up his new tools, in preparation for Ouray (can't show up with new tools there!). Had some classes and toprope practice on the fist pitch, and some screw-placement practice on TR before our time was up and he had to run up north to dinner in Greeley. Fun. The trails were a zoo and a family started throwing ice down the falls as we were leaving, hopefully unaware that we were there.
(DAY #80). 26 December - Horsetooth w/ Sandbag: Despite the time I've spent in Fort Collins previously, the reservoir has been closed due to dam maintenance and terrorist paranoia. Today we went bouldering (lots of highball free-soloing, really) at Rotary Park. It took awhile to get into the groove again for unroped rock, but by sunset we were pulling down on some really fun thin footwork problems. This was super-enjoyable, and actually yielded a few dozen good pictures.
27 December - Too bloody cold to climb. Drove to Winter Park to have a relaxing evening hanging out with Sandbag, Skibabeage, and Fran.
28 December - Again, too cold and nasty outside to do the planned climb/traverse from Berthoud Pass to James Peak to the Rollins Pass road. Instead, Martha, Fran and I went snowshoeing up the St. Louis creek drainage towards Bottle Peak in the early afternoon, with a full ice pack for full training value. Nice, but cold, afternoon out.
31 December - My 81st day saw another couple of laps on Silver Cascade, trying not to be afraid to ice-solo. It's been a decent year, all told, and particularly in closing. I look forward to meeting some of the goals that I missed this year in the new. Happy trails and safe climbing to all.
And, that closes out another year. Be safe, and enjoy the world.
31 Dec-01 Jan - Backcountry (hut trip) skiing w/ Sean and Anne: A most excellent tele tour up to Harry Gates near Reudi Reservoir. Of 16 beds only five of us are there (eight girls from Dartmouth that had reservations ended up leaving for partying in Vail earlier in the day, unfortunately), and we cook a gourmet steak and chicken fajita dinner for 10. It snows a foot on us overnight and the skiing out is exceptional. Best New Years ever - definitely doing some more backcountry skiing this and next seasons.
5 Jan - Vail Ice climbing with Rob M.: The grandiose plan was to see how many cool, harder ice climbs we could hit in Vail and 10Mile in a single day, starting with a warm-up on Pumphouse, typically WI3. Today, not too cold but snowing, and very wet, Pumphouse was in fully at WI4 - argue amongst yourselves, but 85* ice for 80 feet is called WI4, not 3. I was expecting an easier lead than I got, and I felt wigged on it, but Rob told me I looked cool and collected through the whole thing. We TRd it a couple of times to see how it felt, and ended up staying the whole day. Rob got 4 laps and a nice blowout/flying session, and practiced placing his new BD screws, and I took 6 laps on everything I could find. The wet blue column in the middle was as vertical as anything got and running with water - I have to imagine it looked pretty awesome from the road and skate-track below. We (again) scoped the 10mile ice we wanted and made plans to go bag some of it soon.
14 Jan - Silver Cascade Ice Climbing w/ Jason M.: Jason has significant alpine experience, including Orizaba last year, but this is his first outing for pure ice climbing. I run up the first pitch of WI2+ and set up a tree belay on Silver Cascade, and lower down. After a few pointers and talk-throughs, up he heads. As he goes, his dog Chipeta, so well behaved at Shelf last week, runs from side-to-side around the ice, wondering where Jason is going. I think the ice is freaking her out. After talking Jason through proper efficient screw cleaning technique, he heads up a bit further, climbing quietly and cleanly; Chipeta, off on the upper left of the pitch now, decides to take a faster way down. She slides, somersaults, and lands upside down flopping onto her back and head sixty feet down at the base. It was kind of disturbing to watch - that would have killed a human outright. I rapidly lower and untie Jason from the middle of the pitch. Chipeta appears okay, no guarding or obvious broken bones, so I solo up to clean the pitch to get us out quickly; I finish the second pitch out solo as well and we move out to the cars. The day was shortened a bit, but Jason still got a good start to an intro and x-rays don't seem to see anything obviously broken in Chipeta. Probably, hopefully, just some bruises and maybe some dislocated ribs. We'll repeat this, but Chipeta's a rock crag dog, not going to be accompanying us on ice anymore.
27 Jan - Ooh-la-la, got the Kayland Revolution ice boots I'm supposed to demo and report on today came in the mail from Italy!!! They fit right out of the box; probably a 1/4 size too large, but that fits nicely with my heavy wool climbing socks; the fit initially seems to be about right on for US street sizes (I'm a 10, and a US 10 fits just about perfectly). The toebox room is slightly higher volume than I'd love, but it's a heckuva lot better than the too-tight fit in my Karakorams. The overall bulkiness of the boot and perfect padding across the tongue lets me lace them directly and securely without skipping eyelets, and they're just freakin' comfortable. Gotta go give 'em a try in the next couple of days. :)
13 Feb - Silver Cascade, solo: Finally it's time to break in the new Kayland boots. It's just been so cold and nasty that I really haven't been highly motivated to get out there on the weekends. Went in early to work so I'd have most of the afternoon off, and drove up to the local solo ice for some climbing. :) Got in about 7 pitches and gave 'em a feel; except for a crampon-off episode traversing after the first pitch (quickly corrected the tension), they felt pretty good. Warm, comfortable, responsive, and nice and flexy in the ankles. Wearing rigid cramps (Footfangs) with asymmetric boots is interesting; you have to mismatch the heel bails to get a good fit. I would think that semi-rigids would be a better fit for these boots. Good afternoon, chatted with the Gravity Play guys about some desert routes and possibilities for some guide work in Golden and Eldo later in the year.
16 Feb - Eldo w/ Scott C.: Time to break in the new Aliens. Got up (too) early again and drove to Boulder for some more fun rock time. The frontside of the mountains were pretty clear, but there were a couple of inches of fresh snow and lots of ice up in the canyon. Undeterred, we warmed up on Mister Natural (8+), a short bloody-cold-on-the-hands crack, and as the sun peeked around the corner headed further up Redgarden to Rewritten (7, ***, with the optional 8+ Zot start and Rebuffat's Arete finish, 5-6 pitches). We swung leads, dancing around the ice and snow on the ledges and belays, but the crux was traversing ankle-deep snow on the slabs leading to the 'walk-off' up top. Rewritten is an exceptional climb - this was my first full climb on the super-imposing and scary looking Redgarden Wall, and I am totally impressed with the caliber of the rock. It sure looks menacing from below, but it's quite fun and mellow (route-dependent, of course) once you're up on it. One of the best pitches of 7 I've ever led was the 4th, hand traverse to finger crack. At one belay station, Scott is changing out gear in his jacket pockets and the keys almost fall out - nearly lost them, but caught it. Finally I'm out in my new all soft outers - windblock and Schoeller, and I'm quite impressed with it all. It was cool to cold all day, but never frigid; gloves at belays, hats all day, and I had to wear my mittens up after a snow-seat belay for the top (combined two) pitches. The new small-size set of Aliens meets all of my expectations as well; now for some #1 Camalots for the mix. The sun came back out as we crested and downclimbed onto the north slopes, too late for us to climb in. The snow and ice conditions haven't improved in the canyon all day; an AWD Volvo is in the ditch opposite the creek with a number of people helping push it out as we descend the trail. It certainly kept the crowds away, though. When we get back down to the parking lot, though, the keys are indeed gone, again; somewhere on the last pitch and descent they went AWOL. So it goes. 
17 Feb - Tele day at A-Basin w/ Andrea & Chrysauna: A cold, windy day - well, afternoon, the morning was pretty nice - skiing with my teacher friends at the Basin. Big realization for the day, yet again, was 'need to eat more often.' I was so tired from not eating the last two days that I could barely ski; five or so harder runs (and I remember being able to do 20 of this in a row a few years back) and I was so finished that I felt unsafe on the slope, for myself and others. Fortunately the bar at the lodge is a friendly place for tired single burn-out tele skiers. :) More food commitments at the beginning and end of each play day might really, really help me out.
22 Feb - Lincoln Falls w/ Rob M.: We had planned on driving to Vail to climb some ice in the Dez area, but the snow reports this morning indicated 10 inches of fresh at the resorts; the drive up was slow due to poor road conditions, and as we approached Hoosier Pass we decided we should just stop and get a long day on good, known ice rather than screw around in the car for an extra 3-4 hours. After starting down the road to Lincoln parking I decided it was a bad idea to try in the low-slung Honda, so we tried backing back out - good thing we stopped where we did. After putting on chains and spending a half hour extricating the car, we hiked the extra half mile to parking and headed up towards the ice. The lot is surprisingly empty - only three cars - and we decide that it's due to everyone wanting to ski with the new snow and poor weather. The first pitch of the left gully was brittle and rotten, brown, and definitely not confidence-inspiring. Hoping the second pitch (WI3+/4) is better, I start up on bluer ice with two other parties at the belay ledge. The first run goes smoothly, breaking off trap-ice from the surface to get decent picks, but I feel like the pro is sketchy anyway. I set up an anchor on the top boulder and we decide to TR the second pitch with the other parties. We all share ropes for the day, taking six or seven rides each on all sorts of interesting combinations, the weather alternately pleasant but overcast to windy and blowing snow. No one else comes up the first pitch to bother us all day, and we all have our fill of climbing; the ropes and belay devices are barely moving by the end of the day, frozen solid, but we're all quite pleased with the quiet day at Lincoln.
1 Mar - Silver Cascade w/ Sean H.: Sean & Anne finally make it down to the Springs for a weekend; we are hoping to go climbing at Shelf and Anne has a race in Pueblo, but the weather is atrocious. For the 7th, 8th, and 9th days in a row we are reduced to shoveling snow and trying to do something, anything, outside. Sean and I head for the easy solo ice in Cheyenne Canyon to play a bit and take pictures and video with the new Bugs camera setup, as it starts snowing - harder and harder (eventually about 14" new, on top of the foot or two we've already had). We make two laps (4 pitches) and try to take some interesting photos, but the battery charge is exhausted before we can get everything that we want. Here's the first pitch, WI2+, in unattended video (5.14Mb .avi). We make up for it with a big Irish dinner and a decent bunch of photos from the GoG with snow on Sunday morning. Considering getting sick sometime this week for some Vail days...
6 Mar - Tele day at Vail w/ Sean & Cheyenne: I've been skiing for 25 years now, and I've never seen myself (pics or video) skiing. That changes today - and apparently, I can ski a little (As 'Drea says, "poetry in motion type smooth snowy stylin'"). :) The snow was too good to go to work today, and this was a lot more fun anyway. The wind kept China Bowl and Blue Sky closed all day, restricting us to less than half of the mountain - not that it matters at a place like Vail. We spent most of the day playing in Sundown Bowl on perfect windpack and several feet of fresh snow, and taking video with the new digital minicam. Exceptional conditions, and now I don't have to brave the crowds for a ski fix this weekend!
8 Mar - Shelf w/ Sean & Andrea: The excitement started before we even got to the cliff. The approach road to Cactus Cliff, under the Dark Side and heavily shaded, was muddy and covered in snow from the dumps of the last two weeks. Depite cars beginning to park below the road, I figured to give it a try - and made it about 2/3 of the way up the crux pitch before the tires were spinning in the icey ruts. Uh-oh. Full brakes were useless as we started sliding back down the steep road, picking up speed, towards the corner (and dropoff below it). Needless to say, my passengers were not pleased at this point. We finally stopped in the mud just above the corner, after a wild 20mph ride down the hill backwards. I parked low and tried to put it out of their minds. :)
15ish Mar - Boulder: The plan was to get some climbing in after the Denver FM hash and some work on Sean's front door and deck this weekend; the hash went (too) well, and we spent Saturday morning, and into the sunny afternoon, painting, cutting, and generally being useful. My exhaustion level from lack of sleep on Friday told me climbing wasn't probably a great idea today, so Sean suggested we take an easy mountain bike tour down to Eldo and back. Just to show that I was a good sport, even though I don't and don't like biking, we did; and on an easy, almost-not-technical section on the way back I rolled over the bike, the bike rolled over me, the rock steps didn't care, and I bled all over poor Anne's bike. I avulsed a good piece of the skin formerly known as my left hand, and tweaked and bruised myself all over. Soooo... instead of climbing plans for the weekend we continued to work on the house projects (which are looking really good), ate, drank, and checked out the weekend club scene in town. Could've been worse. Snow blows in on Monday, so it'll most likely be a ski weekend to give my skin some regeneration time before any more climbing.
22 Mar - Tele day @ Vail w/ Sean, Dan, & Jo Ann: After another night of Disco w/ Drea, I got up early to partake in the new snow of the week with Sean and some Boulder friends. We took it easy (Dan has his second orthro surgery this week, and Jo is six months pregnant), enjoyed the snow and sun, and just had a good time being mellow on the teles.
28 Mar - Tele day @ A Basin w/ Drea & Chrysauna: Ouch. We apparently overdid it yesterday, just a wee bit, especially Drea's spectacular flip-crash on 10 at 3:45 - but, nevertheless, out we went. A Basin had 1.5" new, but that's enough on a weekday. Anticipating an easy warm-up run, I was quickly distracted by a hot tele girl heading towards Exhibition... I followed, of course. Good, cute, but apparently only a year or two into tele. Warm up on double blacks, everything else is cake all day. Then, a few hours of bumps and jumps, and an amazing thing happened - they opened the North Pole, for the first time in like three years. Of course, I hiked. And who should be right there at the top when I got there? Hot tele girl. Cute, good skier, and friendly to boot. But in tow with male snowboarder friend. But that's okay. It was a great run, lawn-darting 4 time by the upper traverse in bomb-heavy snow conditions, and another time at the bottom of the steep before Lenawee (long slog out to the trails there...). Afterwards, we blew it out completely - anything steep and covered in snow that I could find, Rollercoaster (Pali liftline), Radical, Upper International, Exhibition... I can barely walk up the stairs now, and it was so worth it. When the Basin gets snow, go. And now, to plan the weekend. ;)
2 Apr - GoG w/ Greg T.: Spent the late afternoon bouldering at the Snake Pit; the rock is much friendlier than at Carter or Flagstaff, and maybe just maybe my fingers are getting tougher as well. The problems went down, V0, V0, V0, V1, V1, V2, V2, V2. The last two V2s took some work, and the second to last still needs to be linked from the ground - but the parts are all there. Definitely need to spend a day a week doing this after work. Tele weekend with Florida Bill looms large in the scope now.
5 Apr - Tele day @ A Basin w/ Florida Bill: Hoping that the sun shining brightly in through the window would bring warmth and less-icey conditions at the Basin, we headed up the valley. No such luck. If not for Bill, I would have called this one right away - instead, we tried to find something skiable, lucking onto the Lenawee liftline's sort-of protected aspects. Pali was insanely firm, so after a barbeque on the beach we headed back up and practiced classical (one-pole) tele technique on Lenawee for the rest of the afternoon. Please, more snow tomorrow!
12 Apr - 11Mile w/ RC.com (climbing w/ Charlie & Fran): Charlie is a cool guy. He's a student at Western State in Gunny, and completely deaf. His dog Mort is pretty cool too. It's very interesting climbing with someone that doesn't communicate the same as you, and is funny as hell to boot. We warmed up on Schooldaze on Turret Dome (5.5, 5.4. 5.9+) for starters - my favorite pitch of the weekend, probably, was the second; one piece in at a roof, run out 60m on fun easy rock in 4 minutes flat. Looking for others, we wandered down to Arch Rock and hopped on Obscura Direct (8, 7) and picked up Fran at the first belay station. After a mellow topout, we headed further down the rock and hopped onto Waiting for Staircase, amidst a group of other RC.commers; I left my ATC on the rope to pass the knot on lower, and got all the way to the top before figuring out that the knot wouldn't pass through the pro I'd placed. Instead, I brought up Charlie with a trail rope for a rap; but of course, without a belay device, I had to resort to a solid sitting belay on the high-angle slab. The group of newbies that Matt was teaching on the adjacent Staircase wondered and watched; I told them not to do what I was doing. We were tired and getting more so after this, so we headed back to camp for a big community dinner.
13 Apr - 11Mile w/ RC.com (climbing w/ Brad): Charlie left last night, so we were down to 5 for the last day; Fran linked up with Andrew and Craig, and Brad and I took off for some harder stuff on Arch next to them. Brad put up the first pitch, Captain Fist, and I continued up Arch Rock Route above (7R) with big consequences to the top anchors, below the roof system. We decided that since we were there we'd just stay high; Brad climbed up and put in an anchor under the roof and I lowered him to the top of Village Idiot (9R), and then he pendulum traversed me over. We each TRd the route, and then headed up out the roof to the top; there's a killer roof with jugs just above Village Idiot, 9ish, that's just great. Therefore, 5 pitches on a traverse tour of Arch! Everyone else was from further away than I, so we decided 'just one more pitch' on Hollow Flake (6) before heading out; Fran put it up first, and brought up Andrew and Craig, then while they played at the anchor I blitzed up to join them with another rope to bring up Brad. Great sunny day - need better sunscreen, though. :) This was a highly successful weekend trip, meeting cool new climbers from around the state.
27 Apr - Unaweep w/ Sean & Tony: We woke up to big boulders, all around us. I hadn't been here but once before, a year and a half ago, but hadn't even noticed the boulders on that trip. Sean took us to one concentration of them at another pullout, and we played around on some problems for an hour or so. Not being the primary purpose for our trip, we cut the activity short, had some breakfast, and drove on down to the Kokopelli Trail trailhead for some light-moderate mountain biking. I actually enjoyed it, after an hour or so of figuring out how things worked and how to ride single-track on rocks, dirt, and sand. Happily, no wrecks. More silliness on the road home, with a range rover right behind us careening and flipping outside Glenwood Springs, but it was a pretty much no-injuries weekend. And a fun one.
7 May - GoG w/ Greg: Went bouldering at the Snake Pit with Greg to take the edge off the afternoon. No worries with the V0s/1s, but a couple of those 2s are still not onsight material. For me, anyway. This is a great way to spend a couple of hours on a weekday afternoon.
10 May - Tanner (Fremont) Dome w/ Marilyn: Again looking for warmth (and this time not trusting the forecast), we headed south to a new, sorta hidden area not in any guidebook. After the drive, not really knowing what to look for, we found it after 30 minutes on back roads by glinting bolts on a big rock over the road. A minute or two up the trail I decided we were going to be on the wrong side of an opening ravine, and we crossed to climb a few hundred feet up towards a big crag; an hour of bushwhacking later, we arrived at the base, bumping into a guy I knew from cb.com asking us how the hike was (Ben Brustle, from Alamosa). Apparently, if we'd kept going up the trail another couple hundred yards, there's a nice trail. Oh well. Bushwhacking builds character. :) There's no guide for the crags and climbs here, so I picked something that looked like it would go. The opening moves to the second bolt were sustained 9+, and the rest of the traversing climb was solid 8; an absolutely beautiful climb. Thank you, whoever you are that bolted these fine climbs. Lyn TRd up the climb, finding the moves thin and hard, but moved through them without the wet slips on lichen that we had yesterday. Knowing that these weren't putting her in her happy place, we went down to some easy stuff and did a 'teaching' 2-pitch route on 5.6ish rock for some multi- and rap-setup practice for Lyn. Quite successful day, a great new place to climb, and some solid training for Marilyn today.
11 May - Shelf w/ Marilyn: Again, we didn't trust the weather forecast up north; the Shelf-area forecast looked much warmer and nicer, so we headed down for some sport climbing. That turned out to be the right answer, as I'm very sunburnt and tired as I write this out... :) I started off on Crynoid Corner (7) in my tennies, to get her a feel for her first climb on limestone. After an impromtu lesson on how to set up a rappel from on-top, which would come out as immensely important all day, we moved on. Still morning, and the corner being cold, we headed further down to find some pockets and sun-drenched climbs; White Punks on Pockets (9) was a breeze and fun, playing in the left side crack system. I went a bit further to Chompin' at the Cholla (9, *) and had a fine time; as Lyn went up and set up the rap some friendly visitors from North Conway came by and set up to get on it after us. I had a pleasant time talking about eastern climbing and this year's ice conditions, and just enjoying some good camaraderie. Next I wanted to push it up a little, and chose Toxxxic Entertainment (10a, *) on Spiny Ridge, a fun lieback flake; I wasn't sure that Lyn would make it all the way up the strenuous second half, so top-belayed from a hanging belay. I felt more and more uncomfortable, on the hang, with the flake not really all that attached and the bolts above a crack that didn't look too healthy; I kept feeling like the whole thing might just come off and plummet us both a hundred feet to the deck with a house-sized piece of limestone on top of us, and wondering how bad that fall would be (for the second or two that I was still able to think about it). It didn't come off, thankfully. Lyn worked her way up to the anchors, surprising me with her tenacity. As I was bringing her up a gentleman showed a group over to my next planned route, Damn Right I Got the Moves (8,*) nearby, and they declined the offer of a TR setup. After descending I found that they were the same young lads I'd met the previous weekend in the Garden, from Carson. They were happy and having a great day as well, but tired; I helped them out by finishing set up a TR of the 8 route that they were too tired to lead up, and chatted for awhile. We were pretty burnt at this point, and headed back towards Cactus for another climb or two. Raven was taken, and we watched two attractive girls throw through the crux dyno on Funkdamental before I chose the unknown 10a next to Oscar de la Cholla. I felt kind of rubbery on it, and Lyn took her time heading up on TR; the couple from Nederland, first day at Shelf, on Oscar were cool and fun to talk to as well as I shared some beta and belayed Marilyn up. By the time she came down we were both dead tired and decided to call it a day and weekend, thoroughly happy with the whole thing. Of course, the rope got caught thirty feet up in a crack and I had to solo up and down in my tennies to clean it, but the weekend was an unqualified success. New partner, good teachings, and great climbing. Looking forward to summer so much now.... And, as I got home the email tells me that Hayman has opened back up and Turkey, reachable on foot anyway, is open to climbing again. Happy days.
17 May - Turkey Rocks w/ Rob: Yay! YAY! Turkey is open again, my favorite climbing spot. For right now you still have to park at the intersection of Stump and FR360, and hump your gear in down and up the hill (about an hour, hour fifteen via the campground), but it's just so worth it to get back to my favorite place.
25 May - Boulder Canyon w/ Sean, Anne, & Allison: Anne invited her friend from work to do some single pitch stuff in the Canyon today with us; Allison is getting back into climbing for her upcoming lead class with CMC, and Anne hasn't been on-rock in a year and a half or so, so we looked consciously for some fun and more moderate stuff to get on. We started on the Dome's East Slab (6), having to leave Sean at the base to watch Loki, and then drove a bit further up to Happy Hour for a more dog-friendly environment. Sean put up Grins (8) in it's current seeping wet state, and I put up Nightcap (9, **), probably easier today than Grins because it was dry. I followed part of the way up Grins to remove a directional interfering with the double's knot just below the sloppy crux (having to employ some cute soloist techniques for the last 15 feet of the climb when the knot did indeed get fixed at the upper pro), and then we set the girls off on the climbs. I belayed Sean up Nightcap, and then started setting up Malign (7) in a steadily increasing rain that finally petered out, as Anne followed up Nightcap. I brought Allison up Malign, and then went back down to belay and follow Sean on Dementia (10a), the finger crack/slab that's always busy on the face. It was exceptionally stiff today, the crack wet and slidy, and the smears on the face just not happening with the humidity and damp rock. In different conditions this would be a really fun, and very continuously sustained 10 climb - it felt like hard 10 today, and I couldn't link the move at the top (I'm saying) because of the damp conditions. I think we all had an excellent day out.
29 May - Ironclads w/ Jen: Hottest day of the season yet, we set a new temperature record of 94* in Denver. Of course, that's far too warm to have followed through on our earlier plan of climbing in Golden, and so I decided to head higher. Up into the mountains near Allenspark we found more moderate temperatures and nice breezes at the Ironclads. I put up Shake Hands With the Unemployed (7) and brought Jen up, and then led Shaking the Pope's Hand (7, ***). Jen's exploits at the karaoke bar the previous night unfortunately caught up with her now in the still-hot direct sun, and the remainder of the day was set aside for just enjoying being outside and not working. It doesn't have to be fun to be fun.
31 July - Aiguille de St. Peter & The Pearly Gates w/ Josh: After a long bushwhack in due to conflicting directions, we spied the Martyr, on the north ridgeline extending from St. Peter's Dome. The views from these formations over South Cheyenne Canyon are enough to make it worthwhile, and the climbing is even better. Leaving our gear on top, we hiked to the base and Josh started up The Martyr's (9+, ***, 2 pitches) sustained first pitch. I felt a little 'off' following, and took my sweet time moving the belay around to the second-pitch belay ledge, and figuring out the opening moves to get on P2. P2 was just as good as P1, maybe a little longer - it just kept going and going, always sustained and fabulous climbing. With the new 70m we figured we could just barely set an anchor and rap back to the base in two steps - with about a foot to spare. Josh TRd Athenian Arete (12-) after a rappel inspection, and we decided to move over to the excellent-looking slab west of the Aiguille while we were in the area. More bushwhacking ensued. From the exposed base anchors on Pearly Gates, we looked up at our choices - a 9 bolted slab, or the classic and harder Pearly Gates (10a, ***), a steep slab with a very small crack/seam running most of its length. About this time I'd remembered that I hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday; although a little shaky, I picked the harder classic line (after all that work to get here, I'd have been a fool not to). The route went, and it felt mid-10 to me - protecting with gobs of small aliens and RPs, shaking from exhaustion the whole way. And went, and went. Somewhere past 40m up, with the last 50+ feet turning back to pure slab but easing off as you went higher, I finally topped and brought up Josh, as boom! booooom! from the approaching dark clouds taunted us. Shortly after topping, we made our wise decision for the day, as the rain started spitting, to collect our anchors and boogie off the exposed pinnacles. It blew and drizzled for a while as we found a more direct bushwhack out to the car; before calling it completely, though, we thought to drive down to Cheyenne Canyon and show Josh the best solid line in the area. As we viewed it from the road above, Josh kinda smiled, looked over, and said, 'Can we go do it?' Sure. It's not raining anymore. I gave Josh both leads up Crack Parallel (7/7+, ***, 2 pitches) and followed up and out the direct finish, and we surfed down the scree descent back to the car, and home for me to much-needed sustenance. These are probably the three best climbs I've found in town - all highly recommended, and even Eldo climber Josh agreed. Most excellent.
19 August - Vedauwoo w/ Josh & Fran: We warmed up on Edwards Crack (7) which works in a single pitch with a 70m, and then headed back towards Hassler's Hatbox (7) for some more intro-to-Vedauwoo climbing. Josh worked out (and got worked) on Roofus (11b), and I got worked over a bit on Cat's Cradle (8+) before we headed back towards the front side. Josh wanted the nice-looking slab of Water Streak II (9+/10a) with the Kopishka finish, and Fran and I followed him up before calling the half-day a day and heading to camp for chow.
21 August - Vedauwoo w/ Josh & Fran: A long day away from the offwidths on the Fall Wall. Josh and I led Unnamed 5.9, an excellent friction climb on the far right of the wall. Josh put up Fall Wall Route (10a) and then tried out the Spider God (11b) direct start to the problem on TR, and I had my eye on 5.11 Crack (9+). Josh TRd Gunga Din (11a) from the 5.11 anchors, and Fran and I played around on EO Friction (5) and Cold Finger (7) to set up a rap from the upper platform. The rope fell into a big chimney system during the pull, and I ended up free soloing around in the it's-not-a-route area of OWs and chimneys, getting in well over a pitch up and down both of 5.8 or so rock. Josh finally wanted to get on Space Oddity (12a), a vertical slab on the right side of the Coke Bottle, so we let him go to it. Pleasant day - proving that Vedauwoo doesn't have to be nasty all the time.
22 August - Vedauwoo w/ Fran: We started out back at the Nautilus; I wanted to climb the whole formation and top out on the Parabolic Slab, and Mother #1 (7) was the most direct way to do it. After quickly moving up the anchor on the Parabolic Slab (2), we tried rapping all the way to the deck with the 70m - and it almost worked. The last six feet of easy chimneying got us down quickly. We pulled the rope, and it of course snagged in the offwidth top crux of Flying Buttress, two pitches up. This necessitated climbing up Right Etude (5) with the spare rope to free the primary, for another fun little pitch. We took a couple of hours in the afternoon to go to town and let the weather decide what it wanted to really do that afternoon, and after it decided it wasn't just going to open up the heavens we went back to Poland Hill for some more climbing in the evening. Fran led Kim (6), and I decided to have a run up SW Friction (4) a couple of times just for fun. Fantasia (9/10) was calling me, but I opted to lead up Sugar Crack (7-) first, with Fran putting up the short second pitch; this put us on top of the hill again, at the Fantasia anchor. I asked for a TR belay and gave it a go. Hard. Quite hard. Protecting that climb on lead must be amazingly difficult.
26 August - Middle Teton, solo: Josh boogied down this morning, and Fran was cooked from yesterday afternoon's up-and-down in the Wall Street couloir, so I took a little run by myself up the Middle, something I'd been wanting to do for awhile. Loose, nasty, scary climbing on the NW face, probably as ugly as anything I've soloed anywhere. The views from the top were great. We hiked back out for dinner at Bubba's and bunkspace at the Ranch.
(DAY #70) 16 October - Bouldering in Central Park, NYC: When in the city... My college buddy and old alpine partner Pete is getting married on Saturday, and I'm making the most of my weekend-plus trip out east. Along with a nice 2-1/2 mile run in the park, I swung by Rat Rock for a few minutes and played around on Flakes (V0) just to say I had not been there and not sampled it. It's not worth a trip for itself, I don't think, but it was a neat thing to do while hanging in the City for awhile.
18 October - Pinnacle Mountain, Plainville CT, solo: In between Pete and Kathy's wedding and reception up the road in Simsbury, I drove quickly back down to Metacomet for a little bit of rock that Dawn (Tradgirl), her friend Lisa, and my partner Rob had recommended to me as being 'right in the neighborhood' of the wedding. Unfortunately time was tight, and I didn't have a partner or inclination to break out the rope and gear for a more interesting line. Having only about a half hour to kill, I went up and finally figured out, with a little help from a few locals cleaning up their stuff, where Sixth Sense (6) was located for a little free solo action, my first on rock. Traprock is interesting stuff, and I'd figured out yesterday not to get in over my head, particularly alone at a new area, where no one knew where I was. I soloed up the line, a bit nervous but never in trouble, took some pictures from the top, and soloed back down a 5.0 route on the southern end of the formation. Back in time for catching up with old friends at the reception - I had planned on another Gunks day for Sunday, but it rained all day on me and I made it into a tour-photo day along the Hudson instead. See pictures of the Connecticut climbing, Pete's wedding, and my sojourn along the Hudson here.
8 November - Cross training day: Went for a little trail run from the Breck condo up to the ski patrol shack atop Peak 9 today, 6 miles and 1794' of gain in the round-trip. People looked (and told us) at us a little funny as we ran down the snow-packed slopes as they hiked and skinned up for early-season poached runs, but I think we had more fun all in all.
21 November - Skiing, Breckenridge solo: Working too many hours the past weeks with the company move and all that jazz; I took today as comp time and headed up to the ski huas for a few turns this afternoon in early-season windy conditions. Good teleing through the little trees still poking up around the Mercury area.
18 December - Cross training day: The long cross-town bike commute is not fun when it's 20° out there. Added 20.5 miles to the bike milage today, and feeling stronger than a month ago on long rides.
24 December - Ice at Silver Cascade, solo: I needed to get back on the ethereal medium so I'd be ready for upcoming adventures in RMNP and Ouray in the next few weeks, so I headed to the local spot. It was hard to get my head back on straight for ice soloing, and I stuck to the WI3 stuff for 2 laps (4 pitches) instead of being overly ballsy and risking a big fall. The ice is in fat and wide, but the conditions are just a little strange still. Or maybe it's just my head. Anyway, it was wet and warm, and a good way to spend an hour after the empty office today.
