Category Archives: Rock Climbing

For Mark’s birthday last year, I scheduled a day of hard alpine climbing guided by Colorado Mountain School (CMS). And last weekend, that day finally rolled around.

The plan for our day in the high mountains was to meet Eric Whewell, our guide for the day, at CMS in Estes Park at 4:00am on Saturday morning. We all piled into the car, and drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park. We arrived at the Bear Lake trailhead about 20 minutes later, and started our hike into the pitch darkness.

There was no moon for us, and the stars were obscured by misty clouds that covered the valley. It had rained for five days straight, and we trucked up the trail in the cold humid morning hoping that Saturday would be different.

Our goal for the day was the Culp-Bossier route (III, 5.9R) on Hallett’s Peak. This route is considered one of the best at this grade in the National Park, but is known for long run-outs and tricky route-finding. A perfect prospect for a guided climb.

The approach to the base of Hallett’s is around 2 miles long, another reason Mark and I chose this route. We’ve burned ourselves out on too many long approaches lately. As we walked up the Dream Lake trail in the dark morning, we could see distant lights on the lowest pitches of Hallett’s. It looked as if another group had perhaps slept at the base of the wall, and were beginning their climb just before dawn.

By the time we were nearing the base of the climb, it was just past 5:30, and we watched the sun rise over the park. It was beautiful, and I took a TON of pictures. We left a pack and a few extra items below a boulder at the base of the descent route, racked up in the early dawn, and munched on a little breakfast. Another pair of hikers passed us at this point, and declared their goal was the Culp-Bossier as well.

So, by the time we arrived at the base of Culp, we were third in line. We discussed our options. Wait, and climb slowly below two other groups on the Culp, or look for another route. Eric suggested Better than Love (III, 5.8R) just to the left of Culp, and our plans changed.

Mark and I were happily clueless about this climb as we started that chilly morning. I had never heard or read a thing about this route. We knew the Culp was long – eight pitches or more, and the Culp was hard, with perfectly vertical rock the whole way. Eric assured us that Better than Love was just as good, and not any harder, but that was the only information we had.

The first three pitches of the route followed a steep, sheer, lovely dihedral. It’s the kind of crack-stem climbing that I would normally love every inch of, and we had nearly 600ft of it. But on Saturday morning, the route was still in complete shade, and the rock was cold as ice. I lost feeling in my hands and feet quickly. Let me just point out the obvious here, sticky rubber on climbing shoes doesn’t work at all if you can’t feel your toes. My feet were like dead logs at the bottom of my legs as I climbed, I placed them by sight and hoped all of the holds held.

After 150ft of climbing on this pitch, we reached an early crux of the route. A long roof cuts off the dihedral, and we traversed to the right under it, and up the right side. There are no good hand or footholds below the roof, and, normally, I would feel comfortable jamming the crack under the roof and pasting my feet on the blank face. But, when you can’t feel your feet, and your hands hurt so badly, I think the grade of the move goes up quite a bit. We all pulled through cleanly, thankfully. For me, that was a small miracle that morning.

The first three belays were mostly hanging, and at the last one, the corner was so thin that Eric had me hanging next to him, and Mark hanging six feet or so below us. While we were reorganizing the rack at that airy belay, hanging off three pieces of trad gear above 500ft of air, Mark actually got a phone call.

Don’t ask me why he had his mobile phone, I still don’t know. We all laughed out loud as he answered the call and talked to my little brother TJ about the Lupe Fiasco concert in St. Louis that night. Eric said “You’ve got a signal up here? That’s good to know!”

The fourth and fifth pitches were loose scrambling over the top of the buttress, and then up the right side of a flake leaning against the long, shear headwall of the cliff. From a distance, and even directly below this wall, it looks blank. No cracks splitting the face, no flakes or features to hang off of. Simply clean, dead vertical, granite. Somewhere in here, we moved from the Better than Love route to the origional Love Route (III, 5.9).

I was exhausted looking up at the blank face of our sixth pitch. While we were now in the sun, the wind was howling around us and I was still very cold, and very tired. I was starting to think that I didn’t much like alpine climbing as I shivered at the belay.

Continued in the next post…

There are some moments in life that take your breath away. Times and places that are so beautiful, it physically hurts to breathe.

Last weekend, Mark and I had a guided climb up Hallett Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was the longest, most beautiful, amazing route we have ever done. There will certainly be complex, in depth, information-packed blog posts to come, but this one isn’t about the climb.

We left the Bear Lake trailhead before 4:30a on Saturday morning, and we were climbing through steep, loose talus below the sheer face of Hallett as the sun began lifting through the clouds and mist below us. We watched the movement of the distant and beautiful star as we hiked past 11,500ft of altitude in the Rocky Mountains.

It was one of those moments.

Photos from the day are up in the gallery already, though.

No, not climbing AS Batman and Robin (which would be awesome) or climbing WITH Batman and Robin (even awesomer!) Batman and Robin is a classic little moderate on the Batman Pinnacle in Lumpy Ridge. When Mark and I were talking about moving to Colorado, five years ago, I looked up “local” climbing for Fort Collins, and found the ClimbingBoulder (yes, I’m old) page for Lumpy Ridge. I was in awe. And the first climb I wanted to do was Batman and Robin.

It took us five years to get around to it.

There’s more photos from the day in the gallery.

Its been a little bit of a different summer for Mark and I. He hasn’t been feeling as strong, so we’re not climbing hard trad or pushing our limits on long routes. It’s nearly the end of July, and we haven’t stepped foot on Lumpy yet this year. We wanted to go back, but didn’t feel up to an epic day. What to do? How about a 4 pitch 5.6 that used to inspire you? Once upon a time…

We got up relatively early, in hopes of avoiding crowds and weather. The sky was intermittently filled with clouds and blue sky. When we parked, a cold wind blew across the hills, and the dark sky rumbled; we didn’t think we’d get a climb in. But we hiked up the steep hill, and by the time we were wandering lost along the ridge, the sun was shining on us once more.

Yes, wandering lost along the ridge. Just for a little bit. This rock is in an area we have never explored, so, of course, we spent some time staring up at a rock wall, trying to figure out if this was where we wanted to be climbing. It wasn’t. We had found Checkerboard Rock first, and Batman Pinnacle was further up the hill.

The route itself was quite a lot of fun. The pitches were short, the route finding was pretty easy, and the cracks were very pretty and very fun to climb.

As we buzzed our way up the four moderate pitches, the sky darkened again. This time, real storms formed to our south, obscuring Long’s Peak. As we topped out on the lovely little summit, the sky was filled with heavy grey clouds and thunder rolled out of the blackness to our south.

So, we didn’t get to spend much time on top of the pinnacle. Which is too bad, because, really, why else climb a detached pillar of rock than to jump around and take fun pictures on the tiny summit? I took a few shots of the valley and then rain started, so we set up our rappel and headed down.

The rap off of Batman Pinnacle was short. We actually rapped too far down the hill, and had to scramble back up quite a ways to find the trail that goes along the bottom of Batman Rock. For others interested in climbing this route, just rap to the base of the big tree, then walk off to the east.

In the end, it was a quintessential fun Lumpy Ridge adventure. We had a long, hard, uphill hike. Got a little lost. Eventually found the climb. Four easy, fun, pitches of climbing. Got a little lost on the descent. Eventually found our way down, and hiked out in the rain. We’ve done it before, and we’ll happily do it again.

It’s definitely summer. The monsoon has broken for a few weeks, the skies are beautiful and blue, the garden is growing like gang-busters, and we’re out trying to climb every rock we can. Which, unfortunately, doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing blogs.

After reading Doug’s update from the past two weekends this morning, I decided two things. 1, I better hurry up and write. And 2, I should let everybody know a little secrete. I keep most of our photos in the gallery here on the site, only putting a sampling of my favorites on our Flickr site. So, if you want to see all the new pictures as they come out Subscribe to the RSS feed for our photo gallery. It’s pretty cool. I recommend it.

So, after our fun weekend of clippy-clippy sport routes in Shelf Road, we thought we’d enjoy some more, at a slightly more comfortable altitude. On this Saturday adventure, Mark and I met Doug, Liz and Jo in Loveland, and we all drove up to the Lilly Lake area of Rocky Mountain National Park.

The rocks crowning this hillside are known as The Jurassic Park crags, and they have seen a lot of recent bolting and development – in a good way. Our guidebooks were all completely out of date, and I printed a basic topo off from Mountain Project, but there was still plenty of information missing.

If you do head up to this area, and I highly recommend it, I also recommend (1) spending time printing out information from MP.com, or (2) going with somebody who really knows the area, or (3) having a great sense of adventure. On Saturday, we went for option 3.

Jurrassic Park has been a sport-climbing area of Rocky Mountain for a long time, development began back in the late 80s by Estes Park locals. The approach is relatively mild, beginning on a flat sidewalk on the edge of beautiful Lilly Lake, and then hiking straight up the side of the mountain to the bottom of the rocks.

Since I’m not feeling particularly wordy right now, I’ll just made some brief notes on the climbs we did.

There’s more photos from the day in the gallery.

Coloradoddity (5.6) – In an effort to continue my happy good-feeling leads of the last few weeks, I hopped on the sharp end for this one. It is a surprisingly long route, and thinner and more insecure in some sections than I expected for a 5.6 sport climb. But lots of fun.

Stout Blue Vein (5.8) – Doug led this route, just to the right of mine, while I was on Coloradoddity. He was surprised by the thin, tricky moves at the crux traverse between the 2nd and 3rd bolts, but pulled through and finished the climb cleanly. We all took a lap on it, but Mark and Doug were the only ones to have a clean ascent. I swore loudly after falling just PAST the crux (grrr), and the slide down the slab delaminated the sole of my right shoe. Crap.

T-Rect (5.7+ R) – Mark led this one in the late afternoon, and I thought it was a great example of how well thought-out development in this area has been. The “R-rating” was because of a run-out between the 2nd and 3rd bolt, which might be a little scary, but wasn’t hard. The run-out is there because there is a beautiful horizontal crack that takes great gear (Red Camalot). So, if you remember you’re in the mountains of Colorado, and bring a few cams, even to a sport area, this route is definitely not R.

Critical Morass (5.10d) – Doug re-climbed his 5.8 lead, and then past the anchors to set a top-rope on this one. We all took a turn on it, and had a great time. The route had two thin, tricky cruxes one at the crack on the steep slab, and one at the top pulling over a bulge with a thin finger crack. It was definitely the best climb of the day, and we all really enjoyed it. Even those of us with no rubber on our right shoe.

If you haven’t read Liz’s recap of the weekend (Part 1 and Part 2), you should go do that. I’ll wait here.

Ok, we’re back together now?

Saturday morning, July 4th, at Shelf Road in the desert of Southern Colorado. It’s hot. The gnats have started to come swarming back. Our newly purchased bug spray (various amounts of DEET in various kinds of spray canisters) seems to be completely worthless in these swarms. The best thing we found was an old Buzz-Away Extreme(!) wipe in Liz’s backpack. The combination of citronella, tea-tree, and geranium oils was far more potent than anything sold at Wallyworld. If you run across these products this summer, I recommend them. BUY!

We cooked breakfast and talked about our plans for the day. Somehow, Mark managed to drop his french press full of hot coffee all over his foot. The nearly-boiling water filled his tennis-shoe and blistered the top of his foot within minutes. It wasn’t pretty.

We decided to head to the Dark Side. We walked all along the base of the cliff, only to discover the whole wall was bathed in oppressive sunlight, and didn’t look to be heading into shade any time soon. In fact, at 10:30a on a July morning, Cactus Cliffs, that wonderful outpost of warm, sun-filled winter climbing, was in deep shade. The dark, sunless walls of Cactus Cliffs beckoned us from across the wide valley, so we turned around, back-tracked about half a mile, and then walked another mile for the shade.

We all managed to get in ascents of Beach Ball (5.8), and we decided that it is a sandbag. The overhanging fist crack at the top felt harder than the 5.10 from the previous day. A heck of a warm-up. Mark felt antsy about the building clouds to our west, so he hopped on a lead of Third Stage (5.10b/c) around the corner. This long, thin, beautiful black slab is one of my favorite routes at Shelf, but it is tricky, painful, and a scary lead. Especially with thunder rolling in and dark clouds blotting out the desert sun.

By the time Mark finished the lead, the sky was dark, and rain was imminent. He cleaned the climb, and we all packed up. It was disappointing, to say the least, to have a day so full of bad luck. Burned feet, hot cliffs, long approaches, sand bagged routes, and then walking out in a storm at 2pm. We didn’t want to give up, though. And when we got down to the old Cactus Cliffs trailhead, we saw the best option for salvaging the day.

Yep, the new pit toilette that sits between Cactus Cliffs and the Vault turned out the be the perfect shelter from the incoming storm. We relaxed on the concrete floor, as cool wind and rain sprinkled down, and lighting flashed overhead. We watched the few hearty souls out climbing with us walk past our shelter in the rain, complaining about the bugs and the weather, and throwing in the towel for the weekend.

It didn’t take long for the storm to pass by, and the high clouds lingered, covering the sun and cooling the cliffs around us. After Mark’s two hard leads on a burnt foot, I declared him done leading for the day, and that it was time for us to enjoy more easy “clippy-clippy” sport climbs.

We found Crynoid Corner (5.7) was in it’s own little pocket of shade by this time. This is one of our favorite warm-ups, and while I have pink-pointed the climb before (led on other people’s gear), I’ve never red-pointed it. So, I grabbed our rack of quickdraws, tied on a rope and headed up!

The lead felt surprisingly good. Mark and Liz followed and enjoyed the climb, and I was so jazzed that I wanted another serving. There is a little, out-of-the-way climb along the hike back to the Bank that I have never found any information on. I’ve been enjoying it for years now, nick-naming it “Kate’s Favorite Lead,” and it’s probably a 5.7 as well. Shorter than Crynoid Corner by half, the route follows a black slap up the right side of a little alcove about 200ft right of the 2150 Wall.

I led it happily. Liz led it beautifully. Mark cleaned it without any complaint. It was a great cherry to place on top of a great weekend, and left us feeling that the day was actually a very good one!

Dinner was suggested by @lstefurak on Twitter Thursday, when I asked for ideas for new camp food as I wandered lost through the grocery store. Luke said:

Take onions & caramelize w/ brown sugar. Next add beer (Honey Brown), add sausage + heat and serve on toasted hoagies. 1 pot meal!

I thought that sounded good, but I had no idea how good it was really going to be. It was SO TASTY! Luke’s camp dinner wins! I wish I had a prize I could give out, because it was fantastic. To thank him for his help, all I have is gushing words, and perhaps a link to his very awesome blog. Thanks Luke!!

That night, the campground was deserted. We heard a few fireworks in the far distance, but mostly we enjoyed the still quiet night and having Shelf Road entirely to ourselves. The next morning, we packed up in the eerie quiet of the hot, summer desert and headed home to the Fort.

It was a nice trip, and we learned a lot. We learned that Citronella works better than DEET on gnats. We learned that Kate and Liz are both strong, capable leaders. We learned that awesome camp dinners can be had with one pot and 140 characters. And we learned that Shelf Road is totally climb-able in the summer, especially if you chase the shade.

Over the long 4th of July weekend, we were lucky enough to get Liz to come out and play with us. We discussed different options for the trip, and eventually decided on Shelf Road.

There’s a few nice photos from the weekend in the gallery.

The lovely, vertical, limestone walls of the Shelf Road canyon have drawn our attention many times before. The area sits high in the desert of southern Colorado, and provides beautiful warmth on sunny walls, even in the depths of winter. In the summer, however, the canyon becomes a pink limestone oven, with heat radiating from all walls. We didn’t care. We wanted clippy-clippy sport climbs and starry desert nights.

We left Thursday, after work, and found a nice campsite at the Bank campground that night. Friday, we decided to head over to the Vault. This is a cliff-line where we tried to climb in March last year, but it was too shady and cold at the time. In July, the shady, north-east facing walls of the Vault would be welcome.

To start the morning, though, I wanted to do a fun easy lead. Liz and I both led up Awethu (5.6), a very easy climb up a shallow dihedral. We had fun on the simple, very overly protected, route. We moved right one after this fun warm-up, and climbed Forty Two and no Rinkhals (5.9+). This shallow dihedral was tricky, steep, thin and a lot of fun.

By this time, the bugs were really starting to swarm. When we’re at Shelf in the spring and fall, the wasps and bees can be scary, but in a rainy July, the gnats are king of the Shelf Road bugs. They swarmed around our heads, dive-bombing our eyes and ears. Liz and I found a new use for our Buffs: covering ears and face to keep the swarming gnats off.

We moved into deeper shade and all took a trip up Chip Off the Block (5.9). I really love this airy route up a blocky arrete. We finished up the day with Fire It Up (5.10a/b). This route climbs a fairly wide, pretty dirty, hand crack, and then traverses left in a thin and kind of nerve-wrecking move around the corner to the left. The route finishes on a steep thin-hands crack up bone-hard black limestone that would have been a really beautiful if I hadn’t been so exhausted.

We hiked back to camp in the late afternoon, with clouds gathering on the horizon. We took a quick (relatively) trip back to Wallyworld in Cañon City for bug spray and paper towels. We waited out the rain sprinkling over camp when we got back. An amazing rainbow graced our desert valley after the storm moved off to the east, and I took about a bajillion pictures of it.

We made tasty fajitas for dinner, and finished off a great day with a big campfire. As darkness fell over the desert, we watched cliff swallows hurdle through the trees chasing bugs, and bats swarming out of limestone caves looking for dinner.

The nights seem especially warm and short right now. Sunday, we woke up tired and sore. And determined to find climbs without an approach this time.

So, we climbed at the Nautilus on Sunday.

The shady side of the formation was already busy when we rolled in Sunday morning. We started our morning on Straight 4 Ward (5.5). Maybe we were sore, or maybe the rock was rougher on these less popular climbs. Whatever the reason, this crack HURT. My hands screamed as I jammed the sharp, toothy, crystalline crack. It felt harder than 5.5. It hurt more than a 5.5 should.

We swore our way up the warm-up. “Oh, Holy, OW!” “Mother OW!”

It was easy to top rope Par Four (5.8) to the left. This was a very fun crack. Hard, thin, painful. I lost the skin on my left ankle, and my right hand was bleeding when I got down. But I had some lovely finger locks. I used perfect fist jams. It was very fun.

We contemplated another climb, but decided we didn’t have the energy. It felt like Vedauwoo may have won this round. But we’ll be back for more.

The days are long and warm now. Afternoon storms roll across the mountains every day. The land is wide, and green, and alive.

We camped in one of our favorite spots on Friday night. The wind was warm and blasting over the hills all night long. It carried the heavy scent of sage and mud, wildflowers and ancient granite. And, occasionally, cows.

The plan on Saturday was to walk to the Valley Massif, and tick off five climbs I’ve wanted to do for a long time. A very ambitious day. Especially if Vedauwoo had anything to say about it.

The hike took FOREVER. It was wet. I sunk into black, slimy, smelly mud over and over again. We slogged along the shores of Crow Creek for hours in the steamy sun. We got lost, we wandered around, we yelled at each other, we read maps, we made new plans, and then slogged off again.

Hours later we made it to the base of the climbs. Mark led Powder Puff (5.4) for the warm up, and really enjoyed the climb. We both climbed the route twice, adding a few variations (the chimney start, the Corbel Exit). Then we napped. Four more climbs seemed far out of our reach. We finished the day with Bill Steal (5.6), a beautiful hand crack that was worth wringing out the last bit of energy in our reserves.

We packed our gear up in the long evening light. We scrambled back to the trail, and started the slog along Crow Creek back to our campsite. In a narrow valley between rock cliffs, I spotted something moving in the creek ahead of us.

There were two, large, moose 25 yards in front of us. Liv hadn’t seen them, and came back happily as I urgently called her. The moose looked at us. We looked at our trail. And the moose. And considered what to do.

Did you know, on average, 11 people are killed by moose each year in the US? They are mean animals. They can kick in all four directions. I read this in Outside magazine a few years ago. And I’ve never been so close to a moose. Then they started walking towards us.

So, we yielded the trail to the huge, hulking, black animals. We scrambled up the rocks to the left, and watched the moose slog by us on the trail below. Mark decided on the high-ground move. He declared that, based on information gleaned from labels of Moose Drool Beer, moose love water and would not chase us up the hill. The moose moved on, and we exhaled.

The hike back was easier. We followed the trail longer. We were still completely exhausted on our return to camp. Our shoes and socks were soaked through. Our pants were coated in black, smelly, crusty mud. We had run out of water on the hike back, and were dizzy from dehydration. We definitely earned our hot dogs and beer on Saturday night.