Archive for 2008

Following our anniversary tradition, Mark and I headed out of town for the weekend and spent a few nights at a nice resort along with a weekend of climbing and hiking. In past years, we’ve gone to Steamboat Springs and Estes Park. This year, we decided to head down to Colorado Springs.

It seems we may have been a little early for fall color viewing, but we did get a chance to sample some lovely sport climbing at the Red Rocks Canyon Open Space, just west of town.

This area is unique for the thought put into planning routes and working out access issues with the city. The rock is smooth, eroded sandstone, similar to the well-known fins of Garden of the Gods. Except in this area, there are many fewer cracks and almost no options for traditional gear. Climbers in the region worked out a plan with the city, which allowed a handful of very experienced and talented climbers to come in and bolt more than 90 routes. After they were finished cleaning and setting the routes, the park opened to climbing in 2004.

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I know many people who would frown or scorn a “pre-planned” climbing area, or throw it in the same pile as the “outdoor gyms” at North Table Mountain or Cactus Cliffs. And they might be right to do so. Having a climbing area that was not grown organically, but designed and built from the ground up, gives it a bit of the fake-ish feeling of planned suburban communities or Disney-World wildlife parks. But it also gives almost 100 interesting, well thought out, appropriately protected (not too many bolts, not too few), appropriately spaced, well cleaned, safe, and very fun rock climbing routes.

It’s really hard to complain about a climbing area where several greats of the Colorado climbing community have worked together to produce a fantastic sport climbing spot. The end result, though it might seem contrived, is a beautiful climbing area, in town, with awesome routes of nearly every grade.

On Saturday, Mark and I had a big breakfast at the resort, and then mosey’d over to the Garden of the Gods to register to climb and buy the guidebook. The gentleman at the counter made no attempt to cover up the fact that he thought we, as rockclimbers, were completely insane. Especially when we bought a “guidebook” that was no more than about 20 photocopied and stapled pages for $12.95.

We found ourselves in the parking area at around 10:30a, and set out for the day’s climbs. There was almost nobody else climbing at that hour of the morning, and the park was being generally used by joggers and people walking dogs. We started with the three routes on the Whale’s Tail.

I won’t get into the nitty gritty of each climb, suffice to say I was proud of my lead of the 5.7 slab (The Rose). The rock is classic red sandstone, which does not lend itself to any sort of foot or hand holds. And as you smear up the steep face, sand forms between your shoes and the rock, reducing your friction. The first route felt creepy. But we both lead it, and got our slab feet under us. Our next routes (Pockets a’ Plenty (5.9) and Jason’s Argonaut (5.10a)) didn’t seem so hard. The rock and the slab felt so foreign, but became more comfortable quickly.

We then wandered south along the Whale, and climbed Blow Tube Envy (5.7) and Mister MIA (5.9+).

Oh, did I mention many of these climbs were LONG? Pockets ‘a Plenty (which really only had like 4 pockets on it), Blow Tube Envy and Mister MIA were all almost exactly 100ft long. For each one, we were tying knots in the back end of the rope, and tying in on tip-toe to make our 60m rope stretch. So the routes were slabby, lacking holds, a little sandy, and very, very long. With an range of 5 to 8 bolts in those 100ft, they were very interesting, and a little spicy.

At around 2p, the rest of the Colorado Springs climbing community showed up. Mark and I started to get annoyed with the big group of guys barking at each other to our left, so we wandered across the canyon to Ripple Wall. Here we finished off our day (basically) by climbing Wake to Wake (5.10a) and Current Event (5.10b). The first route was super fun, and seemed easy for the grade. The second route was HARD. It started with a sloper and slab-o-licous traverse with protection sparse enough to make us both nervous, but close enough to keep us working the route. Mark, of course, got the red point, and I took a number of falls before I was able to commit to the delicate end of the traverse.

As I cleaned the last climb, dark clouds were filling the sky to our north. I could see lightening striking the ground a few miles away from us. Of course, as we hiked out of the canyon, we passed a group of college-aged kids (two cute girls and a guy) that had just pulled their rope all the way up to the anchors with the knot left in it. Mark, being the secret super hero that he is, couldn’t help himself. He threw on his harness, pulled out our rope, and ran up Pikes Peak (5.7) (5 perfectly placed bolts in about 90 ft of climbing), untied their knot, and rapped down while cleaning. The whole thing took less than about 15 minutes, and we made it back to the car before the storm hit.

It was a great day for both of us, with committing and fun leads, new and exotic-feeling rock, and well protected sunny slabs. My toes, arches, ankles and calves ached for days, but it was totally worth it!

Tomorrow is our 5th wedding anniversary, and it feels like a bit of a milestone. This morning, the blog of Niffgurd got “tagged” and his recounting of past events inspired me. Here’s what’s happened to me so far.

20 Years Ago:
1. I was in the 5th grade at Tilman Elementary School in Kirkwood, MO. I had already been to four different elementary schools and lived in 6 different towns.
2. My two best friends at the time, Katie Unland and Beth Brown, have both since passed away.
3. I danced ballet, tap and jazz three times a week, and I knew I was going to grow up to be a famous ballerina in New York.
4. I’m pretty sure it was almost exactly 20 years ago this week that my Mom came into my bedroom one night before bed and told me I was likely to have another little brother next summer. My first thought at the time was “Oh my God! My parents had sex!”

10 Years Ago:
1. I was starting my sophomore year at Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. in Terre Haute, Indiana.
2. I was learning to program in Java and C++.
3. I knew I was going to grow up to be a famous dot-com entrepreneur and CEO.
4. I went rockclimbing for the first time ever as part of a Pike rush event at a gym in Indianapolis that fall.

5 Years Ago:
1. I was on the Outer Banks with my closest friends and family as I prepared to marry Mark Calder.
2. A week before the wedding, our beach had been hit by Hurricane Isabel.
3. On the morning of our wedding we went boogie boarding in 6 foot waves, and I got a little beaten up.
4. It started raining about an hour before the ceremony, but we had it outside anyway. Everybody had umbrellas except Mark and I, who stood out in the rain and pledged to spend the rest of our lives together. As soon as the Rev. said “I now pronounce you Man and Wife,” it stopped raining.

There’s quite a few fun pictures of our two-week long wedding odyssey on my old Pbase site.

3 Years Ago:
1. Mark and I were living in Fort Collins, Colorado, as I started my second year of grad school.
2. Mark’s contracting job with our old company in Indianapolis was drying up and he was beginning life among the unemployed.
3. I knew I was going to grow up to be a famous climatologist and save the planet. I was hoping to have a weather phenomenon named after me.
4. After three solid years of rockclimbing, I was starting to have anxiety issues and was not climbing as much. Mark and Tom were climbing together constantly, and it was about this time of year, three years ago, that Mark and Tom climbed the 5.10 variation of Yellow Spur, with Mark leading the technical cruxes.

1 Year Ago:
1. I had recently started on medication for my anxiety, and was sleeping through the night for the first time in 9 months.
2. I was working hard on my Master’s Thesis.
3. Liv was in a cast after slicing clean through two tendons on her back left leg.
4. We had just spent a great day climbing Baobob Tree in Vedauwoo with Dylan, Ann, Sean, Doug and Liz.

So Far This Year:
1. I’ve received a Master’s Degree in Atmospheric Science and I’ve been accepted into the Phd program at CSU.
2. I taught a college-level class on Global Climate Change at Colorado College.
3. I managed to keep a consistent yoga practice throughout the year.
4. Mark and I took our trad climbing to new heights by pulling off clean ascents of 5.9 crack climbs at Lumpy Ridge and Vedauwoo.

Yesterday:
1. I finished my half of a presentation of my work for several famous climate and atmospheric scientists (to be presented on Monday).
2. I received notice that I am accepted into the Workshop on Reducing the Uncertainty in the Prediction of Global Warming in Jerusalem next January!
3. I scheduled an interview for a part time job doing photography for a local rafting company.
4. Mark and I made a tasty pasta sauce from the tomatoes that are just ripening in our garden.

Today:
1. I put a whole bunch of cool songs on the green iPod Shuffle that Mark got for me as an anniversary gift.
2. Jim sent me his half of the presentation and I’ve put them together and delivered them to the meeting organizer.
3. I went to my interview and told them I couldn’t work for them until next March. They kicked me out and said “Then contact us next March!”
4. I went through all of the old photos of our wedding for this post.

In the next year …
1. I’ll submit my first paper to a scientific journal.
2. I’ll have presentations and conferences in San Francisco, New York, and Jerusalem all before the end of January.
3. I’ll take the prelims – a whole week of rigorous testing – and be started on my Phd work officially.
4. Mark and I will start trying to make a baby.

So, on release day (two weeks ago?) I bought the PC game Spore. For those not following PC games, this is a game where you start out as a single-celled organism and evolve your creature until it grows legs, forms a tribe, builds cities and then ventures out into the galaxy. It also has an internet community component where you can encounter other players’ creations while you play the game. But don’t start imagining yourself as the ultimate core wars player whose organism will crush other players worldwide. What you do see other creatures/buildings/vehicles as a flavor element which you then crush/befriend on their way to galactic dominance.

It received so much hype that I had to try it and find out for myself. Does it stand up to all the hype? No, of course not. Is it fun… yes. I’m a huge fan of all the Civilization style games and galactic exploration/conquest so this is right up my ally. I think this review is fair where they describe it as the ultimate casual game.

Last night, Mark and I went to the 3rd annual Reel Rock Film Tour, as it stopped in Fort Collins for an evening. While I’ve never been one to give movie reviews on this site, I thought I would give a few impressions of this event, more as an evening with the local Northern Colorado climbing community than anything else.

We convinced Doug and Liz to come out as well, and evidently Alpinist Adam was in attendance too, though we didn’t meet up with him until afterwards. The auditorium was nearly full, with several hundred people in attendance. Even though the movies were being shown in the student center theatre at Colorado State Univ, the crowd was diverse, and we saw people of all ages in attendance.

Doug, I think, summarized most of our feelings about the movies at the end by saying “Wow, that was a lot of Dean Potter.” I felt the whole film festival could be renamed The Many Hairstyles of Dean Potter or maybe Check it out yo! Dean Potter is crazy/beautiful and Tommy Caldwell is missing a finger! Ok, that last one kind of sucks, but it sums up the general feel of the shows.

We all really liked Peter Mortimer’s new film, The Sharp End. Each of his movies seem to get bigger, better and prettier. This one had great production, and cool computer generated segments. It was full of typical Sender Films humor, drama, suspense and really big falls. In this movie, they either mic’d the climbers or had one of those Sonic Earz, because you could hear the breathing of the leaders clearly as situations got desperate. It was a wonderful effect. Listening to somebody else’s breath makes me breathe along with them, and then really draws me into the tension of the moment. Then there was always that moment, one sucked inhale, one “F—.” and we’re off!

Definitely head over and check out the big version of the trailer on their site, because the one from YouTube (shown here) is pretty grainy and hard to see.

The crowd was great. Everybody would gasp and then give a big “Oooow!” when the climber lands. I thought it was fun to hear the different people in the audience cheering for the boulderers, the crazy German trad climbers, or the insane big wall aid climbers. A large group of girls cheered each time Steph Davis graced the screen, and the crowd erupted when her line on Long’s Peak (Pervertical Sanctuary 5.10c) was drawn across the Diamond.

Probably for me, one of the highlights of the evening was the gear-give-away at “intermission.” While I didn’t win anything, the guy just to the left of Mark won a GIANT block of chalk. I’ve never seen so much chalk in my life. They called out the number, and he actually groaned.

“Oh great. I won chalk” he grumbled dismally. He didn’t get up to accept the prize, just sunk down in his chair and passed the ticket to the end of the row for the runner to check. They passed the chalk down the row to him. Mark was laughing.

“Wow, that’s a lot of chalk,” said Mark.

The guy next to him looked up hopefully and said “Do you want it, man?”

“Sorry, I don’t use chalk,” Mark replied honestly.

“Me neither.” He glanced hopelessly around for a minute and then sat back in his chair to watch the second movie. Mark and I were both quietly laughing like mad. It’s so easy to think everybody in the Fort boulders. After all, we have Rotary Park, Carter Lake, and the 420’s. But there are lots of other climbs around here, and lots of other climbers. And last night, we all celebrated the sport together.

I love the state motto for New Mexico: Land of Enchantment. You just can’t walk around the desert and mountains in this place and not feel some kind of mystical connection with the land, the sky, and the ancient Native Americans that also walked through these mountains. Maybe it’s the low population density, or the beautiful mesas and desert rock formations. Whatever it is, every time we visit the state, I feel like I’ve gone someplace beautiful and remote, a wild and exotic land, that is barely part of the world I live in every day.

I woke up early and energized on Sunday morning. Mark and I had to leave by noon to make a Sunday evening commitment, but nobody was stirring when Liv and I set out on the trail. Even though the sky was deeply overcast, I took the dog and hiked up to the top of the mesa we had been climbing on the day before, in the hopes of getting some pictures of the sun rising over the canyon, or the desert beyond.

The trail to the top edge of the mesa was about 2 miles long, and probably took Liv and I about an hour to do. The clouds were breaking up as I reached the edge, and the sun had long since risen. There were no incredible sunrise pictures for me that morning, and judging by the moist, cool breeze coming over the the mesa, there would be no climbing before we had to leave at noon either. But it was really nice to sit on the edge of the cliff, in the quiet desert morning, and watch the clouds slowly roll over the canyon and lands far beyond.

Eventually, I left my little perch and hiked back down to camp. The rest of the gang were hanging out in Dylan and Ann’s camper, drinking lots of coffee, making biscuits for breakfast and doing crosswords. I really suck at crosswords. Evidently, “creative spelling techniques” are not part of the challenge of the puzzles.

The clouds slowly burnt off, and Dylan and Ann decided to head up the hill for another day of climbing. Mark and I packed up camp and reluctantly headed home to our normal lives. It was a very nice, if too short, weekend away from reality.

Mark and I have climbed a little bit in New Mexico, and each time, we’ve been impressed with the quiet, secluded nature of the crags, even if they are just off the road. Last weekend, the stars aligned, plans came together, and we were able to meet Dylan and Ann in the Land of Enchantment.

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We drove down to Sugarite Canyon State Park on Friday after work. We got caught in a bit of traffic in Denver, but made it into the campground just before the gate was locked at 10pm. Following the pattern from the previous few days, it rained for most of our drive down.

Pictures from the weekend are up in the gallery.

On Saturday morning, we rolled out of bed a little later, made breakfast, and hung out with the ranger who had spent the previous evening dealing with rowdy campers for a little while. Eventually, we packed up and hiked up to the lovely, south facing basalt cliff. The approach felt relatively short, and we enjoyed the hike up to the rim of the mesa through high desert forests and prairies.

The day turned out to be clear and beautiful. The rock was sunlit, warm, and the views from the cliff-line were incredible. We were on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, in the high country of northern New Mexico. To our south, we could see distant deserts and open lands, with peaks, mesas and wind-blown sand sculptures. The summer has been feeling late, and the desert climbing season will be starting soon. Looking out at the beautiful landscape below us, I started to get excited about new adventures this winter! But for now, we were having a great day in the mountains.

Pete’s Downclimb (5.6) – Mark and I started the day on a nice crack suggested by Dylan. We had brought a light rack, with gear up to one #3.5 cam. Mark got about 10ft up this route and realized that the whole thing was going to take much bigger gear. He climbed back down, grabbed all of Dylan’s Vedauwoo big gear, and then headed up again. The climb was lots of fun, and Mark even found a perfect little placement for the smallest Big Bro about 3/4 of the way up. I followed, and enjoyed the nice little ledges and pockets covering the climb.

Crack Head (5.8) – Dylan lead up this route while we were figuring out gear on Pete’s. And we began our day of free-loading off of Dylan’s TRs. Why not? It was a fun day with good cracks. After each of us climbed and enjoyed the perfect hand crack on Crack Head, we’d clip a few of the top draws on Sangre Verde (5.10a), and then run up that nice arrete on TR. The pockets were lovely, the moves were smooth and the traverse back to the anchors at the top was spicy.

Salt Mother (5.8) – Another Redpoint feather in Dylan’s cap, and another TR for Mark, Ann and me to enjoy. The climb starts with a tricky thin fingers crack, that felt creepy and insecure. It ended with thin hands that were perfect for me, and quickly became my favorite route of the day.

Great Roof Left (5.9) – This intimidating roof hung over us all day, and Dylan attacked it on lead. Mark and Ann followed happily, and everybody seemed to agree that this route was not as hard as Salt Mother. I hung out in the sun with the dog, resting my now aching wrist and hoping that this pain wasn’t a resurgence of the tendinitis I dealt with a few years ago. Eventually, I decided that it was the end of the day for me, but enjoyed cheering everybody else up their routes.

Motengator (5.8+) – I guess 4 pitches just weren’t enough for Dylan at the end of the day. We had all started talking about cold bear and ice water, but we had plenty of time left to get one more in. Dylan lead up this route, which seemed much longer than any others so far. Perhaps it was the heat or exhaustion from a long day, but it also seemed harder than the 5.8 grade would suggest. Careful, but strong, crack technique got Dylan, Mark and Ann to the top of the route without any problems.

Ok, without many problems. Mark lowered Dylan off of his belt, which was not set up well and resulted in a few minutes of apparent agony for Mark as his belay device dug into his crotch and the rope ran over his leg. Evidently, the usual belay set-ups that Mark uses for me, don’t work as well when your climber weighs 50 more pounds.

By the end of the day, we were all smiles, sunburns and sore muscles. We hiked down the mesa and spent a cool evening camping out with our friends.

My parents were here over the long Labor Day weekend, and we threw a huge BBQ one night. There was corn, and rotissery chicken and coleslaw galore. My mom made the fantastic ‘slaw with only CSA (local) veggies, and it turned out great. It was so simple, I’ll have to do it again someday: shred cabbage, cucumbers, carrots and cilantro into a big bowl. Add a little olive oil and a lot of white whine vinegar, some toasted poppy seeds, and you’ve got yourself a tasty slaw.

In fact. She made a lot of coleslaw. So much, that after eating it at two meals a day for about 3 days, we hadn’t hardly made a dent, and were getting a little sick and tired of eating coleslaw.

That’s when inspiration struck. One night, over our coleslaw, I said to Mark: “You know, this would make great filling for spring rolls!” He agreed heartily, and the next day he came home with eggroll wrappers. Not exactly the same thing, but all they had at our local market.

We had a ball rolling the slaw up in the wrappers and then Mark fried them in about 2 inches of 350F vegetable oil.

The result was so nice, I had to photograph it. And very, very, very tasty. Mark doesn’t like to waste fry-oil, so we also made churros, and then wrapped left over brownies in the eggroll wrappers and fried those! At that point, we got a little sick.

Oh and one more note. I love photographing food for some reason. Yes, mountains and climbers and adventures are fun too. But for some reason, I think making food look beautiful and tasty is an incredible art. I buy cookbooks for the photography sometimes. If anybody out there wants to write a cookbook and needs illustration, just let me know. I’d be more than happy to help out. :)

So, I’ve learned several important things this week. 1) I don’t know how to spell the word Monastery and 2) The last time we climbed here the lack of fun was all my own fault.

Someday I’ll write a blog post about climbing and having an anxiety disorder. Today I’ll simply say that when we got to the Monastery last weekend, I remembered what happened the last time we climbed there. What I thought, almost 3 years ago, was reasonable fear and doubt in my safety system was actually a full day of panic attacks. No wonder Mark never wanted to go back again.

The photos from the day are up in the gallery.

This weekend started with a rainy, cloudy Friday that made Mark and I decide not to go backpacking. Our trip to Smith Rocks next month is inspiring us to spend more time clipping bolts, and climbing on rock new and unfamiliar rock. So, we decided to take Liv and the little rat terrior we were dog sitting, Izzie, out to The Monastery on Saturday.

The hike out was fun as we met a family in the parking lot who had never been to the area, and wanted to follow us out. It took us about an hour to hike the steep (up and down) mile to the climbs and then we wandered around lost, looking for the Nursery, or something, to warm up on. That’s what the green squiggles on our GPS track indicate, before we found the rocks waaay down the hill (red area).

Eventually, we found ourselves in The Catacomb (gotta love the freaky names for this climbing area) and warmed up on a couple of fun routes on a rock called the Sepulcher. Mark loved the name Sepulcher. It made him think of NetHack and D&D from back in the day.

Gravestone (5.7/8) – This did seem like the hardest route of the day. It was short, and it was like diving back into the deep, dark end of the pool where you’re not sure the crystals will stay in the rock. But after it was over, we were having fun.

The Mausoleum (5.9-) – As this climb shared an anchor with the previous one, we both ran a lap on it. I was starting to get into the groove of sticking my fingers in tiny crystalline cracks and using itty pebble footholds by now, so the route didn’t feel all that hard.

Headstones (5.8) – We walked up the hill to the right side of the rock we were climbing on, and Mark did a lovely flash of this long 5.8. When he got to the top, he found the chain anchors to be in a bad place for top-roping, but decided it would work out ok and lowered off. As I climbed, the rope friction was so bad that Mark had to haul on the cord with his whole body to take the slack out of the TR.

It felt wonderful to top out this little route. The anchors were in the far wall of a little bowl, and the views were amazing on all sides. As I pulled over the edge, I felt completely relaxed and happy to be out in such an amazing place, climbing to such beautiful spots.

Simplexity (5.9+) – There’s a good chance we’ve done this climb before. But Mark picked it out and Mark lead the route. The first bolt was high and creepy, but by this time, we both had our pebble-toes in full gear, and Mark loved climbing a route where all he worried about was where to put his feet. I enjoyed every minute following on it, and then moved the TR to the climb on the left which shared the same set of anchors.

Altered Boy (5.7) – At this point, I don’t know if this climb was really 2-3 grades easier than the previous one. They were all starting to feel very similar and very fun. It was a great, pebbly, crystally, crackily, lovely climb to finish the day on.

The clouds cleared during our last two climbs and we hiked out in the late afternoon sun. The doggies were all tired, and so were we. It turns out, the Monastery is not a scary horrible place to climb after all! I’ve changed my mind. I’m happy to recommend the area to anybody.