Archive for 2007

More shots are up in the gallery!

Sunday morning dawned warm and bright in the desert campground. We had spent time the night before re-racking, re-packing, and re-filling water for the day’s activities, so all we need to do on Sunday morning was pack up the tent, make coffee and then hop on the trail!

We were back at the Independence Monument trailhead at around 8:30am, way earlier than I ever expected. Mark was worried about another large group getting on the tower before us, so we were happy to see that nobody else had signed on the trail register yet that morning. These indications where happily confirmed when we found ourselves to be the first ones at the base of the climb that morning. Yey!

Our climb for the day was Otto’s Route (5.8), which is a historic route, the first ever to the top of Independence Monument. John Otto climbed the route for the first time in 1911, and, in order to make the route do-able, he carved foot steps and handholds into the soft sandstone all the way up the route. Mark and I had heard of these added pockets, and thought they would soften the grade. However, it turns out that Mr Otto was, evidently, seven and half feet tall and regularly solo’d V18 or so. The climb was hard. It really was.

Pitch 1: A long and sandy ramp, that was trickier than I expected. Mark took quite a while to lead this, and he kept calling down “I’m at a big ledge, should I set a belay??” “No… look for chains!” I was going to give him trouble about taking so long to lead a 5.5 ramp, but then I fell twice on my way up when my feet slid off the sandy rock.

Pitch 2: A quick scramble around the corner, and then we’re into the early crux of the climb, an overhanging off-fists crack where a huge boulder rests against the wall. Mark pro’d it well with a blue and silver camalot, and then did the classic Ved ‘one leg in, hump your way up’ ascent. It was intimidating for me too, but I found a critical drilled pocket, and then wedged my leg high enough that I could scramble over the top fairly easily.

Pitch 3: This pitch started with a scramble over a stack of boulders, and then you hike up the ramp behind the huge flake in what the topos call the “time tunnel”. Once back out into the sun, we climbed a face with a few pockets, and some sandy ledges up to the big ledge below the final pitch. It was another pitch that seemed like it should have been easier than it felt as I was climbing it.

Pitch 4: The final, exposed, crux-a-liscious pitch. We walked around to the far side of the tower and then walked up the easy, but completely unprotectable face. I had seen shots on MP.com that looked like there was pro somewhere up there, but Mark just couldn’t find it. After 100ft of this scary stuff, the wall starts to get vertical. Two or three moves brings you to the first of three pitons that protect the final overhang. This overhang was tough. It was long, maybe 15-20 ft of climbing, and by the time I was reaching for the top, I was massively freaked out, and my hands were so tired they were involuntarily opening as I tried to grab the sloped ledges. Yes, I did hang a bit, but I flopped onto the ledge eventually.

We sat on the ledge for a while and caught our breath. The summit was up a 7ft holdless headwall, well above the anchors, and we weren’t sure how to get up there. We decided to start our rappels down rather than boulder this unprotected 400ft in the air. But the couple climbing up below us caught sight of our ropes and convinced us that if we just stayed put for a few minutes, they’d be up there and could show us how to get on top. “You want to get to the top after all of this work, right??” They yelled up.

So Jessie and Margaret met us at the final belay. Jessie was kind enough to share his water, which I somehow stupidly forgot on the ground. They were both local Grand Junction climbers out for Margaret’s first lead of this classic route. She did awesome. Jessie showed us the trick was to take a loooong rope leash (like 20ft), and then scramble up over the lip using some holds on the left side (and standing on the metal tube that was embedded in the rock). He spotted all of us on the way up, and then belayed us down, these guys were my heros. Getting to the actual top was great, and I don’t think I would have enjoyed the climb nearly as much without their help at the end.

Descent: In order to avoid having to dig out our two extra, coiled and packed away ropes, we all four agreed to just tie our lead lines together for the two double rope rappels required to get off the rock. We rapped over the edge from the top anchors, down through the time tunnel, all the way to the second belay. These were both two of the longest, most vertical rappels I’ve done in a long time. It was good practice for our up-coming weekend at Devil’s Tower, though. There was some confusion as to whether or not two 60m ropes would reach the ground from the second belay, but Margaret and I felt they should, and Jessie agreed to be the guinea pig. They did make it all the way down, with about 2ft of rope on the ground at the end. Don’t tie your knots with too much rope for this one!

It felt really good to be back on the ground, and kind of funny to see the conga-line of climbers working their way up the lower pitches. Yep, it’s definitely a popular route. We hung out for a little while, repacking, eating, drinking and talking with Jessie and Margaret about climbing areas in the desert and the Front Range. There were clouds moving in, and Mark and I had to make it back to Denver that night, so we couldn’t spend too long relaxing.

The hike back went quickly, though we did stop to check out a giant blue lizard, and had to spend some time throwing rocks at a pretty big desert gopher snake to get it off the trail. We were supposed to pick up Mom at the airport on Monday morning, so we drove back to Denver, and holed up at a KOA near the airport for a night of exhausted sleep. Good weekend!

There are more photos from the weekend in the gallery!

One more spring weekend, one more road trip! Mark and I took off from work at exactly 5:00 on Friday afternoon, and drove without any incident to Colorado National Monument by about 10:30pm. It was a long evening, and pretty creepy driving up the canyon rim road in the pitch dark. But we made it, got the tent set up, and crashed at around midnight that night.

The next morning we were able to sleep-in as we didn’t have Liv with us. We snoozed through the chilly desert morning until about 8:30a. It’s so cool to be able to crack open the tent and see the desert for the first time! It was a great campground. A few people out in RVs and pop-ups, a few other tents, gorgeous red rocks and sand, and little flowers all over the ground.

Our plan for the first day was to spend the morning driving around and sight-seeing the monument in the morning, and then climbing some single pitch desert cracks in the afternoon. We stopped in at the visitors’ center to make sure that there were no falcon closures that we needed to be aware of. Next, we headed south along Rim Rock drive, and I took about a billion pictures of the incredible, freestanding, striped and arched desert towers that lined the canyons.

The hike into the climbs took a little longer than we expected. It was a great trail though, winding up into the canyon from outside the Monument. Our climbs were located on a slab of striped red and pink wingate sandstone about 0.75 miles down the trail. Even though a few large groups of climbers had signed in on the trail register before us, we were the only people at the climbing area for quite a while.

So, on Saturday we climbed…

Left Dihedral (5.8) – A nice hand crack in a hard sandstone corner. It starts with a nice, steep slab to the right, which rapidly becomes pretty darn vertical. The jams are soft, easy, but sustained for the top 50ft.

The slab right of Left Dihedral (5.11-) – I don’t know if this toprope route has a name, and it’s definitely not on mp.com. It has been climbed before, as many of the sandy ledges seemed to be more rounded in certain areas than they might have been naturally. Even though our shoes got incredible purchase on this rock, the tiny slopers on this very steep slab made the climb very difficult. By the time I was finished climbing both of these, my feet ached to the bones. Lots and lots of footwork.

Luhr’s Route (5.9-) – This climb heads up the slab on the right side of the area, past three bolts, through a darn tricky steep slab move, and into a huge left-arching crack. I was skeptical about the website’s claim that one 60m rope would reach the ground, but it turned out to be fine. Mark and I both really enjoyed this climb as it had a lot of everything: difficult slabs, finger- hand- and off-width cracks, laybacks, and roof climbing. I was so exhausted by the time I finished this route that I decided to skip the last climb of the day.

The slab left of Luhr’s Route (5.12?) – Mark climbed this one on toprope to the anchors. It was hard as heck in the bottom, I’ve never seen Mark have so much trouble on a slab. Since he flashes 5.12 slabs in the gym, I suspect the middle of this climb was near that grade. The top part was filled with tiny slope-y ledges that Mark’s exhausted fingers and feet just ate up.

As the sun started to get low, we decided to pack up and head out. We made it back to the campsite at around 6:30p, and Mark collapsed into the tent for a pre-dinner nap. I packed up the long lens and went out to shoot the Monument at sunset. Independence Monument is the pinnacle of the canyon. It’s a long, thin tower that was first climbed by John Otto in 1911. It’s a classic and historic 5.9 (manufactured) route, that is one of the most popular climbs in western Colorado. As I drove through the pullouts, I watched a large group of climbers take there turns rappelling off the top of the tower. This was the climb we had planned for Sunday, and it was really cool to watch all the other people head down in the evening light.

Dog watching last weekend was lots of fun. I found a doggie that will actually look the camera in the eye! Echo is an awesome Australian shepherd that had a ball hanging out with us and playing with Liv all last weekend.

Took this shot a day or so ago in the afternoon when we had lots of cool multi-layer clouds flowing through. I like how the polarizer really pulled out the reflected yellow hues of the late afternoon sun.

So, it’s Easter and Mark and I are finishing up the taxes. OUCH!!!! This year is especially painful as Mark’s new job did not withhold enough money to cover the taxes on his income, let alone my taxes in a higher bracket than CSU expects for grad students, plus we evidently made a wad of cash on our investments last year that we were less aware of than we thought. So, the IRS is bleeding us for a couple thousand extra on this snowy Easter Sunday.

While Mark was grumbling and cussing and rifling through papers this afternoon, I decided to have a little kitchen adventure, and I put together an appropriate desert for the day. Enjoy!

Bleeding Strawberry Trifle

1 quart fresh strawberries, sliced
1/3 cup good balsamic vinegar

2 cups heavy cream
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 fresh pound cake
1/3 cup Amaretto liqueur

In a small shallow dish, coat the strawberries with the balsamic vinegar and marinade them in the fridge for at least 15 to 20 minutes (in my case, and hour or two until we get around to making dinner). After the strawberries have marinated, check for sweetness, adding sugar if desired.

In a large bowl using an electric mixer, whisk the cream to soft peaks. Add the vanilla and confectioners’ sugar. Whip until stiff peaks. Set aside.

Using a serrated knife, slice pound cake lengthwise into 1/2-inch thick slices. Carefully cut out a small circle for the bottom of each of the martini glasses. Place small circle in the bottom of the glass and brush cakes Amaretto liqueur. Take a sip of Amaretto liqueur. Add a layer of marinated strawberries. Sprinkle with more sugar if desired. Add a layer of whipped cream.

Add a second layer of cake, this one will be much larger than the first. If your pound cake is shaped like mine, you just put in a whole piece and then knock the corners off. Brush with lots of Amaretto liqueur. Take another sip of the Amaretto. Add another layer of marinated strawberries. Top with a very large dollop of whipped cream. I garnished with small corners of strawberries in the whipped cream. Some recipes recommend amaretto cookie crumbs or mint leaves to garnish.

You can stick these in the refrigerator until serving. Also, use the remaining cake, cream and strawberries to create a few extra, not-as-pretty trifle dishes. If you refrigerate for at least 2 hours, the flavors can marry and it makes everything especially tasty.

Well, the weather this weekend is pretty icky. I guess it’s not quite summer yet. The blossums are out on our trees and flowers are sprouting from the ground. On the Front Range, that means it’s time for more snow!

Mark and I are staying in this weekend and getting stuff done that we’ve been putting off (house work, taxes, stuff like that).

Have a Happy Easter everybody!

I took lots of fun pics on this climb, check them out in the gallery!

Last Sunday was a beautiful, warm, early spring day, so Mark and I decided to continue our tradition of climbing Greyrock as our first multipitch climb of the season. Unfortunately, we got distracted in the morning by various cleaning and home issues, and we ended up realizing somewhere around 11:30am that we had to reorganize and repack all of the climbing gear before we could leave. In a whirl of activity, we ended up leaving the Greyrock trailhead for this long, alpine-ish climb at 12:30p! Yes, we knew it was late. Yes, we brought our headlamps.

We hiked the approach rapidly, but then ended up in a long conversation with a group of climbers up in the area for the first time at the trail intersection. They had two guys just in from Poland and Sweden, and had convinced them to hike all the way to Greyrock for their first ever rock climbs! We found the base of our route after some wandering and bush-wacking almost exactly 2 hours after leaving the trail-head.

The route we decided to try this time was Theodore – 5.6. Here’s how it broke down:

Pitch 1: A long, deep, flaring hand crack. The crack is on a mild slab, and arches a bit to the left. I found it easier to use foot holds all over the face than to spend much time trying to figure out how to jam it. Mark, the crack-master, enjoyed easy jams the whole way up. I think we missed the first belay somewhere on top of the crack, as Mark didn’t belay until about 160ft off the ground just left of the large roof.

Pitch 2: There was nothing spectacular about this one. Rather than head further left into what looked like more interesting climbing, Mark led straight up through low angled fat cracks and small chimneys. Another 130ft of 5.4-ish climbing put us on a huge grassy ledge. Mark’s anchor here was pretty pathetic as he didn’t want to sit so far back from the edge that we couldn’t hear each other. Pretty much, it was one good cam, and the butt belay. This was fine with me as the climbing was so easy I didn’t feel I could put much stress on the belay even if I wanted to.

Pitch 3: Mark and I both agreed after this one that it was the best pitch of the climb. We headed up and right a bit over some bulgy slabs. Right as I scrambled over the second bulge, I had a foothold pop off for the first time ever on Greyrock. I then reached up and grabbed a hold filled with water. I was sooo happy… “Oooo! Alpine climbing is sooo cool!” Quite the adventure. After trying not to get wet in this little seam, we rounded the corner and followed a fantastic 100ft long flake up sweet moderate climbing with an incredible view.

Pitch 3a: Mark sat on top of the end of the flake in a web of slings around rocks and a large tree. He really looked like a big spider in a multi-colored web. I opted to climb through the web and hike up the bushy ledge behind Mark to move the belay under the next crack system. This is the ledge from which the 5.6s variation probably starts. We opted to continue up off the far left side of the ledge.

Pitch 4: This pitch was full of looser rock and lots of lichen. The pro wasn’t great, and Mark decided to angle for the left side of the two roofs above us. He set a belay on a small ledge with a fantastic view. Somehow, this ended up being the airy-ist belay of the whole climb. We were both having a great time, but it was pretty obvious we were going to loose our sun, and we needed to top out pretty darn soon.

Pitch 4.5: Mark led up the gully and over the ledges above us. He stopped after about 50ft. After about 3 minutes of no movement I called up “Mark! What’s going on??” He yells down “I’m on top!” Oh, really? I was expecting another long pitch, but I guess this was it. He took up three quarters of the rope and I climbed up over the lichen-covered terrain. As I popped out onto the large boulder-covered ledge where Mark was belaying, the wind hit me full force. “Wow, check out that dark cloud!” I said. Mark frowned and suggested I continue climbing up over the boulders to the full summit and then bring him up over the last 4th class scrambling. And that I do it quickly.

As I scrambled over the last ledges, I came around a corner and there was a guy standing there in a T-shirt. We both looked surprised to see each other. I asked him directions to the lake on the summit, and he sent me up a little higher. I got to say, the best part of climbing Greyrock is scrambling over the last few boulders and popping out to see this view!

Mark untied the rope and started taking apart the anchor when he heard me talking with, as he put it, “a pedestrian” just off the belay. The wind howled for about 10 minutes as we reorganized the rack and rope, but then calmed down rather quickly as the storm moved off. Somewhere around the top of the 1st pitch, Mark noticed that he left his hiking shoes on the ground. He really didn’t want to hike the three-quarters of a mile down to the packs in his new, unstretched rock shoes. After some experimentation as to whether he could wear my shoes for a while, we settle on him wearing my nice wool socks, and I wear the shoes without them. We left the summit at around 6:30p, or 4 hours after we started the climb. Not exactly alpine fast. Nor was our hike off in any way quick.

I left Mark sitting on the trail with all of the gear at the bottom of the rock and jogged off into the darkening trees to try to find our bags. While I was gone he, thankfully, reorganized all of the gear so we could pack it up in a nice manor. We headed off on our hike out at around 7:10, and made it back to the car in the pitch dark at just after 8p. A great way to spend an afternoon, and a really cool way to finish a fun climb.

So, there has to be something wrong with me, right? Some kind of learning disability or old brain tumor or something. I just went back and read most of these posts. Ok, so my tenses are a little confused recently, and that’s mostly because the voices of authors I’m reading right now are unfortunately seeping in.

No, what I want to apologize for is my spelling. Most specifically this (which I just found out. Seriously. I didn’t realize this until just now):

Lead is the present tense of the verb. Pronounced with a long ‘e’. As in “Mark leads the climb.”

Led is the past tense. Pronounced with a short ‘e’. As in “I led the climb for the 18th time and I still fell at the third bolt.” For years now, I’ve been pronouncing it correctly but spelling it the same as above. Shoot. What was I thinking?

Ah ha! Yes, if you read all the way to the bottom of the dictionary entry, “Lead” can be pronounced with a short ‘e’ as in the metal. As in “I sucked on that paint brush until my teeth fell out from lead poisoning.” So, not crazy. Just didn’t quite have the connections right in that spelling part of the brain.