Category Archives: Rock Climbing

So, last week I mentioned that while climbing with the girls, at an out-of-the-way toproping area, I lost our big, $120, number six BD Camalot deep down inside the 6-inch wide crack we were climbing on. When Mark found out, he was not happy, but seemed optimistic that we’d be able to get the thing back the next weekend.

On Saturday this weekend, we had one goal: Get that cam back.

Our plan on Friday was to set a toprope on the climb and try to find the cam first by using several flashlights, and then fish it out of the crack with a couple of treble hooks we made from drapery hangers.

Mark was still having trouble with the return time change, and slept in a little late that morning. We made it to Vedauwoo at around 11am, and then hiked out to the crag. By the time we got to the climb, the clouds were thick above, and there was thunder in the distance.

I suggested that Mark might take a look at the fat crack and see if he wanted to lead it, and the next thing I knew, he was free-soloing up to the base of the climb in his running shoes. I tossed the rope and his climbing shoes up to him and he lead up Barley (5.6) with no problems, set an anchor, and started lowering down as the wind started picking up, and the thunder got closer.

He stuck his head in the crack as far as it would go, with his own nice headlamp on, and couldn’t see anything. He looked for several minutes, from several points, and couldn’t see a cam. This was when Mark figured that somebody must have read my blog post from last week, and had beaten us to the cam. He was sure there was nothing down there.

I climbed up to the spot and couldn’t see anything either. I tried several different things to wiggle in and see that cam. I even tried lowering my headlamp on a long cord, and swinging it back and forth to see if anything would glimmer or “tink”. I didn’t see anything.

Mark was pretty sure there was no cam in there. But I decided to lower the hook and swing it around a bit and just see if it caught anything.

And it did.

It took me maybe three swings, less than a minute, and I felt the hook catch on something. I lifted experimentally, and felt a weight and heard metal scraping on rock. Mark was shocked. He was down below me saying “That’s probably just the hook caught on the rock.”

I pulled a little harder and the hook came free. I swung it into the spot again and caught something again. I pulled again, slower, and I heard metal grinding on rock as I lifted the weight up, and then pulled it further in to the wide spot in the crack. In less than a second, the big cam came into view. I don’t remember exactly which part of the thing I had hooked, but I remember it looking really secure on the end of that line.

I grabbed it, pulled it out of the crack and WHOOPED for joy! Then I quickly clipped the darn thing to my belt and told Mark to lower me down. Once back on the ground, I put the cam back on the hook for the trophy shot. :-) Mark was completely amazed. He had totally prepared himself for the cam to be gone, not in there at all, and somehow, I had just pulled this giant chunk of metal out of dark, thin, air.

Mark scampered up the climb again to clean the anchor and move the rope over to the 5.9 destination climb for the crag. As he bounded up, fat rain drops started to fall, and thunder roared over the top of the cliff. Mark took shelter in the cave at the top of the climb, and Liv and I hung out in the cave at the bottom. The rain poured and the hail pounded down for more than 30 minutes. Liv was hugely freaked out by the thunder, and kept trying to crawl further onto my lap. A few of the bolts sounded extremely close.

When the storm was over, all of the cracks were running with water, and the rocks were slicker than snot. We packed up our stuff and slid down the formation and back to the trail to head home for the day. No more climbing for us that day, but definitely MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

My few pictures from the weekend are in the gallery.

On Sunday morning, Dylan, Ann and I headed out to the Nautilis to meet up with Sean and Collin for one more day of climbing. I don’t know about Ann, but I was still feeling pretty beat up that morning. Even on the short hike around to the NW side, my legs were fatigued, and my knees and ankles were aching. But I got in a couple of climbs anyway.

Cornelius (5.5) – As Ann led the first climb yesterday, I got on the first lead today. I’ve led this sweet little finger crack before, but it’s been well over a year now. I was really pleased with the climb, as I used about half as much gear as I usually do, and only took one little hang. Plus my TR anchor on top took only a couple of minutes to build, and it was awesome!

Ted’s Trot (5.7) – Dylan led up this climb while I was leading mine. Collin followed and cleaned it, and then I was volunteered to be third. Looking up at the gaping chimney above me, and seeing the rope run horizontally into the darkness; I didn’t really know if I was up to this one. But Dylan wanted another rope brought up, and I wanted to give it a try, so I did.

There were three times in this climb that I would normally have done everything I could think of to avoid them. The first one was this scary, dark, bad rope direction chimney. I kept thinking “If only there was a big bro up there…” But then, I knew that if there was a re-direct, that I would climb without problem. So, I decided to climb without problem without a re-direct. It’s all in my head… right? right!

The chimney was much easier than it looked, thanks to hidden cracks inside, and then the top section had an awesome 3-crack chimney. There were times when every part of my body was jamming a different crack, and somehow, I was doing chimney moves too. Loved that part. So classically ‘voo.

Then, there was the top. The crux of the climb is crawling out over a bulging chock-boulder that sits atop the chimney. There’s a fat fist-sized crack in there that both Dylan and Collin were able to hang on their fist jams while lifting their feet up onto the slab to the left. But, for me, it was waaay bigger than fists. I sat below this crack for a few minutes, just breathing and thinking. Below the roof, there was 100ft of air. The rope, again, seemed to run in a direction other than perfectly ideal. This was the second time that I really wanted to go down.

I was so close to finished, though! I’m not afraid to admit it, I used the rope a bit to get my balance below the crack. Then I reached up, and found a perfect handstack, left fist, right hand!! This was the first time that I’ve ever done a handstack, and it worked so well that I just stood there and stared at it for a few minutes. Dylan saw it and got a huge kick out of it. He said he wished he had a camera because it looked so nice. I managed to hang just long enough on that handstack to get my feet up on the slab. I moved my handstack up, moved my feet up, and I worked my way over the bulge this way.

Above the anchor, Dylan directed me to lead up over easy terrain to the very top of the formation. It was simple, but exposed, and wild, and I did it! Collin and I rapped off the top using the rope that I brought up, and that was the end of my adventure. I was really proud of pushing through these little things that normally would have just blown up to ruin the whole climb.

After this, I was done for the day. Collin lead up Cornelius as his first Ved lead, and then Ann jumped on a lead of Easy Jams (5.4). She got about halfway up when the thunder and lightening started crashing around us, and the rain started coming down. She lowered off, and we all took shelter in a little cave. The rain blew by pretty quickly, and Collin decided to finish the lead afterwards.

After watching Collin enjoy the fat crack in the corner, I packed up my stuff, called the dog and hiked out. The skies above Vedauwoo were dark and ominous, and I headed home across the windy Wyoming plains.

My few photos from the weekend are in the gallery.

So Mark is on the other side of the planet for the weekend. I decided that I wanted to get out for some climbing regardless, so Ann and I planned a Girl’s Day of Climbing in Vedauwoo for last Saturday. We had a great group come out for the day, Rachel, Kate M, Becca, Vicki and of course Ann and I packed up the racks and ropes and ran to the rocks for the day.

Our original plan was to climb on Poland Hill, but when we arrived at the parking lot at 9:30a, there were already 5 or 6 other cars, and two more climbers showed up within minutes. We decided that this was too big of a crowd for the three good climbs on that formation, and took off for Plumb Line Crag instead.

This turned out to be a nice change of plans. There were only a couple other people in the area through the day, and they were all interested in a hard 5.9+ crack that we waited until the end of the day for.

Ann started out the day by hopping on a lead of Amaranth (5.7). She did so great! Her pro was solid, and she actually pulled a layback and some creepy difficult moves on lead! Her anchor was creative, and worked pretty well as a toprope anchor, though we did decide to have everybody rappel off to save Rachel’s new rope the wear and tear.

Rachel seconded and cleaned the climb without problem, and then belayed Ann over to set a top rope on Barley (5.6?). I thought this was a 5.8 up until just now. Hmm. Ann built another great anchor, and set a directional in the fat crack using my #6 camalot. I’ll come back to the significance of this later.

While Ann was leading and Rachel was cleaning, the rest of the girls were having fun making their first sets of tape gloves. Then they all took turns working Amaranth. None of the other three girls had ever rappelled before, so Rachel sat on top of the anchor and explained how to go static to the anchor, untie and throw down the rope, and then set up and go on rappel for all three girls. And she did great! Kate, Becca and Vicki all seemed to enjoy the adventure of rappelling down for the first time.

Then we all started to work on the fat crack next door. And, wouldn’t you know it, the last person to tackle that crack accidentally kicked the big cam 90-degrees and it fell, (tink, tink tink!) deep down inside that dark, wide crack. Ann climbed the route last, with a headlamp, and did eventually get a view of the cam, which she says is waaaay down there. There was no getting it out that afternoon. Stay tuned for next weekend, when Mark and I lay siege to Plumb Line Crag trying to get that big cam back!!

Ann and I worked together to clean these two climbs and keep each other on belay. After some hilarous antics of trying to get on a low rappel over the edge of a lip just a few feet above a huge ledge, we made it back to the ground with a top rope on Plumb Line.

A couple of the girls tried this one, but it’s overhanging-massively crackishness was just too much after a long day in the sun. I explored the far end of the formation, and found an exciting little scramble that got me back to the anchors so I could clean the climb. We all hiked out in the evening feeling exhausted, sun burnt, scraped and bruised up, and very very happy.

Ann and Dylan were nice enough to let me camp with them on Saturday night and climb with them on Sunday. I really missed Mark that evening as I had to set the tent up by myself in the outflow wind of a near-by storm, and then cook my own dinner, and tackle all of the usual camping chores single handedly. It’s so much more fun with two people. But I did ok. Eventually, Liv and I snuggled up for a warm, quiet night in the wilds of Wyoming.

Our plans to climb on Devil’s Tower this weekend got canceled because of the storm that blew through. Mark and I were both disappointed, but we didn’t really have the money to pay for the weekend right now (have to replace the laptop). It was nice to stick around at home for a quiet weekend, get laundry caught up, vacuum, and get some work done.

As I said before, more photos from the day are in the gallery.

Sunday morning dawned clear and warm again. We decided not to spend too much time on the rock that day, so we’d be able to get home with enough time to clean up and take care of everyday life. We packed up camp and made it to the the Nautaulis by 9am; early enough to be first on two of the more popular climbs on the formation.

Handjacker (5.7 ow) – Dylan started out the day leading this innocuous-looking, fairly short off-width, and a climb that Mark and I have done a few times before. The early part of this climb is pretty easy, but hard to protect. The last 8ft, though, are heck-on-wheels. I enjoy this climb because my feet fit well in heal-toe during the wide part. Dylan climbed it fantastically, without any hangs or falls, though it seemed to me to be the hardest I’ve ever seen him fight for a climb.

Lower Progressive (5.9+) – We hung a toprope on this one and everybody had fun giving it a try. Mark and Dylan both climbed without any trouble, of course. I had one flying crash as I tried to get on the climb, but I jammed and pulled into the crack, and eventually worked my way up. I actually had the most trouble in the center of the climb, in one area where I lost all friction for the foot outside the crack. It was a very difficult, but very fun climb. One of those climbs where you give it every ounce of energy you’ve got, and the finish feels so good for it!

Between climbs, Ann and I did a few yoga poses on top of the rock formation, the photos turned out really nicely, so I’ll post a few below. It was a really fun day. Dylan has an awesome video on his blog of Mark climbing Handjacker before we took off for the day. After the two climbs, we followed Ann and Dylan out to a coffe/sandwich shop in Laramie, and I had one of the best curry chicken wraps I’ve had in a long time. Great day, great climbs and great bruises to remember it with!

Well, I finally got the photos off my dead laptop and into the gallery, check them out!

Vedauwoo is one of my all-time favorite places to climb. It’s not laid-back sport climbing, and it’s not long, fun multi-pitch trad. It’s hard. It’s adventurous. It’s exciting. And it’s painful.

Last weekend, Dylan and Ann found us looking for a free campsite off the side of Wyoming CR 700 near dusk on Friday night. It was a good thing, too, because the site we were checking out was pretty aweful. They had a much better one in mind, that had a beautiful little beaver pond just down the hill, and was sheltered on all sides by a lovely, dense grove of pine trees.

We all woke up the next morning excited to be out here for the first time this year. As the sun came up, the air heated quickly, and it got surprisingly warm, very fast. We made our coffee, picked our climbs, and headed off to Poland Hill for the day.

After a nice little hike, that seemed much easier than last year, Ann headed up to lead Kim (5.6) while Mark and I set up to climb Sugar Crack (5.7). Mark was in high spirits for the day, and he wizzed up the lead for this climb. Even stopping to add a big bro to help with rope drag near the top of the climb. I tried to follow as if I was leading the climb, and it felt pretty good, but pretty creepy in the top, wider, area of the climb. I don’t know if I’m quite up for this lead just yet.

We walked off the back side after the first pitch, and found ourselves staring up at Little Old Crack (5.5). I remembered this route being rated 5.6, which could mean anything in ‘voo, and it looked darn intimidating. Even though I wanted to lead it, I suggested Mark take the first go at it. He jumped right on, and dispatched the whole thing in no time. As I followed, I found the angle to be less steep than it looked, and filled with giant holds and easy jams. Ah, so it was 5.5. I don’t think I’ll have any problems leading it next time I’m out there.

We rapped off Kim as a large guided youth group arrived, and decided to spend the rest of the day working a couple of harder climbs, now that we were all warmed up. Mark pulled together all of the big gear from the whole group, which turned out to be a really nice wide-crack rack. He then hopped on the lead for Fantasia (5.9).

This was an incredible lead! We have top roped this climb before, and it was a hard, painful, grunt fest. It’s exhilerating when you figure out the moves, and the rhythm of fat-crack climbing is unique and not to be missed. We used to tease our hard-core bad-ass climbing friend Tom about how we were going to make him lead this route, and he would shutter. Mark was nervous, but he pulled off one of the best leads of his life. Our rack was enough to protect the whole climb pretty well, and Mark made his way up with only one rest (it’s questionable as to if he even weighted the rope). This lead made Mark an official “Hard-core Bad-ass Wide-Crack Vedauwoo Climber!!” (or HCBAWCVC) Check out the blood and scars to prove it.

Next, Dylan decided to lead up Piece of Dirt (5.11a), a steep and challenging-looking climb on the face left of Fantasia. This was another Hell-Of-A-Lead for the day.

Dylan popped off maybe twice, but made the whole climb look graceful, simple and easy. So easy, in fact, that I offered to second it. Wow! Turns out it was a seriously hard climb. I ground my finger tips down to numbs crimping on tiny crystals, I cheeted twice by pulling on quick draws and I never even made it to the top! Ann did much better on this route. As I flaled on Fantasia next, Ann patiently worked out all of the crux moves, and fully climbed the route to the top! It was awesome. Mark tried last, and even he couldn’t finish the route without pulling on the draws. Thus proving once and for all that Dylan and Ann are much better climbers than us.

I missed some key beta, and never made it out of the bottom pod on Fantasia that day. But that’s ok. It was a long and sun-filled day in a beautiful, beautiful place. We had great climbs and great friends and great accomplishments all around. That night, we settled into our camp, eating the tastiest steaks of our lives, toasting marshmellows, and enjoying the cool Wyoming night.

More shots are up in the gallery!

Sunday morning dawned warm and bright in the desert campground. We had spent time the night before re-racking, re-packing, and re-filling water for the day’s activities, so all we need to do on Sunday morning was pack up the tent, make coffee and then hop on the trail!

We were back at the Independence Monument trailhead at around 8:30am, way earlier than I ever expected. Mark was worried about another large group getting on the tower before us, so we were happy to see that nobody else had signed on the trail register yet that morning. These indications where happily confirmed when we found ourselves to be the first ones at the base of the climb that morning. Yey!

Our climb for the day was Otto’s Route (5.8), which is a historic route, the first ever to the top of Independence Monument. John Otto climbed the route for the first time in 1911, and, in order to make the route do-able, he carved foot steps and handholds into the soft sandstone all the way up the route. Mark and I had heard of these added pockets, and thought they would soften the grade. However, it turns out that Mr Otto was, evidently, seven and half feet tall and regularly solo’d V18 or so. The climb was hard. It really was.

Pitch 1: A long and sandy ramp, that was trickier than I expected. Mark took quite a while to lead this, and he kept calling down “I’m at a big ledge, should I set a belay??” “No… look for chains!” I was going to give him trouble about taking so long to lead a 5.5 ramp, but then I fell twice on my way up when my feet slid off the sandy rock.

Pitch 2: A quick scramble around the corner, and then we’re into the early crux of the climb, an overhanging off-fists crack where a huge boulder rests against the wall. Mark pro’d it well with a blue and silver camalot, and then did the classic Ved ‘one leg in, hump your way up’ ascent. It was intimidating for me too, but I found a critical drilled pocket, and then wedged my leg high enough that I could scramble over the top fairly easily.

Pitch 3: This pitch started with a scramble over a stack of boulders, and then you hike up the ramp behind the huge flake in what the topos call the “time tunnel”. Once back out into the sun, we climbed a face with a few pockets, and some sandy ledges up to the big ledge below the final pitch. It was another pitch that seemed like it should have been easier than it felt as I was climbing it.

Pitch 4: The final, exposed, crux-a-liscious pitch. We walked around to the far side of the tower and then walked up the easy, but completely unprotectable face. I had seen shots on MP.com that looked like there was pro somewhere up there, but Mark just couldn’t find it. After 100ft of this scary stuff, the wall starts to get vertical. Two or three moves brings you to the first of three pitons that protect the final overhang. This overhang was tough. It was long, maybe 15-20 ft of climbing, and by the time I was reaching for the top, I was massively freaked out, and my hands were so tired they were involuntarily opening as I tried to grab the sloped ledges. Yes, I did hang a bit, but I flopped onto the ledge eventually.

We sat on the ledge for a while and caught our breath. The summit was up a 7ft holdless headwall, well above the anchors, and we weren’t sure how to get up there. We decided to start our rappels down rather than boulder this unprotected 400ft in the air. But the couple climbing up below us caught sight of our ropes and convinced us that if we just stayed put for a few minutes, they’d be up there and could show us how to get on top. “You want to get to the top after all of this work, right??” They yelled up.

So Jessie and Margaret met us at the final belay. Jessie was kind enough to share his water, which I somehow stupidly forgot on the ground. They were both local Grand Junction climbers out for Margaret’s first lead of this classic route. She did awesome. Jessie showed us the trick was to take a loooong rope leash (like 20ft), and then scramble up over the lip using some holds on the left side (and standing on the metal tube that was embedded in the rock). He spotted all of us on the way up, and then belayed us down, these guys were my heros. Getting to the actual top was great, and I don’t think I would have enjoyed the climb nearly as much without their help at the end.

Descent: In order to avoid having to dig out our two extra, coiled and packed away ropes, we all four agreed to just tie our lead lines together for the two double rope rappels required to get off the rock. We rapped over the edge from the top anchors, down through the time tunnel, all the way to the second belay. These were both two of the longest, most vertical rappels I’ve done in a long time. It was good practice for our up-coming weekend at Devil’s Tower, though. There was some confusion as to whether or not two 60m ropes would reach the ground from the second belay, but Margaret and I felt they should, and Jessie agreed to be the guinea pig. They did make it all the way down, with about 2ft of rope on the ground at the end. Don’t tie your knots with too much rope for this one!

It felt really good to be back on the ground, and kind of funny to see the conga-line of climbers working their way up the lower pitches. Yep, it’s definitely a popular route. We hung out for a little while, repacking, eating, drinking and talking with Jessie and Margaret about climbing areas in the desert and the Front Range. There were clouds moving in, and Mark and I had to make it back to Denver that night, so we couldn’t spend too long relaxing.

The hike back went quickly, though we did stop to check out a giant blue lizard, and had to spend some time throwing rocks at a pretty big desert gopher snake to get it off the trail. We were supposed to pick up Mom at the airport on Monday morning, so we drove back to Denver, and holed up at a KOA near the airport for a night of exhausted sleep. Good weekend!

There are more photos from the weekend in the gallery!

One more spring weekend, one more road trip! Mark and I took off from work at exactly 5:00 on Friday afternoon, and drove without any incident to Colorado National Monument by about 10:30pm. It was a long evening, and pretty creepy driving up the canyon rim road in the pitch dark. But we made it, got the tent set up, and crashed at around midnight that night.

The next morning we were able to sleep-in as we didn’t have Liv with us. We snoozed through the chilly desert morning until about 8:30a. It’s so cool to be able to crack open the tent and see the desert for the first time! It was a great campground. A few people out in RVs and pop-ups, a few other tents, gorgeous red rocks and sand, and little flowers all over the ground.

Our plan for the first day was to spend the morning driving around and sight-seeing the monument in the morning, and then climbing some single pitch desert cracks in the afternoon. We stopped in at the visitors’ center to make sure that there were no falcon closures that we needed to be aware of. Next, we headed south along Rim Rock drive, and I took about a billion pictures of the incredible, freestanding, striped and arched desert towers that lined the canyons.

The hike into the climbs took a little longer than we expected. It was a great trail though, winding up into the canyon from outside the Monument. Our climbs were located on a slab of striped red and pink wingate sandstone about 0.75 miles down the trail. Even though a few large groups of climbers had signed in on the trail register before us, we were the only people at the climbing area for quite a while.

So, on Saturday we climbed…

Left Dihedral (5.8) – A nice hand crack in a hard sandstone corner. It starts with a nice, steep slab to the right, which rapidly becomes pretty darn vertical. The jams are soft, easy, but sustained for the top 50ft.

The slab right of Left Dihedral (5.11-) – I don’t know if this toprope route has a name, and it’s definitely not on mp.com. It has been climbed before, as many of the sandy ledges seemed to be more rounded in certain areas than they might have been naturally. Even though our shoes got incredible purchase on this rock, the tiny slopers on this very steep slab made the climb very difficult. By the time I was finished climbing both of these, my feet ached to the bones. Lots and lots of footwork.

Luhr’s Route (5.9-) – This climb heads up the slab on the right side of the area, past three bolts, through a darn tricky steep slab move, and into a huge left-arching crack. I was skeptical about the website’s claim that one 60m rope would reach the ground, but it turned out to be fine. Mark and I both really enjoyed this climb as it had a lot of everything: difficult slabs, finger- hand- and off-width cracks, laybacks, and roof climbing. I was so exhausted by the time I finished this route that I decided to skip the last climb of the day.

The slab left of Luhr’s Route (5.12?) – Mark climbed this one on toprope to the anchors. It was hard as heck in the bottom, I’ve never seen Mark have so much trouble on a slab. Since he flashes 5.12 slabs in the gym, I suspect the middle of this climb was near that grade. The top part was filled with tiny slope-y ledges that Mark’s exhausted fingers and feet just ate up.

As the sun started to get low, we decided to pack up and head out. We made it back to the campsite at around 6:30p, and Mark collapsed into the tent for a pre-dinner nap. I packed up the long lens and went out to shoot the Monument at sunset. Independence Monument is the pinnacle of the canyon. It’s a long, thin tower that was first climbed by John Otto in 1911. It’s a classic and historic 5.9 (manufactured) route, that is one of the most popular climbs in western Colorado. As I drove through the pullouts, I watched a large group of climbers take there turns rappelling off the top of the tower. This was the climb we had planned for Sunday, and it was really cool to watch all the other people head down in the evening light.