Coming Home

My "Summer in Estes" is really almost up. I have about a week of work left. My parent's will arrive here on the fifth of august at which point I'll stop working, and then we'll spend some time together before heading to Madison, WI for my grama's 90th birthday party, and then back we'll all go to St. Louis. Hopefully mom and dad will have some extra space in their suitcases so I can fit all my new climbing gear in our luggage for the return trip. I'm starting to plan some hikes for us all to do when they come out here.

Before I leave I'd like to climb in some new places such as Boulder Canyon, Eldorado Canylon, The Flatirons, or some other new spot. There's deffinitly a bunch of classic trad lines on Lumpy that I would love to do if I had more time (Backflip, J Crack...), but I think it might be nice to visit some newer spots. I guess it depends on the people with cars mostly...

The People I Climb With

I'm not even going to try to take credit for this. Logan did a nice brief bio on all the people we climbing with. I want to put a link to it because I reference these people all the time.

Because he didn't include a bio for himself, I'll try my hand.

Logan Smith:


Logan is a sweet guy and a sweet climber to boot. He's from western Kentucky, near southern Illinois, and climbs regularly with some of the same guys my dad climbs with down there.

He's gotten a ton better and a ton more confident out here, now the challenge is to find him some more lines that inspire him.

Kor's Flake + More

I haven't posted too much recently. Since the last post I've got to a new best on a hard sport route, taken someone climbing for there first time, gone bouldering in Boulder, and been to Lumpy twice!

I spent one afternoon/evening at Jurassic with my friend Tim. We had a good time and I had my best try yet on Andrology, my 90ft runout 5.11d "project". The crux is at the top, and there are a lot of hard moves, so you really have to keep your endurance up. I got past the crux for the first time on lead and completed the route with one take. I might be able to send soon.

Drew and I spent the next afternoon at Lumpy repeating some of the single pitch routes that I did with my dad a few days earlier. He lead Cackle Crack and I did a new one next to it called Rooster Tail, 5.9+. It was a pretty challenging offwidth with a finger crack at the end - probably the hardest pitch of trad that I've done, let alone onsighted. We also tried another route, a 5.10a finger/hand crack in the same area called Rhode Island Red. Drew slipped near the beginning and took a legitimate fall onto a #5 stopper and it held like a champ! He lowered off from about halfway up and I finished it with one take. Lumpy 5.10 is HARD!

The next morning before work I went top roping with a guy from work. It was his first time climbing and I think he enjoyed it. He's lived a ton of places (Michigan, The Boundary Waters, Yosemite, and more) and was a lot of fun to talk to more.

Yesterday I went bouldering below the Flatirons in Boulder, CO. It was about a 45 minute drive, but the hike was really easy because we're acclimated to Estes Park (8 or 9 thousand feet) and Boulder is at less than 6 thousand. Neither Wayne nor I actually sent any hard problems, but we had a good time. We stopped at a store called the sport's recycler in Boulder and I got a little camelback backpack for cheep. We walked around the Pearl St. pedestrian mall for a while too before coming back.

Today was deffinitly the highlight of the week. Drew and I woke up at 4:00am to climb Kor's Flake, one of the biggest 5.7 walls around. They say it's 900ft tall! We over prepared a little bit, because of a bunch of warnings of how committing of a 5.7 it was, but it turned out fine. The crux off width crack was a little runout, but the two big cam's that my dad let me borrow came in really handy.

We got back to our packs at 11:50am, after about 5:00 hours of climbing and three rappels (and a lot of walking) to descend. The weather was moving in, so we were pretty happy to have started early.

I'll post the pictures once they're up on the computer. Sunrise especially was beautiful.

Uggh.

Unbeknown to me, my schedule was changed this week. Instead of working in the morning like I usually do on Sundays, I was scheduled for the afternoon. I unfortunately only realized this after waking up at 5:30 and going to work for half an hour.

I'm very tired now.

East Side Adventure and Melvin's Wheel

Today was the best day of climbing I've had out here in Colorado, and my 8th day of climbing in the last 9 days. It's pretty amazing that I'm not hurt.

Dad and I headed back to Lumpy, and with a better weather forecast headed to The Bookmark. We started on a route called East Side, 5.8 on The Bookmark Pinnacle, a detached feature that's capped by a four foot wide spur that you can climb right up. Dad described it as like climbing up a horses back, except there's a lot more air under your feet.

The first pitch was a 150 footer with the fantastic hand crack shown above, some wide climbing, a few bulges to overcome - a little bit of everything nice. But after that we got a little lost. The description said to make an airy traverse to a strenuous hand crack, but I think we traversed in the wrong direction to something a little too strenuous. Dad backed off the committing opening moves, so we switched ends and I pulled onto the (wrong) line. I wouldn't have kept going except that I saw some bolts above so I thought this was definitely something solid. The moves however, were WAYY too hard (~5.10b/c finger crack) so I just pulled on the gear to wok up to the bolts, and then pulled on the bolts (5.11ish slab) to gain the big ledge where we were supposed to end. I brought Dad up with a lot of grunting and then he did the last 30 feet up the thin pinnacle. It's a shame we're both so bad at route finding.

We got down around 12:30 and headed a few hundred feet over to the classic 5.8+ Melvin's Wheel. That's dad leading the second of three pitches, a fantastic hand/finger crack that splits blank face above a super spacious belay ledge. The fist two pitches followed awesome cracks that took great gear, and the third pitch was this weird but fun chimney/offwidth that you follow all the way back into the rock until coming up to a summit. If i'd had a long hook I could have retrieved a few nalgene bottles jammed down deep in it. It's a difficult pitch to describe, because it was so odd.

Melvin's wheel is definitely the best trad climb I've done though. Great jams, great gear, and long pitches. It did convince me of the stupidity of wearing my sport climbing shoes in cracks though.

Lumpy with Dad

In between getting rained on and walking around lost looking for triangle rock, we actually got some good climbing in.

We started at 6:30 in the morning with breakfast in the staff dining room and we one of the first cars at the trailhead at about 7:00. We didn't start with really definite plans, but thought someone on the twin owls would be good because of the slightly shorter approach. After a not so easy approach it turned out that the twin owls were closed for raptor nesting, but because the weather didn't look so great, we weren't too dissapointed - this way we could get on some less committing, shorter lines.

The first line of the day was a perfect 5.8 dihedral called Cackle Crack. Dad jumped at the chance to lead the first pitch, and did an awesome job. I finished it out with 30 or so feet of easier climbing above, and then we scrambled down the left side.

He does some things a little differently than I do, so spent some time sharing our systems. He showed me how to use "half draws" which are 12in slings with only one 'biner that you use to connect the rope to the protection, and I showed him my system of "trad draws" which are 24in slings with two 'biners carried trippled. By the end of the day we were both using some of each.

Next we headed a hundred feet over to "Yosemite Crack", so named I guess because it's perfectly straight and clean and vertical. It's rated 5.9- and I took the lead, which makes it i guess my hardest attempted trad lead. I say attempted because it was freaking hard! I needed two takes. It's short crack route but it gets really wide and stenuous. In the middle I did some fist jams, but then it got even wider and I sort of had to jame my whole arm in untill the meat of my forearm got some purchase. After strugling up this thing we watched in awe as a man and woman from Boulder made it look easy.

At another rock (Gollumns Arch Rock) we saw two familiar faces from Jurassic Park, one of whom was there yesterday with us and the other who I'd seen a few days earlier. They climbed a 5.10 and we climbed a 5.7 right next to one an other, finishing at almost the same time. We felt a few drops of rain, but it didn't stay.

We spent probably the next hour or so looking for triangle rock in the wrong place. No fun. We got rained on pretty well too and spent some time hiding under and overhang. When it cleared up and I started to get a little less grumpy, we realized our mistake and found triangle rock. I did one good 5.8 and I think dad got some good pictures that I will post later. The next "route" was an unprotectable chimney to a few crack moves. We didn't realize how bad it was going to be from below, and once Dad started leading it I guess he felt like he couldn't leave it and had to put me though it too. It was pretty narrow chimney, and the only way to get up wa to groan alot and wiggle. The moves above were totally not worth it. I told Dad I was mad at him for putting me through that climb, and he said that he'd buy me dinner, so we ate at Ed's Cantina in town.

Tomorow we have plans for some multipitch stuff on The Bookmark, and then I guess he'll head home. Not to worry though, in a few weeks he and my mom will be back for a days before we all leave for my grama's 90th birthday party and then all go back home to St. Louis.

So much climbing, so little posting

Altogether, I'd rather be climbing than writing on this blog, so I think it's a good balance.

Since Friday, when I last posted, I've climbed every day either before or after work. Yesterday, my dad arrived here for a short visit. Awesome! We climbed together this morning at Jurassic and had a wonderful session. Tomorrow i'm off from work (finally) and we're going to head to lumpy to do some multipitch.

I'd write more, but I have to wake up early to CLIMB!

Little Walls and Big Mountains

Today I went back to Jurassic Park with Drew, his ex-girlfriend and her friend who are visiting Estes Park for a few days. Fortunately, there wasn't too much awkward ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend stuff going on. Mostly we just had a good day climbing. Unfortunately there was a big group from a local camp there, so we wern't able to get on all the climbs (especially the easier ones) that we would have liked, but we made due.

Because of the many climbs that aren't listed in the guidebook, but are listed online, I decided to make an addendum to the book that I can tape into the guidebook. For those of you that are interested, or think it would be helpful, you can download it as a pdf. JurassicPark.pdf

Drew and I got on one difficult line that neither of us could finish, which while disappointing is also fun, as not we both have sometime to really work on. The line is a super long (90 feet) perfectly vertical bit of pocketed rock. The crux comes at the top, and while the moves are physically hard, the route is also a mental challenge because many of those moves come after a pretty long run out (you risk a big fall). The fall is totally clean, so there's little chance of getting hurt, but it's still scary.

As a funny note, I bought a stick clip today; it's a telescoping pole with a clamp on the end so that I can clip the first bolt on a route from the ground if it's particularly high or if the "landing" would be rocky if you fell before you could make the first clip. But it wasn't long enough to reach the first clip on this route, so I just climbed the beginning without stick clipping. It made me laugh because it kind of defeats the purpose of the stick clip.

While this route seemed "big" to me, a mountain guide and all around badass I met briefly in Connecticut before coming to Colorado this summer is on Broad Peak and K2 right now - big mountains if there ever were big mountains.

Before I came to Colorado, I spent a week with Nate Plough and we took a class from this amazing dude, Chuck Boyd, on traditional climbing and anchor building. He's probably in his late fifties or early sixties, and has done amazing stuff on mountains in all different disciplines from 5.12 first ascents of alpine rock towers at 20,000 feet to stuff in Yosemite to (now) leading an expedition to K2 and Broad Peak in Pakistan. You can read learn about him and his expedition at k2tallmountain.com and read the expedition blog at http://www.k2tallmountain.com/blog/K2%20Tall%20Mountain/Blog/Blog.html.

Jurassic Park

Today was my "Saturday" - i.e. first day off this week. In the morning I had some trouble finding people. I wanted to go climbing but didn't know where anyone else with a car was. So instead, I read the newspaper and some of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (I'm on about page sixty).

Finally at lunch I found my roommate, Mardy and some of the Rock & Ropes guys (Drew and Logan and such). We waited untill three to go climbing, so a few people could join us after they finished work, and then we headed off to a new area that I'd never been to before.

I guess I should clarify "we". It was me, Mardy, Jacob (my other roommate), Drew, Lindsey, and Annie. Lindsey is from Arkansas, and she just arrived in Estes a few weeks ago. She worked here last year and is dating Wayne, another climber in our "group" who I may or may not have mentioned before. She mostly boulders, and climbs really hard. Annie is from Eu Claire, WI. There is someone or other going on between her and Mardy that I haven't really figured out.

So, all six of us piled into Mardy's car and we went climbing. I had heard bad things about the approach, but it turned out not to be that bad - about 15-20 minutes of moderately steep hiking on a good trail - all with a great view of Mt Meeker and Longs Peak just behind us.

The super classic route at Jurassic is "Edge of Time", a really thin arrete thats on the cover of the guidebook.
For a bunch more pictures, check out http://images.climbingbayarea.com/v/colorado/estes_park_valley/co_hwy_7__tributaries/105756826
it's one of the most aesthetic lines around.

But, today was not the day for Edge of Time - sorry for all the hype, it's just a nice picture. Drew and I "warmed up" on a funny climb on a long wall that wasn't in the guidebook. It's listed on the internet as "Unknown V, 5.10+". It turns out that this route stops in the middle of the wall at a two bolt anchor, but instead we continued on another route just to its left that goes all the way to the top of the wall (~90 feet). The climbing on this one got a lot harder, with some awkward fingertip liebacking on a suspect flake and a big move that gives this route the name Dynamometer.

Annie and Lindesy and Jacob all led an impressive 5.9 across the corridor, which was awesome because they are really new to lead climbing. Mardy flashed (sucessful climb with no falls on his first attempt at the route) an 11a a bit to the left, his hardest flash climb by far, and Drew and I worked a 5.12a in between the two, which we both redpointed. A successful day for all!

Sweet.

In other news I learned that a guy at work speaks french (he's russian) and I'm pretty excited to have the chance to practice my french (as well as my spanish) now.

A Cross Section of Middle America

This week the YMCA of the Rockies is hosting a convention of 1400 Baptists. 1400 people eat a lot of food. They also all seem to like eating early (i.e. before 6:00). It was a pretty crazy day.

Their collective numbers were, however, less impressive than their individual sizes. A significant fraction of our dinner guests had a lot of trouble confining themselves to one chair when they sat down. I conservatively estimate that upwards of three fifths of our guest were significantly overweight.

I had the job at dinner of greeting them and counting their numbers from the chefs, and spent a lot of my time at the front desk thinking about American waist lines, Bob Herbert's column today, and the basis of American hegemony. I don't think my jobs of waiting at the door, mopping floors, or stocking of plastic pouches of salad dressing are doing much help. Soon I'll be back at school though.

As a side note, did anyone know that a big pouch of Kraft ranch dressing has 330 calories, 320 of which are from fat?

I still don't understand the people who do this for a living, as a career.

Happy Fourth

It's only 5:30 and I've already got in two separate climbing sessions today. Neither was super long though. Tomorrow I have to go back to work for another five days, so I feel obligated to do my best to climb on my Thursday-Friday "weekend"

In the morning Mardy, my roommate, and I went to Prospect Mountain. He worked on Suburban Hangover, 5.10c and got it after a few takes. I think it just took him a while to wake up, because he was a little sketchy at the beginning and then totally found his confidence on lead higher up on the route.

After Suburban Hangover, we went to a new outcrop at Prospect that we hadn't been to yet called The Fin. It had two sport lines on it that we did - pretty fun although the grades were misleading. Both were much harder than the 5.10a and 5.10b grades given for them in the guidebook.

After lunch I went with two other guys, Josh the super-biker and Will who works at the YMCA rock climbing wall with Josh. We went to Mary's lake which is really close to town and hosts a bunch of rocks right off the road. Josh said he'd seen people climbing there on one of his bike rides. We couldn't see any bolts, but after scrambling up to the top of one of the rocks, we found a bunch of bolts from which you can set top rope anchors. None of the routes are listed in the guidebook or online, which makes it kind of fun because there's no wankery possible about grades. I think there are a bunch more climbs over there that we could set up top-ropes on.

Time for dinner.

Hiatus (Variation)

Today Logan and I went to Lumpy and climbed Hiatus (5.7+). It was... well, an adventure that pushed the limits of what I'd already done on trad. It was Logan's first time climbing trad, so I led all three pitches.

Drew and I had plans to climb a different route today, Kor's Flake, but unfortunately his grandmother passed away yesterday so he's headed home to Illinois.

Neither Logan nor I had a car, so we borrowed Logan's roommate's old restored ford mustang. It was huge - I could barely see over the hood on the passenger side - thank god I wasn't driving.

Hiatus starts off with a pretty thin crack. I would have liked to have some RPs because I ended up having to run it out above a number four BD stopper (a little tapered wedge less than a centimeter across marginally jammed into a crack) on the way to the roof shown in the picture at the top of the first pitch. I was scared out my wits!

The second pitch is a pretty wide crack that you lieback, and wasn't that bad untill it ended and I took a right turn for another 20ft to the belay instead of the left turn you were supposed to take. This made getting back on route for the third pitch kind of difficult - I had to traverse left a good 50 ft. I probably didn't place enough protection on the traverse either because Logan was a little sketched out following it.

This route was definitely not the best introduction to trad climbing for Logan - I don't think he's super eager to to it again soon. It's kind of a shame because none of the other routes I've done yet have been as sketchy, even though some were more difficult.

We finished pretty early, so we decided to go to a little sport climbing place with three routes that's just off the road not far from lumpy. Unfortunately, the rock was terrible. I took a totally unexpected ~20 foot fall when the rock I was holding onto with my left hand broke clean off the cliff and tumbled down. Fortunately it didn't hit Logan in the head, or else things would have been a LOT worse. It was probably about the size of a softball. Neither of us have any desire to go back to that place.

A Ragtag Group

I worked in the morning today, so I really wanted to go climbing. Unfortunately, my normal partners were busy. Drew was working into the evening, Logan had (and still has) a hurt finger, my roommates had church stuff, and I couldn't find any of the other people I usually go climbing with.

So, I went with a friend from work, Ben, who just started climbing, and another girl who works in housekeeping named Jessica who'd never climbed before. We were lucky enough to be able to borrow my roommate Mardy's car, as none of us have one up here.

One of the downsides of Estes Park sport climbing is a lack of easier routes. Most of the easily accessible easier routes were climbed before sport climbing was invented, and thus were established in the "traditional" style (the only style back then). Our group today, however, was not up to trad climbing because it takes a lot more experience and committment than sport.

So, after checking the guidebook, waiting out a little rain and getting dinner, we headed off down highway 7 in the direction of "the ironclads", an area which supposedly hosts a fairly good selection of easier sport climbs.

Unfortunately, the directions were a little hard to follow. We deffinitly made it (correctly) to forest service road 115, but the parking directions -- park at the turnoff by a big tree -- were a little ambiguous; there were lots of trees. There was also a lot of rock -- in almost every direction -- but most of it looked liked scrambling. After trying to convince ourselves that we were just out there for a hike so as not to be disappointed, we walked in the direction of some rock and after some scrambling managed to find two 30ft sport lines on the back of a fin of rock that didn't appear to be in the guidebook. Both looked hard (5.12ish).

Ben had never belayed a lead climbed before (a very necessary skill), so after a minute primer or so I set of on the leftmost climb with not as much confidence in his ability to catch me if I should fall as I would have wished. I made it up to the top in extremely poor style with aid from the rope just as we started to get rained on, so we headed out pretty quick.

The Ironclads is a really cool area, but next time I hope I'll be able to go with someone who knows where the real climbing is.