Summer in Estes / Fall in Princeton

First Trip to the Gunks

2008-08-27T12:37:00.003-06:00

Yesterday Nate and I went climbing in The Gunks. Despite some unfortunate setbacks, it was a great trip.

The Gunks is on The Mohonk Preserve, a privately owned wildlife/recreation preserve of 6700 acres. We both payed 75 dollars for a yearly membership. In exchange for that, the trails are all really well maintained, there's a nice visitor center, they have programs almost every weekend on everything from Leave No Trace to singles nights.

The rock is nothing like I've ever climbed on. It's characterized by horizontal as opposed to vertical cracks and TONS of overhangs, ceilings and roofs everywhere. Even many of the easier routes go up and around big imposing overhangs.

After a two hour drive from Princeton, we got thoroughly lost trying to find our route, a classic 5.6 called High Exposure, first done in 1941 by Hans Kraus and Fritz Wiessner. We started up the wrong route before realizing that it was definitely too hard to be rated 5.6. (That climb I think was actually Airy Aria, 5.8).

Finally we found some people and they told us that the route they were on was in fact High Exposure, so we ate our lunches and waited for them to finish. Nate lead the first pitch, and I proceeded to stub my toe and gash open a big bloody hole. Fortunately, putting on my climbing shoe really staunched the bleeding because of the compression/pressure of the shoe.

The climbing took us a while, because we climbed in really short pitches. I got to lead the crazy pitch though, which was probably some of the most exposed climbing I'd ever done. You have to step around this roof on a very narrow prow. Also, because the cracks do not run vertically as they do in most areas, you don't know from below whether the rock above you will accept good protection because you can't see the cracks. It's also not as obvious where the route actually is because you don't have a crack to follow. All those facts contributed to our slow progress.

Nonetheless, the climbing was stupendous. The Gunks are amazing.

I have pictures from the trip, and you can see them at http://picasaweb.google.com/rmcgibbo/FirstTripToTheGunks

A Day of Midwest Climbing

2008-08-20T22:48:00.006-06:00

Today my dad and I went to Jackson Falls, a sport climbing area in southern Illinois. The drive takes about two and a half hours, so we had to get up early in order to get back before five o'clock. Up by 5:30 and out the door by 6:00. There was nobody else there at all save for one local on a horse. No traffic, no lines; can't beat that!

Although it's called a falls, we didn't see much water at all. The waterfall was sure dry. I bet the farmers in the area are hurting.

We got in some great climbing, mostly in the easy 5.10 range. First, we started at Spleef Peek. We did a 4 climbs in a row, which almost perfectly increased in difficulty (5.8, .9, .10a, .10a).

Then we went to The Gallery, home to a lot of five star 5.10s. We did three adjacent ~60 ft climbs. The one that I'm looking at in the picture was the first, a 5.10a called Earthbound Misfit, and then right on the corner is Psychotherapy (5.10b) and then the next one, all the way around the corner is called group therapy (5.10c). I had some trouble staying on route on the middle one, but other than that these are great climbs.

We continued down the bluff line where Dad did a 5.9 face called The Sophmore and I worked on a nice 5.11d overhang called The Reckoning. I had to rest on the rope at almost every bolt, but the biggest reason for that was difficulty in finding the correct holds. Although the route seemed awesome to me, I don't think it got much traffic because many of the pockets were sandy and some unfortunately were damp and slimy inside. I would love to be able to try it again soon, because all the moves were really fun. I think the biggest issue for if when trying to climb it free (no falls or rests on the rope) is just endurance.

We finished off the day at Mr. Jimmy on an outstanding less than vertical slab route, and then called it a day. I just got this camera, so I'll post a few more picture. The rest are posted at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2013324&l=46fa6&id=1295520678

Me on The Reckoning, 5.11d

Dad rappelling off after climbing Master Marley, 5.10a.

Should I Keep This Up?

2008-08-20T22:18:00.002-06:00

The summer is almost up - I'm leaving St. Louis to return to Princeton this Saturday. So, the original purpose for this blog is done, but I'm not quite ready to give it up. I think it's a useful tool to keep in contact with you guys. (Do you think so? Leave a comment!)

I could end this one and start a new one, but that seems like more trouble than it is worth. I just changed the name of the blog a little bit, and I guess I'll just keep going. The topics of discussion will be a little different (less climbing, more chemistry), but I think I'll be able to keep it interesting.

As a plus, I also recently got a camera, so there will be more pictures.

Closing Time

2008-08-15T18:49:00.001-06:00

I forgot to post this post from a little while ago. I wrote it in the Madison, WI airport with no internet access at the time.

Here it goes:

I'm sitting in the Madison, WI airport writing this post into my text editor. Seven dollars for WIFI internet access was a little too expensive. I'm on my way to St. Louis - by the time I post this up to the web, I'll be home.

On the fifth of august, my parrents arrived in Estes Park. I quit my job, and we spent four days together in Estes Park before coming here to Madison for a joint birthday celebration for many of our relatives. My grandmother turned 94, my aunt 70 and my uncle 60. We almost had someone turning 50, 40, 30, 20, and ten this summer as well. Twenty was the biggest stretch though, as they tried to use me (i'm still eighteen) and a second cousin who's nineteen to fit the pattern.

As a last hurrah in Estes Park, I went hiking with my parrents. I hadn't done any legitimate hiking during my two months in Estes, and I was supprised by how much I enjoyed it. By legitimate hiking, I mean hiking without climbing as the destination. We went to some very beautiful lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park together, and had hoped to climb two thirteen thousand foot peaks (Chiquita and Ypsilon) in the park. Unfortunately, the dirt road ging up to the trailhead had been washed out by heavy rain the previous day, so we had to settle for a different hike - dissapointing trek through the forrest to a (less beautiful) lake. But it was a good workout.

One morning I got to take my parrents climbing at Jurassic Park. My mom overcame a lot of her fears and got up three routes - some of her first outdoor climbs ever. The first was the nice 90ft warmup Coloradoditty, and while I find it quite relaxing, she was especially scared because of how high it is compared to many (gym) climbs. My dad also lead Edge of Time, and I had one last try on my ongoing project, Andrology. None of the moves are harder than 5.11d, but there are just so many of them! With the difficult section between 70 and 80 feet up, and no rests beforehand, endurence is the key. I guess.

Here in Wisconsin we had a nice visit. Almost the whole family was in town for the party. My grandmother has seven children, many of whome (unlike my dad) are grandparents now themselves. Some of my aunt Ann's grandchildren are even older than I am, and there sure are a lot of them. Next time I hope we get name tags.

This morning we helped my uncle fred on the farm a little bit before setting off. There's always work to do on a farm, so we kept busy unloading hay and taking the branches from two cut down willow trees up to be burned.

I'll be back in St. Louis for ten days before going back to Princeton on the 23rd. I'll be helping with the Outdoor Action rock climbing orientation trips for incomming freshman, so I have to be back to school quite early. Classes don't start untill the 11th of September, so I plan to spent a lot of the down time setting rock climbing routes at the Princeton climbing wall.

Hopefully I'll have time to see many of my high school friends while I'm home.

Classic Climbing

2008-08-01T22:39:00.003-06:00

I've gotten two more great climbs in in the last two days. I only have two more days of work left, and not too much time here after that, so I'm happy to be getting "my money's worth" of climbing in.

Yesterday Drew and I climbed a route called backflip. It's one of the classic 5.9s on Lumpy Ridge, and was visible from one of the climbs Dad and I did when we were here. Drew lead the crux pitch, a thin crack in a dramatic 90 degree inside corner that comes to a roof that you have to traverse around. That traverse was some of the more dramatic climbing I've ever done - I felt like I was Warren Hardring on the Nose's Great Roof. (Sorry if you don't get the reference.) The next pitch had a little spice too, as I got to lead a 5.7R start to some funky thin crack moves. We got super lucky on the descent, with the ropes just stretching the necessary amount on the rappels, and I even found some booty (a new Black Diamond quickdraw).

Today Drew, his friend Nick and I climbed Pear Buttress (5.8) on The Book. We were worried that moving in a party of three would really slow us down, but we went surprisingly fast on each of the five pitches. We left after an early lunch and got back in time for dinner! Instead of doing the standard really scary (no protection for the first 20 ft) start, we opted for to do the first pitch of a different line called Loose Ends (5.9) and then met up with Pear Buttress after the first pitch. The variation was awesome (and well protected), but also significantly harder. I was pretty happy with myself for leading it clean. I got to lead the third pitch - a perfect finger/hand crack, and though I didn't feel like I had enough gear to place protection as often as I would have liked, I got through it. Drew got to lead "The Cave Exit", a super wierd bouldery exit from a legimitate cave near the top of the wall. The description says you can get some funky stemming moves, but we all had to climb it like an overhang (complete with heel hooks!)

(The picture is of some random guy off the internet doing the cave, because we didn't bring a camera). Although it doesn't look it, this is ~400 feet off the ground.

Maybe I'll get some more climbing in before I leave or maybe not. If these turn out to be my last two climbs in Colorado though, I'll have no complaints.

Coming Home

2008-07-25T21:37:00.002-06:00

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

2008-07-25T21:18:00.004-06:00

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

2008-07-25T14:30:00.003-06:00

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.

2008-07-20T21:30:00.001-06:00

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

2008-07-18T20:47:00.003-06:00

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

2008-07-17T21:59:00.006-06:00

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

2008-07-16T21:57:00.002-06:00

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

2008-07-11T22:13:00.003-06:00

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

2008-07-10T21:58:00.003-06:00

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

2008-07-05T21:06:00.002-06:00

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

2008-07-04T17:25:00.004-06:00

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)

2008-07-03T15:33:00.003-06:00

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

2008-07-01T23:17:00.002-06:00

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.

Learning Spanish

2008-06-30T21:44:00.003-06:00

People from all over the world work in food service at the Y. One of the biggest contingents is from Columbia, although there are a bunch of people from Turkey, and even one from Kazakhstan among other countries.

Their proficiency in english varies a lot. One of my friends, Luis, speaks exceptional english. I was talking to him about Hemingway and described his writing style as "terse", and then realized that he might not know that word. He did - but another American kid who we were also talking to didn't. (Luis didn't know the world clown though, so I guess it balances out.)

Some of my Columbian co-workers barley spoke a word of english on the other hand when they arrived so I've been learning some spanish. It's really similar to french, which I studied in school, so that helps a lot. Many of the roots are the same, and the basic structure of the grammar is almost identical.

Some of what I've learned has been just phrases, but I'm actually starting to learn the building blocks as well. I'm definitely learning it a lot faster than I ever learned french, but I guess that makes sense because I never spent almost half the day trying to speak french.

A lot of the words (palabras en espangol) I've learned are specifically suited to the work we're doing (to vacuum = aspirar, clean = limpiar, floor = piso, table = mesa, etc), but hopefully by the end of the summer I'll have a more general, if elementary, knowledge of spanish.

I'm pretty excited.

I also started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Columbian. I think Orhan Pamuk's "Snow" is next on my list, but I'll have to go into town and join the public library there to check it out.

Destroyer

2008-06-30T20:54:00.002-06:00

I haven't written about any sport climbing yet, which is kind of a shame because I do more of it than trad. One nice thing about climbing in the Estes Park Valley is that both types of climbing coexist; in some places there is a lot of tension between the two "camps" of climbers.
In Connecticut, for instance, there is no sport climbing at all, due in large part to a single individual who likes to the chop fixed protection necessary to sport climb with bolt cutters.
But out here, I guess people are a little more laid back. Today I climbed with Drew at a little crag just a mile or so from the YMCA property. It hosts less than a dozen routes, some of which are sport, some trad, and some a mix of the two.

Today, Drew and I ate an early dinner and headed out for Cottontail Crag. The weather didn't look to promising, as the sky was dark and it was starting to rain. In fact, as we pulled out of the parking lot in Drew's car we even heard some some thunder. But we knew better than to turn around - the dark clouds and rain usually disappear almost as suddenly as they appear out here.
So we headed out, and began the ten or fifteen minute hike up to Cottontail in the rain, and by the time we got to the crag, it had cleared up. It was still dark over most of the sky, but some blue sky was poking out around the edges and the rain was totally gone.
We had decided to go to Cottontail today for pretty much one route, "Destroyer". It's rated 5.12a, and is the hardest (maybe 2nd hardest) route I've tried to date. The difficult section involves using some pretty small holds and balancy body positions. I finished it, all the way with no falls on my fourth try of the evening, and was really excited. Drew is really close to getting it. I bet he'll "send" on his next trip out there, which will probably be in the next few days. In the mean time I'll have to find a new project.

Osiris

2008-06-27T16:18:00.001-06:00

This morning Drew and I left for Lumpy at 7:30 in the morning (and had a lot better luck with the weather) to do Osiris on the "Pages Wall" of The Book on Lumpy Ridge.

The rock was really interesting - I wish I knew more about geology. Shallow, flaring cracks ran up most of the wall, which from a distance look remarkably like pages of a book. Sometimes flaring cracks can be difficult to protect, but fortunately we didn't have that problem - the climbing was hard enough. The first pitch, rated 5.6 or 5.7, which is normally not that hard, was 140 feet of some of the most strenuous climbing I've done. It was a sort of chimney with lots of grunting and groaning moves required.

I really wish I'd brought a camera because I had some amazing views of Drew starting the fourth pitch, just above fang ledge. The aformentioned fang is a thin spire leaning against the wall which you climb up to start the pitch. It comes after a short traverse, so I had a great view as he pulled onto the route with blue sky in the background and tons of exposure. I felt like it would have gone well on the cover of a climbing magazine.

It turned out to be a pretty long day because we took a wrong turn on the descent and thus had to hike back UP a substantial amount to retrieve our packs from the base of the climb, so we missed lunch. I guess we would have missed lunch anyways since we topped out at 12:50pm. It took us about 3 and a half hours to do five pitches... I guess we'll get faster as we refine our technique.

Check out this link for some pretty descriptive pictures of the climb.

Books

2008-06-26T23:10:00.000-06:00

When I can't climb I try to read. I try for books, and the Times on the internet. Sometimes I spend too much time on email and stuff like this though.

One of my roommates brought a lot of books from a philosophy class, so I read some of those. I got 86 pages into Plato's Republic a few weeks ago - I should probably finish it. It was quite good until around the 85th page, so it will probably get good again soon. He also had the Communist Manefisto, which at 120 pages took only the smaller half of an afternoon to read. It peaked my interest in Marx, and I'd like to read Das Kapital now.

We have a library at the YMCA, but it's not very big. I went in for the first time with hope to check out Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" (I figured it'd be... appropriate) and Dawkins' "The God Delusion". I guess Nickel and Dimed was too obscure and Dawkins too anti-christian for the YMCA to stock. I came out with Susan Sontag's "In America" and Jack Kerouac's "On The Road".

"In America" was absolutely fantastic. Probably the best book I've read on my own accord without it being assigned to be for school (many of those books have been really good as well). I couldn't, however, really get into "On The Road". I turned it back in instead of renewing it at checked out "A Farewell to Arms" by Hemmingway. Its also really good, and a little easier to understand it in subtlety than "The Sun Also Rises" (read for school a few years ago), which is appreciated. Maybe I'll make this a summer of reading the classics. I think I'll get "East of Eden" next, though sugestions would be appreciated (I think this whole blog thing will let you do comments).

Work

2008-06-26T22:49:00.000-06:00

While I came out here mostly to climb, I seem to spend a lot of time working. Uggh. The DMM slogan is "Climb now, work later", but sometimes I feel like I'm doing more of the converse.

I work five days a week, eight hours a day, and make $4.50/hr before taxes with food and housing as bonuses at the YMCA of the Rockies, Estes Park Center, in food service. I used to spend my shifts mostly in the dish room, but within the last few days I've been transfered to the walnut dining room.

The walnut room has a capacity of about 250 and usually serves conferences or conventions, though apparently we do weddings and stuff like that sometimes. Last week we had a convention of kids with cochlear implants and their families, and this week we have a conference of doctors. We usually have between 2 (like yesterday) and 6 (the day before) staff to run the place, which amounts mostly to "preparing" cold foods, cleaning, fetching more bowls and silverware and the like, cleaning, and cleaning.

I put the word preparing in quotes because usually it amounts to finding a box of premade food, 80-90% of the time made by Sysco, the food service giant, and putting it in a pan. I think the food we serve (and get served ourselves as part of our pay) is pretty gross, but some of the guests seem to enjoy it because I usually get one or two positive comments a day.

The two shifts each day are 6:00am-2:30pm and 12:30pm-9:00pm. My schedule is a mix of the two. The morning shift leaves time to go climbing after work. Usually the plan is to eat an early dinner around 5:00pm or so and then sport climb till dark. So far, I haven't really done anything exciting during the mornings before any of my afternoon shifts, but I'm hoping to change that. The weather is generally better in the mornings, but its just a matter of getting a partner to wake up and go.

Tomorrow is payday, so that's pretty exciting. I won't really get much money (~$300 for 80 hours after taxes) by normal people standards, but for me its enough because I don't have any substantial expenses. I plan to spend most of it on climbing gear.

White Whale

2008-06-26T21:59:00.000-06:00

Today was my first day off from work in a while, so I was pretty excited to spend the day the climbing. Unfortunately, no one else was off in the morning so we just went climbing in the afternoon, once my regular partner Drew got off work at 2:30.
Drew is a senior in college at Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal. During the year he works at the climbing gym there. He's majoring in technology education and will be doing his student teaching next fall. Within the last few months, he bought a full rack of trad climbing gear, so he's a good guy to climbing with.
Today was our third time at Lumpy Ridge (the main trad area around here) together. In the last few weeks we've climbed Batman and Robin, 5.6 and Magical Chrome Plated Semi-Automatic Enema Syringe, 5.7.

We had planned to do this climb yesterday but subsequently backed out because weather hadn't looked to promising. However, the predicted bad weather never came so we felt kind of stupid. So today, even though the weather didn't look too good again, we decided to just go for it. From the YMCA campus the sky looked pretty bad to the south, but to the north, the direction of Lumpy Ridge, the sky was peeking through the clouds.
The approach to White Whale, on the Left Book, was pretty long, and it misted a little along the trail. We were pretty concerned that we would get rained out, but decided to make the call at the base of the climb. Another group was at the base, and fortunately they had just gotten down. We also saw two guys freesoling a route just to the left, which was kind of scary to watch.
The route is three pitches, and rated 5.7. I led the first pitch to a belay at a tree. As Drew was cleaning, the weather closed in and it started hailing. Fortunately it stopped pretty quick, but I was still pretty cold in my cotton t-shirt. Drew was carying the rain jackets in his pack, so we both had to endure the rain untill we got to the belay. We considered rapping off the tree and retreating, but the hail stopped so we figured it would be easier to just finish the route. The climbing was really high quality, but the wind was blowing the whole time so we tried to move fast. Drew said that if his helmet didn't have a chin strap, it would have blown off.
We finished up the climb at 6:00, which left only an hour to get back to the Y before dinner closed, so we ran down the approach. Going downhill was fun but once we hit level ground it was just hard, especially considering that we were both carrying packs. Fortunately we made it back in time for dinner, so I guess all the panting was worth it.

Tomorrow we're off again to another Lumpy Ridge route in the morning (when the good weather is), so I expect it to be a little less "epic". All in all we really lucked out with the weather because of how much worse it could have been.

Making a blog?!

2008-06-26T21:46:00.000-06:00

So, I used to think that blogs were a new age construct that were kind of self-important. But, nonetheless, here I am starting a blog. I got the idea from overhearing two other people talking about blogs, and I think it's a good idea for a few reasons.
I wanted to communicate what I was up to this summer, and had been doing it by email. A blog will, I think, be a little easier for a few reasons. First of all, I feel a little imposing flooding people's inboxes with mass emails. With a blog, if you're not interested then you don't have to read it, no harm - no foul. It's also very easy to share a blog with others - all it takes is sharing the URL address.
So, I guess here it goes. Welcome to my blog. (That still feels awkward to write)