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.
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.
In which Kate continually redefines the “scariest thing I have ever done.”
Mark and I have spent a fair amount of time climbing on the giant granite rocks just north of Estes Park known as Lumpy Ridge. We’ve manage to climb a few easy and a couple classic routes over the years, but we’ve never found a route that made the area truly special, until we climbed the Pear Buttress (5.8+).
Note: It is important to keep some facts in mind for those who may have visited Lumpy before. The Pear is a rock formation with a classic 5.7 that climbs to the top of it. The Pear Buttress is a route on a different rock formation called The Book, and goes at harder and more sustained grade. It doesn’t have to make sense, it simply is.
Mark and I were proud of ourselves when we managed to show up at the Trailhead for Lumpy at around 9am. There were other climbers milling about, and we ended up hiking in a long line people up to the base of the Book. We noticed as we left the car that we had forgotten both our guidebook and the printed copy of the route description that I made on Friday. It was a nice Saturday in the National Park, so we figured we would just follow other climbers up this wildly popular route. And after seeing the number of people at the bottom of the climb, we knew our plan would work.
The first pitch of this climb has no protection until 20 or 30ft up. Watching Mark climb this steep, thin slab from the ground was very scary. I held my breath and held my hands up the whole time, convinced that if he did fall, I would at least be beneath him before he hit the ground. Mark, as usual, didn’t mind the high first piece, and climbed as if he were on toprope. When he finally got his gear in and I started breathing again, I declared that to be “the scariest thing we have done all year!”
The rest of the first pitch is fun flake hand-jams and then the crux, or hardest part, of the whole climb comes at the top of the pitch when you are forced to climb very thin cracks on a slippery rock face before making it up to the belay ledge.
The second pitch traverses left along a sloping ledge 150ft in the air. I was feeling confidant, and had no problems until the ledge reaches the edge of the huge slab of rock we were climbing on. The route then ascends the corner of the 1000ft tall slab of granite, with air below you on all sides. Mark admitted that he felt “exposed” during this section of the climb, and I trembled and slowly worked my way up and then across an airy traverse and then down to the belay. I knew I was safe on a rope and seconding the fairly easy climbing on this pitch, but the route hung out over so much empty space that it was nearly impossible to keep your mind off of the image of a tumbling demise. Once I reached Mark, I clipped myself into the fixed anchor and decided that this section was “THE scariest thing I have done in a very long time!”
The third pitch was the “money pitch,” a 160ft long hand crack that splits the blank face of the rock. It starts with thin hands about an inch wide and slowly widens to perfect cupped hands near the top. Mark led the pitch like the crack master that he is, quickly and quietly working his way up the beautiful formation. When it was my turn to second the pitch, I found my crack climbing rhythm, and moved up the rock at a good pace. After the first 30ft, I found my breathing and heart rate had increased and I felt like I was climbing at an aerobic pace. After the first 60ft, my toes were sore and my calves had begun to cramp. After 90ft of crack climbing, my right groin muscle had begun to spasm and shoot pain through the right side of my body whenever I lifted my right leg, and when I finally reached the top of the crack, I was sweating, panting, and pushing my physical limits past what I ever thought I could endure. It was a fantastic pitch!
The last few pitches got us up and off the top of the rock. Mark and I decided to give the Cave Exit a try, and after his adventures in stemming, I thought I would let him write his own post about the exit. Look for that one to show up soon. I was so sore and exhausted by the time I reached the critical point on the last pitch, I didn’t think I could do it. I stood on a little rock, reaching out to a shelf that hung out over the 800ft of air we had just worked so hard to ascend, and had to hang upside down and pull myself over the lip. I screamed in pain, terror and effort as I pulled over the roof, and then topped out a fantastic climb with a rush of adrenaline stronger than any in years.
I was thrilled and goofy on top of the rock. I yelled profanities to the wind, jumped up and down, and took about a million pictures and some goofy video. I decided that roof was “THE SCARIEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE!” and felt so happy and proud for completing the climb.
In the end, this route fit all of my requirements for a “great climb” without any doubt. We worked hard, with sustained physical effort, and it took everything we had, all of our mental, physical and emotional power, to finish it. It topped out on an amazing and beautiful summit. And Mark and I got to enjoy it together. Score one for Lumpy Ridge!
As you’ve no doubt read by now, we spent a the holiday weekend with good friends in our favorite place: Vedauwoo, Wyoming. I was not the only person with a camera and a blog, and I thought I would add a few links, pictures and video taken by others in the group.
Sean has a concise trip report and some pictures on his blog.
Ann also has some really nice (and not so nice ;) ) pictures up on her flickr site, though she is often to shy to make them public, unfortunately. Here, I will help!
Yes, that is me trying out Doug’s very nice pipe and pipe tobacco. I have a strange and secrete fondness for pipe tobacco and cigars. Don’t tell my mom or my insurance guy.
Dylan, who is one of my greatest blogging inspirations, is slowly building a great series of posts about the weekend. He has the actual GPS track from our hike on Saturday up on his site. And he has this fantastic video of our first campsite on windy, windy Saturday. It really gives a bit of a feel for what the wind is like out on the ridges of the Green mountains. Just remember, the temperature was hovering around 40F (~4C) while he was filming.
Thank you everybody for your friendship and company. What a great weekend!
Three nights, three posts. Though Monday was a little uneventful. The rest of the pictures from the weekend are up in the gallery.
One good day of climbing and then it was time for Vedauwoo to remind us that it is still, technically, early spring in Wyoming. We awoke Monday morning to a wet fog filling the air like confetti at a political convention. Those of us who were left packed up camp and headed home. I wandered about the woods near our camp for a while trying to capture the surreal thickness of air with my inadequate tools.
It felt a bit like being a goldfish in a dirty tank. I mistakenly went off trail for a few minutes and then couldn’t find it again. I bushwacked in (what I thought) was the general direction of our camp, and then caught a glimpse of our bright yellow car. I popped out of the woods on the exact opposite side of camp from where I imagined I had been walking. So weird and disorienting.
Mark and I drove home, layed out all of our wet gear to dry, and then spent the afternoon in a semi-conscious state watching TV as the rain pounded outside of our house. In the evening, we all met for dinner one more time at our favorite local brew-pub. We toasted a great long weekend, and the beginning of another fantastic climbing season.
Sunday morning we all slept in, snuggled into warm bags and tents kept cool by the woods around us. Doug and Liz put up a hard breakfast competition with Mark and I, now that we all have the car camping gear, there was bacon, eggs, and sausage all around that morning. Eventually we packed up for the day, organized who was riding with whom, put the mountain bikes on the car and headed back to the main area.
There’s more pictures from the weekend up in the gallery.
The gang hiked out to Jurassic Park while Kevin, Wade and I headed off on our mountain bikes in the opposite direction. We rode along the south-east side of the Nautilus to the far end, through a serious swamp, and then caught up with the Turtle Rock trail at the east trailhead. We rode all the way around the main area; having a blast riding over granite boulders and through deep muddy creaks. 1.5 hours and 3.5 miles later, we eventually found the climber’s trail into Jurassic Park. We hid the bikes and hiked in to meet the rest of the group, who were just starting to climb after having a luxurious lunch and lounging on warm, sunny rocks.
I was really tired from biking. My legs felt like jelly and my shoulder muscles were in burning tight knots. But the group put up some interesting topropes, and I gave a few of them a shot. Kevin took over control of the camera, and came up with some really great shots from the day.
Get up that Tree (5.8) – A one move wonder that Mark lead up as his warm-up. I never tried it, but many people in the group seemed to enjoy hanging upside-down from the giant chockstone.
Lawyer on the Toilet (5.8) – This was a great little crack with a pretty tough off-width section in the middle. It took me a few minutes to figure out the key, for me at least, was turning around and facing the other way when the foot holds ran out on the slab.
Rowdy Joe Bad (5.11c) – I gave this bolted slab a go while the top rope was hanging around. I never got past the crux. Mark worked out a method that may have been cheating, using his wing span to reach over to the crack on the right. Which left Dylan as the only one in our party to honestly climb the route.
Flake-O-Saurus (5.10c) – Mark hung a top rope on this climb and many of us had a great time thrashing around on it. Mark climbed it with a few falls in the crux as the steep crack transitioned to awkward face climbing. I took a bunch of falls as the perfect hand crack transitioned into an offwidth. My excuse for the day was that my legs were exhausted, which lead to weak, sloppy footwork. And that was especially evident on this climb. Eventually, I layed back the sloping flake until I could get back in above the wide section and jam to the actual crux (where I quit). I know, cheating, but at least I got to enjoy some sweet crack climbing before and after.
At the end of the day, a fellow climber in the area hung one of our ropes on Slot-A-Saurus (5.9+), and we all lined up to give it a try. Sean gave everything he had and more on that climb. Clare worked hard and completed it. Ann made it look beautiful and easy. Wade got about half way up and called it a day. In the course of this, the evening was getting later and later. Kevin had decided he was going to drive back to Denver, no matter how late we stayed at the crag. I was hungry and exhausted, and still had to ride my bike back to the car.
I ended up convincing Mark to leave this climb for another day, but I suspect that our next trip to ‘Voo will start with this fantastic crack. He was disappointed, but seemed to understand. We all headed back to camp in our own fashion. Dylan, Ann and Clare hiked back from the crag – a mere 3 miles at dusk in a road-less and trail-less wood. Sean drove back to the Fort. Kevin packed up and headed home to Denver. Doug and Liz and Mark and I sat around the fire, cooking dinner and hanging out until rain started falling out of the dark sky above, then we all tucked in for another night of wild Wyoming weather.
“This is ‘high country’ and wind is ever present, whether just a light breeze prowling through the aspen groves or near hurricane force gales. Storms of near bestial proportions are spawned in the snowy range … and many times descend upon the valleys of Vedauwoo.” – Skip Harper
Pictures from the weekend are being added to the gallery!
We made plans to spend the long weekend with the old gang at Vedauwoo months ago. And we should know better than to try to predict weather so far in advance. After a week of heavy weather in Northern Colorado, Mark and I (and most of the rest of the group) weren’t sure how a long weekend in the mountains and high, windy, cold plains of Wyoming was going to turn out. We waffled about whether to drive up on Friday night or Saturday morning, but around 7p on Friday night, the clouds parted, the sun came out, and we decided it was time to take a chance.
Our first adventure involved finding the campsite that Ann and Sean had picked out earlier in the day. Dylan sent us a map via email, which Mark and I promptly left at home. We both felt we had the image in our mind, so after two hours of driving through mud and fog and rain and the dark woods northwest of Vedauwoo, we finally found the site. We put up our tent in freezing rain and dark fog, and crashed for the night.
In the morning we woke to howling winds and the left side of our tent encased in ice. The few hearty souls who had camped Friday night (Dylan and Ann, Clare, Sean and us) collectively decided we would be unlikely to get much climbing in that day. Mark and I brought my little brother Kev back from the meeting spot and Doug and Liz showed up around 10:30. We all packed up day packs and put on layers to hike out and explore the northern reaches of Vedauwoo.
This turned out to be a great decision. Even though Mark and I have been climbing in the area for more than four years now, every time we go back to Vedauwoo we discover a new valley, rock, mountain or glade that is just stunning. On this hike, we all explored a whole region that I had only seen from a distance. The Green Mountains are a series of rocky peaks to the north of most of our climbing areas, and on Saturday we got an up-close look.
According to Dylan’s GPS, we covered about 7 miles in about 4 hours, which is good for a hike that was only 60% on a trail or road. With the mountains and rock formations in Vedauwoo, it’s so easy to hike off over a hill, across a marsh, through a forest, without ever needing a trail for navigation. Just put a rock to your back and walk “that way!”
On the final leg of our route around the mountains, we stumbled upon a perfect campsite snuggled up against a peak. The ground was soft with pine needles and the wind blew by overhead without touching us. We all decided we should move campsites.
Saturday evening was spent next to a roaring fire in the soft quiet arms of the lee-side of Vedauwoo. The wind, weather, and remoteness of the area make it so wild. The dark forest feels like coming home to those of us with storms blowing in our souls.
