Category Archives: Rock Climbing

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.

Doug has a nice write up on his blog, as well as a lot of great pics up on his flickr site.

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.

“Vedauwoo filter(s) out the weak, the soft and the spineless, which leaves better company for you.” – Todd Skinner

After dinner on Saturday night Doug and Liz headed home, and Mark and I cuddled up for a windy Wyoming night of camping. On Sunday morning, we had origionally planned to try to get in a training hike for our upcoming climb of the Grand Teton, but we weren’t feeling motivated. Instead, we substituted the long-ish (20 minutes) approach to Plumb Line Crag.

After our arduous journey, through cow pastures and sage brush, we came upon another group of climbers racking up for the climb we were looking for: the infamous Plumb Line (5.9+) itself! Only two of the three climbers in the group planned to climb the route, the third was a friendly girl who had a much nicer camera than I and was pulling out some good stops for some great photos. In deference to her, I ended up not taking any pictures at the cliff. So, I’ll borrow one from MP.com (below).

Plumb Line is a beautiful, perfect, hand crack: 50ft long and slightly overhanging. It’s an old-school 5.9, the difficulty graded back in the days when 5.10 didn’t exist. Mark and I have oogled the climb before, but never attempted it. Today, it was our only plan, so we decided to be patient and hang out while the other group had a go.

We chatted with the first leader, who said their group was from Boulder. The leader described learning to climb years before in SoCal, and that Vedauwoo was giving him a chance to pull out tricks from Joshua Tree that he hadn’t used in a while. His second was a route setter at THE premier bouldering gym in Boulder (the Spot), and he complained a bit that morning that he may have been bouldering too much lately. They both did a great job on Plumb Line, with the leader taking a few worthy falls as he “went for it” on gear!

Mark scrambled around to the rap anchors and worked on setting up a TR for us. This was a little tricky because the crack had a perfect rope-wedging cleft at the top of the crack, and all we had to run the rope over was a hex that was slightly too big. Mark figured it out eventually and then it was our turn to climb!

Mark did a fantastic job, of course. He pulled into the crack and then was on top of the rock in 6 or 7 long, smooth, loping moves. He kept hands and feet in the crack, and had beautiful technique throughout the climb. I, on the other hand, managed to ‘climb two moves and fall’ all the way to the top. Two moves and fall. Two moves and fall. On my second lap I got more into the rythm and was able to string together more than two moves. It almost started to feel good! Or at least I felt like throwing up a little less when I topped out. Mark’s second lap was faster and smoother than his first, and as he rapped off he declared that he would be ready to go for a redpoint the next time we were in the area!

I should mention as we were working Plumb Line, the group of Boulder boulderers had moved to our left, and the route setter had decided to tackle a nasty overhanging off-width Big Pink (5.11b) – one of Bob Scarpelli’s favorites. They borrowed our #4.5 and #6 cams to round out their rack for the menacing 8 inch wide crack.

That guy gave Big Pink a huge fight. He made it about 12 feet up before taking a hard lead fall onto our biggest cam. That’s when something weird happened. The cam had been placed into the crack in the normal manor, with the grip facing horizontally out. When the leader took that big fall, the cam’s lobes dug into the crystaline granite and, at the same time, the whole giant piece of pro rotated 90-degrees as it caught his down-ward fall. There was a huge “CRACK!” and smoke or dust actually came drifting out of the crack. The cam was left in an awful position, with two lobes pressed all the way in and two out like an umbrella.

We all agreed that part of the rock must have cracked under load, and that we had just seen what happens when you fall on a smaller cam, but at a really big, slow scale. Pretty wild. The leader carefully placed the other #6, and hung on it while he worked our cam out of the crack. He then went back to the heavy work of climbing the route, and eventually made it up, as did his second.

Mark and I were interested in trying this offwidth. It had been a long, hard fight for both the Boulder boulderers, and they hadn’t used any heal-toe or chicken wings or our usual methods of offwidth climbing. So, now we have two more goals for Vedauwoo. Redpoint Plumb Line and climb Big Pink!

We’ve been watching storm after storm blow through Wyoming, waiting for months for the snow to melt and the skies to clear up long enough to get back on that old Ved granite. And, finally, this weekend we made it. There are some nice pictures in the gallery.

Doug and Liz agreed to join us for camping on Friday night and climbing on Saturday. After hearing about the astounding and enigmatic Beehive Buttress from Dylan and Ann last fall, Mark and I asked Doug and Liz to show how to find the place. The rock is hidden northwest of just about every other rock in Vedauwoo, and required a half hour of driving into a remote wooded area of the mountains.

Vedauwoo has a long history. The guidebook actually lists very few FA’s, and the reason given is that it is assumed that local Native Americans most likely ascended many of the routes long before pioneers arrived. More recent climbing history has established a very strong traditional ethic. There are only a handful of bolted routes, all of which are protected carefully and sparsely. There are rumors that people who have added bolts to climbs have been severely punished.

Which is why I was so shocked when Dylan came back to Fort Collins last fall with tales of a massively bolted sport crag in Vedauwoo. This place isn’t in any guidebook, and not on any websites. And that is probably good for the health of the people who installed all of that hardware.

We enjoyed a great day climbing under a hot sun. Unlike Dylan (who seemed to have some insider information), I cannot give names or grades for the climbs. I know nothing about the place!

We started with the two easy climbs to the far left, and I did a rusty, slow, lead of the one on the right. We moved further to the right and climbed four other more difficult routes. So, in all, I ticked off 6 long pitches that day, which was a long day for me. Mark and Doug climbed one more ultra long route, bringing their total up to 7 pitches for the day. We hiked out hungry, tired, sore and sunburned (some of us more than others…) at the end of the day.

Somehow, in the course of procrastination or avoidance, I came across a blog post with a link to a link to a link to this wild compilation of on-line video: Biggest Rock Climbing Falls Caught on Video. I highly recommend clicking through and watching the whole collection. They actually made me feel really good about our safety system!

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)