Archive for June, 2008

All week long Mark and I had been planning a backpacking trip into the Comanche Peak Wilderness, to get some altitude and flush out the bivy system to be used on our up coming climb of the Grand Teton. However, on Friday all of that changed.

I don’t need to explain the nitty gritties here, but suffice to say it’s the second week of June and there’s still more than 12ft of snow at our reserved campsite below the Grand, gas prices are ultra high and we’d rather be driving our Prius than the suv on vacation this summer, and we haven’t been to the midwest during a warm month in almost 4 years. We decided to ditch the plans to climb the Grand and take our vacation with my family in St Louie over the 4th of July.

Thus, we awoke Saturday morning with no need to train for a mountain climb, and no real desire to go through the trouble and pain of hauling all of our climbing gear out to climb at Lumpy. Mark got up around 6:30a with the dog and then called me 15 minutes later to tell me there were three baby foxes out playing in the grass near our house.

So now, rather than getting ready to climb, I was sneaking through the grass with a 300mm lens for an hour.

When I got home, the neighborhood garage sale was just starting. Mark and I had prepared a garage full of stuff to sell, and our neighbor, Jenifer, had agreed to sell it in our absence this weekend. As I opened the garage, though, a crowd descended on our pile and people started throwing cash at me. All plans for climbing on Saturday were immediately canceled in favor of participation in that all-American of summer Saturday activities: the garage sale.

Even though we didn’t get out on any fantastic new rocks, we had a great time on Saturday. I love the photos I managed to grab, and I will likely be posting more shots of the little guys in the next few weeks as they get out of their den more.

The garage sale was a huge success: we unloaded everything we wanted to and walked away with almost $200! I could write a whole post about how surprised I was to find myself enjoying the yard sale ritual even though I had intended to sell everything on Craig’s List. Fort Collins is an interesting and fun town, and the people who stopped by our little garage were a diverse and happy lot. It turned out to be a really nice day all around.

It’s spring, and the strong thunderstorm season is upon us (I just heard a resounding “DUH!” from every citizen of Windsor). I’ve got the camera out at night, and I’m enjoying the thunderstorms as they blow by.

Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies? Boys, you got to be ready in every dialect with every shape and form to hex the St. Elmo’s fires, the balls of blue light that prowl the earth like sizzling cats.

– Ray Bradbury Something Wicked This Way Comes

We climbed “The Pear Buttress” on “The Book” in Lumpy Ridge (Estes Park, CO) which finishes at an area near the right shoulder of the formation which is called “The Cave Exit.”

This particular exit is indeed a cave and is generally rated 5.7+, though you will see in most comments that the moves are awkward. From a distance, I saw 3 people climb through it and that bolstered my confidence. I figured I could do it as well.

I stepped to the back of the cave and started working my way up slowly. As I approached the fixed piton, I was about one move away from it and got a good look at an amazing amount of air that I was about to hang my ass over, so I placed some of my own protection and then moved into and clipped the piton. I got myself into a good splits position between the two walls of the cave and started trying to figure out how to get up and through it. Kate said she could occasionally see my head poke out right next to one of my feet. Quite awkward! I toyed with lots of body positions that could have worked if only my elbow had an 180 degrees of bend. I continued to turn face-in and face out until I found a position I felt certain would allow me to get into the roof with some easy moves. Ready to proceed, I pushed up with my legs and my harness tugged me back down.

Mark: “Something’s caught or snagged, can you see it?”
Katie: “The rope is wrapped all around you a couple times!”
Mark: “Do you think it would clear up if I unclipped the piton?” (I had other protection already)
Katie: “I’m not sure, it’s all around your legs”

I did a little dance to shake rope off of each leg until it made an unobstructed straight line through the protection to Katie. Even if I fell, it would have been at most one or two feet and a rope wedgie. With all that straightened out, I could give the roof a go. It wasn’t too bad (5.7+ if you don’t climb like me) and the view from the top was fantastic.

I set an anchor and brought up Katie to admire the view as well and we eventually made out of the valley having had a perfect day.