At the end of last summer, Chris and I decided that our goal in the park this season would be to climb Pervertical Sanctuary on the Diamond on Long’s Peak. Although we often climb harder at the crags, the climbing on the Diamond is all above 13k feet, making things quite a bit more challenging. We kicked out of work a bit early on Friday so we could make the nice approach to Chasm lake with daylight. As usual, it was hard to sleep with fears of snaffelhounds and other rodents all around us. By 4 AM, we were more than ready to get up, but unfortunately, on the first great weather weekend in a while, so was everybody else. We made it up to the north chimney and almost got suckered up to fields by some misguided folks. By soloing 90% of the chimney, we managed to pass two other parties headed for our route, leaving only the folks bivying on broadway to contend with. Luckily none of them were planning on PV, so we were good to go. Within minutes of reaching the base, the other parties caught up, but we were there first, so it wasnt much of a concern anymore.
We were a bit weary of the opening pitches and their reported runout nature, but they turned out to be very reasonable and quite pleasant. The climb ramps up nicely in both difficulty and quality. The wall becomes steeper and the features more defined. Wild climbing on the third pitch brought us below the crux hand crack. As usual I psyched myself out pretty well going in to the lead. The climbing was exhausting at the altitude, but I managed to hold it together for the 100′ of difficult climbing. The splitter crack continues on for the next crack. Chris had good beta to keep moving up his large cams, and made steady work of the nearly 200′ pitch. From an awesome, comfy belay ledge, it was just one more moderate pitch up to table ledge. As the first party on the raps, we had no waiting to endure, making for a relatively care free descent back to our camp.
Overall, an outstanding quality climb. The only downside was the dangerous feeling race up the north chimney in the morning. I think in the future I’ll keep my Diamond climbing to weekdays.
PHOTOS:
Loaded up with the essential gear, most importantly a Hot ‘n Ready pizza
buttress. On Saturday, Chris and I climbed the Flying Buttress on Mt. Meeker. Even though this route gets tons of stars on the internet and in the guidebooks, it doesnt seem super popular. I really can’t imagine why. The rock is perfect and the climbing is consistently interesting and occasionally outstanding (i.e. the roof). On the way up, Chris decided to pioneer a new approach that avoids any semblance of trail after the 1st five minutes. Aside from the constant doubt as we wandered in the dark up the treed hillside, the new approach paid off with beautiful sunrise views from the alpine ridge. The great morning light provided an opportunity to test out my new toy (camera). The new approach only cost use a bit of time, and we met it up and down the climb well before the forecast storms kicked up.
The day before we left CO for the warm beaches of CA and the soaking wet PNW, Joe, Chris and I managed to get out for a little prework climbing in the park. The goal was simply to get out and climb a popular easy ice climb, the Martha Couloir, in RMNP, then make it into the lab early enough to work a whole day. The night before I seriously weighed whether getting up early and risking not making it to work till noon was worth the trouble, but ultimately I made the right choice and went climbing. Things went even faster than expected, taking around 4.5 hrs car to car, getting us all showered and to work before 10:00 AM. Not bad for ~11 miles and 4000′.
We seemed to skip spring altogether this year, going from heavy May snow to 90 degree temps in the course of 2 weeks. My plans for the spring involved lots of great skiing, but unfortunately the means for many of those plans are rapidly swelling the local creeks and rivers. Luckily, I managed to ski one of the classic lines of CO a few weeks back. Even this trip almost wasn’t though. With the weekend nearing, the forecast seemed to get warmer and windier. After waking up at 4 AM on Saturday, I checked the Snotel to find 40F temps and 60 MPH winds. I went back to bed…
The forecast the next day wasnt much better, but we were desperate and decided to go more or less regardless. We modified the plan a bit, waking an hour earlier, and heading for the more difficult Dead Dog Couloir instead of the Tuning Fork. Having never skied a long steep couloir, we decided to boot up it and check it out, rather than taking then standard summit hike and dropping in blind. This also provided Pete with his first experience in steep snow climbing. The route was severely runneled, which made for nice climbing, but foreboding skiing.
By the top of the couloir, the snow had started to soften, and skiing was starting to look a little more appealing. We finished the short hike to the summit and relaxed a bit to allow some additional softening.
It turned out that some of the 1st turns off the summit were the most serious of the day. With tired rust legs, one must make a tight turn, where the consequences (however unlikely) of a screw up would result in a potentially bad fall down the main face. From here, we reached the entrance to the couloir. The steepest turns (55 degrees or so) are right off the bat, making for an exciting drop in.
Snow conditions in the couloir were pretty difficult, with a choice of the rough runnel in the middle, or the steep double-fall-lined edges. It wasnt always pretty, but we made it down safe and sound, skiing 99% of the way back to the car.
After being out of town the last two weekends, and now staring at a wet and cloudy weekend forecast, this may have been the only real spring trip of the year , but I’m still holding out hope that the heat wave will leave enough scraps for next weekend.
Well maybe not fluffy powder, but hard to complain for a weekday morning in mid-May. This ski season in CO (my first here) was pretty mediocre, and certainly didnt live up to any of the CO hype. As the lifts started shutting down, the local snowpack was looking pretty grim, and plenty of folks were speculating on whether the spring season (the only reason to be a skier in CO as far as I can tell) would even happen. Luckily, mother nature has come to the rescue in a big way, delivering ample amounts of snow to the high country and occasionally in town. 1.5′ of fresh snow in RMNP was enough to convince me to shuffle my work hours around a bit and get out skiing yesterday morning. As a result of Peter’s bus not arriving in Boulder until 5:57, we made a very civilized 6AM departure, arriving at the Bear Lake TH around 7:15. Surprisingly, the forecast clouds had broken, and we enjoyed bluebird skies to start the day. We were even a bit worried the sun was going to soften the snowpack too much.
We decided to check out the south facing Dragon’s Tail couloir on Flattop Peak. If it started getting too warm, we’d just have to head down, or change objectives.
As we neared the couloir, we observed that a large portion had slid the day before, leaving behind a pretty hard bed layer. This made for great climbing conditions, but had some of us a bit worried about ski conditions. Although almost completely non-technical, the couloir does provide a very pleasant ascent, with steep rock walls and some narrow constrictions. It was hard to understand how such a trivial climb could receive so many 4 star ratings on mountainproject and summitpost, but now I can see.
Climbing higher in the couloir, with increasingly variable snow conditions, I became more concerned about the safety and enjoyability of skiing it. At the top, we discussed it and decided we’d rather wait to ski that line until we had more forgiving conditions. Instead, we headed over to the Corral Couloir where we enjoyed great soft snow conditions on more moderate terrain, eventually passing beneath the North Face of Hallet, and arriving at Emerald Lake. All in all, an awesome day in the hills, and hopefully the beginning of a great spring ski season.
It has been quite a while since I posted anything on the blog. Mostly this is a result of too much rock climbing, and too little time up in the mountains. Hopefully that will change if we start getting into more spring like weather at some point. In the mean time, here is a video from a climb that Doug and I did a month or so ago on Otis Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. This route is considered by many to be a new classic, and I would readily agree. The route offers remarkably sustained climbing at a fairly moderate grade. Although originally reported as a grade IV, by linking a few pitches, it might be more of a III. We originally intended to link this climb with some of the neighboring routes, but the forecast clouds never materialized, and by the time we reached the summit around noon, most of the other lines were running lots of water. This is definitely a climb I can imagine myself repeating over and over (as Doug did, climbing it twice in a week).
Headed out with Doug to give the east gully of the first flatiron a go. A recon last weekend showed some good ice formed part way up the route, and the fresh snow + cold temps gave me some hope that things might go. After some deep wallowing (AK training for Doug ), we reached the face. I drew the lead, following a thinly iced chimney to a lower angle ramp. The chimney provided interesting climbing, with no protection. Upon reaching the lower angle ramp, the ice turned to unbonded snow, and still with no protection, climbing came to a halt. Various descent plans were discussed, including:
1) trying to tension the rope to the outside of the chimney and lowering
2) jettisoning my crampons and riding the gully like a slip and slide to the powder cone below
3) down climb the sketchy terrain, accepting the powder crashpad as a reasonable outcome.
Luckily good judgment and luck won out, and the downclimb went off without issue. At the base, the route was nice enough to drop a few wet slides on to all of our gear.
Sam, Pete, Mary and I spent the last few days at steamboat springs. No big snowfalls, but enough fresh everyday to keep things soft, with a few surprises when putting forth a bit more effort. We skied the resort Thurs through Sat, with short backcountry tours Friday afternoon and sunday morning. I didnt put the video camera to too much use, but did take it out for two runs. One is the slack country off Pony Express, the other is a run down Baker Mountain near Rabbit Ears Pass. Unfortunately the footage from Baker mountain is mostly useless due to a fogged up lens. Guess I need to remember to take the camera out of my pack at the end of the day.
Did some bolted mixed climbing at Vail on Sunday with Joe, Doug and Jesse. Led Cupcake Corner, then we toproped Frigid Inseminator and 7th Tentacle, while Doug and Jesse climbed the much harder routes to the right. First “real” sport mixed (meaning actual rock and ice) leading I’ve done. I tried to move to the ice much too early, costing me the onsight. I did get pretty good at up and down climbing the chossy crux. Forced Joe to put up with a marathon belay session. As usual, another movie.
Last weekend I decided to turn 30 and take a trip up to Cody, WY with Chris. Although the forecast was a little warm, we had faith that Cody would still deliver, and it did. The combination of huge ice routes and minimal crowds make Cody one of the more appealing ice climbing destinations around. Also, the environment tends to lend itself to some fairly adventurous outings.
After a brief and somewhat humorous run in with the law, we made it to our motel shortly after midnight. We got up the next day and climbed the mega classic Mean Green. It proved to be a pretty long day, with some hard (for us) climbing, a somewhat sketchy descent, and some route finding issues on the hike out. Nonetheless, it was probably the best ice climb I’ve ever done, so well worth the effort. We didnt get back to the motel until around 11:00, and after a microwave dinner, an early start the next day was basically out of the question. Instead we decided on a leisurely start, and a climb of Stringer.
Although located in a dark cleft, the route is still on a south facing aspect. Unfortunately, the warm temps had melted out a significant portion of the climb. This was a bit of a mixed blessing, as we were pretty worn out from the day before. We spent the afternoon driving around and looking at various ice climbs, before returning to the motel for a nap and some BBQ dinner.
Day 3 we hoped to climb the classic Moratorium on the lower bench. One of the longest continuous flows in the valley, and rarely as fat as this year, this seemed like an obvious objective. On the approach, we noticed the climb looking a lot harder and thinner than it had the day before, so we opted instead to head up to Bozo’s revenge. It turns out, the climb we were seeing on the approach was not actually moratorium, but Joy After Pain, a much more difficult line. Moratorium was out of view around the corner. Still, Bozo’s proved to offer some classic moderate climbing, with an excellent 50m long main pitch.
pitch 3
, but I’m still holding out hope that the heat wave will leave enough scraps for next weekend.
), we reached the face. I drew the lead, following a thinly iced chimney to a lower angle ramp. The chimney provided interesting climbing, with no protection. Upon reaching the lower angle ramp, the ice turned to unbonded snow, and still with no protection, climbing came to a halt. Various descent plans were discussed, including:
