Archive for 2008

In preparation for our upcoming climb of the Grand Teton (see, I told you), Mark and I are gathering and evaluating our gear and trying to streamline our climbing system. For me, one of the most important pieces of gear I carry with me is my camera. These days I shoot with a Nikon D80, often with a lightweight fixed 50mm lens, or a nice wide angle zoom (18-70mm), and almost always with a circular polarizer. But, this rig is heavy and expensive, and I could shave several pounds and a lot of space if I found myself a tiny point and shoot camera that I liked.

This week, Mark and I made the stunning realization that the summit of the Grand Teton is not after 11 miles of hiking as indicated on the Exum Guide webpage, but a mere 7.5 miles. That’s totally do-able! So, for our training exercise this weekend, we hiked out to a fun climb at Lumpy Ridge. I left the memory card for my camera at home, so no pictures from this trip, unfortunately. Well, here’s to reusing one from last month:

Our first goal for the day was Melvin’s Wheel, a classic 5.8 on the Bookmark. The approach is probably about 2 miles long since the trailhead was moved 3/4 of a mile away, so it was a good morning hike for us. We got to the base of the climb a little late (around lunch), but it was a sunny, blue-bell spring day, without a cloud in the sky.

There was a party ahead of us on the climb, so we took our time re-organizing the rack and getting prepared for the route. We decided we only wanted to climb the first two pitches, as those are the best, and then rap off and hopefully get in another few pitches on some other climb.

Mark led up the first, very long, pitch. By the time he reached the belay, there was only 15 or 20ft of rope left on the ground. I packed my shoes into a backpack with our tag line (small, extra rope for long rappels) and then headed up the pitch behind Mark.

It was a fun, long climb, full of interesting, varied features. I would say the two cruxes were a thin steep crack about 50 ft off the ground, and then a roof feature just below the belay. There’s few things as exciting as pulling over a roof on fantastic, solid handjams, with 150ft of air below you. Mark and I both made the move easily, and enjoyed the pitch.

By the time I reached the belay, the party in front of us was already leading up the third pitch of the route. Their belayer was sitting on top of the large horn of rock covered in slings that marked the rap station for the second pitch. After some yelling back and forth to him, we decided Mark would lead up the second pitch, set a TR, and I would climb, clean, and lower down. That way we could get in our pitch quickly without interfering with the party above us.

As Mark took off on lead for the second pitch, a climber from a newly arriving party below us reached our anchor. Mark and I filled him on our plan as he added his carabiners and clove-hitched his rope to the rap rings, effectively creating a second anchor at the same location as us. He then brought up his second and began to spout some of the most obnoxious and annoying crap that I have ever heard from a fellow climber. He said (and I am not exaggerating)

After I gave Mark trouble in a blog post about his rapid series of short climbing pitches on Greyrock last week, he decided this week, it was my turn. Especially after my disastrous navigation on the afternoon in question.

We headed out, a little later than we perhaps should have, for a training hike on Saturday. My first goal was the Big South trail, but as we drove up the canyon, the day got later, and I thought we might get more daylight if we found a closer trail in the Comanche Peaks Wilderness. Unfortunately, I accidentally instructed Mark to turn on Stove Prairie Road instead of waiting for Pingree Park Road, and didn’t realize my mistake for about 45 minutes.

By that time, we were most of the way to Loveland, and not going to be hiking in any wilderness area that day. There was some bickering, but as the Devil’s Backbone (a two mile long sandstone rock fin) came into view, we decided we could at least get in a long hike for the day. An hour and half after leaving Fort Collins, we got out of the car no more than 20 miles from our house, and started hiking.

As we’re training for an upcoming attempt on the Grand Teton, we hiked through the open space with our climbing packs laden with gear and water. The trail was packed with hikers compared to what we usually see, but, surprisingly, nobody wondered why we were carrying huge packs on a trail with no camping or climbing permitted. Or, at least, nobody asked us.

The Devil’s Backbone open space has a nice network of trails open for mountain biking, horse riding, and hiking. They run north along the hogback and connect to the Coyote Ridge Natural Area (south of Fort Collins) and eventually even to the network of trails in Horsetooth Mountain Park. Mark and I knew we could walk as far as we wanted to, which was really nice for a day that we had already pretty much spent in the car.

We walked north following the left side of the three loops along the trail, and enjoyed a warm, sunny afternoon. We stopped for a break and to relax in the shade at a lovely grove of cottonwoods about 4 miles out from the trailhead, and a mile or so from Coyote Ridge. After our break, we headed back taking the other side of each loop on our way south. To the best of our calculations, we covered 8.2 miles in about 3.5 hours. It was a very nice end to a rather icky morning. And it only took us 15 minutes to drive home.

Mark and I bought a new car! The passat always served us well, but it’s days were numbered. When the local Toyota dealership offered us a surprisingly good deal on a brand new Prius, we had to take it!

The car is awesome, and we love playing with all of the gadgets. The bluetooth connection lets you use the cars speaker system to make phone calls. There is actually a specific cable/port thingy for my iPod. And it gets 20 more miles per gallon than the Passat. It feels a bit like driving a spaceship. Not the exciting take-off part, of course, but the floating through space part.

The slow, quiet travel of vast empty spaces because you have no real destination and no urgency of arrival. It’s the Zen-inducing side-effect of piloting a vehicle with 74 horsepower.

This commercial makes me so happy. It’s really brilliant. Enjoy!

Mark and I decided in the last week or so that we want to try to climb the Grand Teton at the end of June. To warn our readers, the next several adventure write-ups on this blog are probably going to start with the words “As preparation for our up-coming climb of the Grand Teton…”

This weekend, we picked Greyrock as our training ground. We hiked the 3.5 mile long meadows trail to the base of the mountain. When we got to the bottom of the mountain, two parties were already climbing on top of each other on The Greatest Route. Another pair of climbers had just arrived, and seeing the log-jam decided to climb Barfy’s Favorite instead. We only knew of three routes to the top of the rock, so we wandered back to the “Chipmunks” area. There was a large group finishing up a top-rope on the first pitch of one of the three cracks. After they cleaned it, we started up the second part of our adventure for the day.

The last time we climbed Greyrock, we found ourselves on an easy, 5.6 route to the summit that Mountain Project calls Theodore. This time, we climbed the crack that started 10ft to the right, and managed to end up on a completely different route that was much more difficult.

Simon (5.9-) – This climb is usually done in four or five pitches and climbs the crack system to the right of Theodore. We started on the long, fun hand crack the other climbers were top roping. The second pitch was fun slabs and thin cracks up to a huge ledge under an extremely intimidating roof. The guidebook said the crux of the climb was this overhanging hand crack, and it looked horribly intimidating. In fact, when Mark got up to the roof, there was a new-looking sling around a chuck where it looks like another leader may have bailed.

Mark climbed up to the roof, pulled hard and made it over without too much drama. There were a few interesting moments as he jammed in a yellow cam at his waist without being able to see it, and then climbed up the slab to the right and set a belay quickly. I was actually very nervous when I made it up to the roof. The ground seemed very far below me, and that crack was long, and very steep.

But, I dug in, and pulled out a clean ascent. I even managed to yank out the seriously over-cammed pro that Mark had placed. And, after a few surprisingly fantastic fist-jams, one wild scream as I stood up on two jammed feet, and then a few moves of beautiful, exposed crack climbing, I was at the very nice belay ledge.

The rest of the climb went well. We did shorter pitches because the sun was out, the day was warm, and there were lots of good ledges to hang out on. I have been reading the new edition of John Long’s Anchors, and I evaluated each belay point with “WWJLD?” Only one was questionable, on the 5th or 6th pitch (I don’t remember), I found Mark in front of two widely spread cams, with a sling around a television-sized detached boulder. I asked Mark if the boulder was safe and he replied “Sure it is! See!” giving it a kick that rocked it back and forth on the ledge just a bit.

“Take off the sling!” I demanded. “If that thing falls, I don’t want to be attached to it!” Mark complied. He handed me the gear, grumbling about how his “death sling” wasn’t good enough for me.

We scrambled up to the top of the mountain at about 5:30p. There were still a few hikers around, one of whom was nice enough to give me a shocked “Where did you come from??” expression when I clambered up over the edge of a shear cliffline. I love that moment. We re-organized, enjoyed the view, and hiked down (this time we both had shoes). I was already exhausted and sore from the day, but we dug deep and hiked home, taking only an hour and half to descend the 2.5 miles back to our car. I had blisters from shoes that were too small, leg and back muscles in tight knots and knees that are still sore. But it was a good day, and only the beginning.

A shot from my walk around Arapahoe Bend natural area a week or two ago. It’s a little strange how many of the trees near our house have leaves or blooms, but the branches were all bare down by the river.

After our Partner Yoga class last weekend, Mark and I bought the book from the instructor. The Pleasures and Principals of Partner Yoga by Elysabeth Williamson has some really great postures and adjustments for pairs to practice. The other interesting part of the book is the way it is illustrated. They took lovely images of yogis and turned them into sketches. It gives the book a low-tech, artistic feel. Like a traditional yogic scroll, where the ancient hand was only able to sketch out the basics of the asana.

I thought I might try my hand at this effect, and the result is here. What do you think?