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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last (and only) time Mark and I went to check out climbing in this corner of Colorado, we got lost, thrashed by bushes, nearly struck by lightening, and spit off of a climb that was much harder than we thought. When Dylan and Sean proposed we go back to the South St. Vrain Canyon again last week, we told them our story of pain and woe. Dylan disagreed completely, and we decided to trust him for another trip back to the area. There are lots of pretty pictures up in the gallery.

The day began with a bright sun, which never left us. We started off climbing some fun routes on the way into the Buttonrock recreation area. We had the cliffline to ourselves on Saturday, and we climbed hard. Dylan has a blow-by blow of our routes for the day, I’m just going to list the first SIX that Mark and I tackled here. We cruised so many pitches because many of the routes were easily top-roped from the same anchors, and because Mark was ON.

Unknown Flake (5.7) – Mark’s first lead, a nice traditionally protected slab. I followed.
Civic Duty (5.8) – A toprope of the thin slab to the left of our first climb. Lots of fun for both Mark and I.
Green Slab (5.9+) – Mark and I climbed on Dylan’s TR. Mark did a fantastic on-sight, and I took a few falls. It was tricky.
The Buick (5.10a) – Mark jammed this overhanging crack so beautifully. I couldn’t get off the first big ledge.
Unknown Face (5.10c) – Mark pulled off another brilliant on-sight on Dylan’s toprope. I took several hangs, but made it all the way up this pumpy little climb.
Beemer up Scottie (5.8) – Mark lead this overhanging hand crack cleanly, with one scary moment. Dylan followed and cleaned it. Sean and I were done for the day and just enjoyed the show.

Mark and Dylan both felt the need to continue down the road after those first six hard climbs. We ended up in a beautiful spot next to the river spilling out of a reservoir. Mark put up a beautiful, smooth lead of Introducing Meteor Dad (5.10d). This was one of the longest routes of the day, and I enjoyed an hour or so without a pack, taking pictures, while Mark and Dylan climbed. It was a great way to end a fantastic day. And then Mark fell in the river on the walk home.

Our group was lucky to have Piers Sellers come out to talk and spend the day discussing his research with us this week. Apart from being an incredible, and very accomplished climate scientist (ie my current career track), he has also flown on two different shuttle missions to the International Space Station! In the course of those two mission he has logged 41 EVA hours in 6 different spacewalks.

Piers (I tried to call him “Dr. Sellers” and he made fun of me) gave a great talk about what it’s really like to go into space. I was surprised by little facts like it only takes about 3 minutes to reach orbit in the shuttle, that Russian cosmonauts are so superstitious that they all pee on the wheels of the shuttle before getting in, and that the inside of a space suit smells like bacon on an EVA.

After spending the day at the department, my adviser threw a very nice party for Piers, and Mark happily came out to meet him. We all three had a great conversation about rock climbing, and Piers said that his experiences climbing in the mountains were “miserable.” Ah well, I guess it’s not for everybody!