On “Deeper Shade of Soul” at The Gym – 5.13b

The last Sunday in March, a trip was organized to head down to Shelf Rd and get on some harder stuff. Pascal and Mirthe had finally moved to the USA a couple weeks ago and they had some climbing projects in mind. I invited Tom from work, which also joined in the Sunday fun. We all started the day with a nice stop at the friendly “Canyon City Coffee Café” and the continued on to “The Bank” parking lot.

The Gym Wall is host to a ton of 5.hard routes and a couple fun moderates thrown in the mix. The rock is pretty good and really sharp. Pascal put up “Crack of Dawn 10b” right away. This was a very popular, tall, and fun bolted crack. Pascal had no problems with it, but when I lead it, I got sucked in the upper right corner, which ended up with pretty awkward down climbing. My first route was “trout fly’s 10-ish” and it end up being pretty weird. It had some hard reachy opening moves and an awkward exit resulting in a 1 star route. (It could have been I was just having a awkward morning).

Mirthe projected “Example 13b” which I think was the 1st 13b in the US. It looked pretty gnarly and I had nothing to do with that, it was way out of my pay grade. She ended up figuring out the pocket opening sequence.

Here we split up for a bit. Tom and I went and played around on another moderate, “There Goes the Neighborhood”, which was extremely sharp. When Tom when up it actually started to rain, which is unheard of at shelf. From this wall, we watched Pascal and Mirthe work another 13b called “Deeper Shade of Soul”. From this vantage point, it was a extremely impressive and stout line.

Tom and I made our way over and feasted on Twinkies. I was convinced to give the 13b a try and man it was hard. The opening moves I would say where V5 into a ok rest, then a v5 cross over to another rest, then the crux hits with a v6-v7 move, sloper pull-up to a single pad mono pocket. From here I couldn’t do any more even. Pascal then was up and made his way through the sections using crafty sling aids. Once above the crux he work his way through the top route.

Thoroughly beaten and cold from both the route and the storm rolling through, we headed back to the cactus cliff. Here we still had sun, so we tried 2 more routes. Pascal and Mirthe put up “Almost French”, which was a horrid 5.12a. The climbing was very convoluted and seemed manufactured. I didn’t like it at all. Tom and I put up “Almost Gothic“right beside them which was juggy to thin 11d. I almost on sighted the route, but fell off once at the crux. This was my hardest lead yet and first attempt to lead an 11d, which got me really excited on how much I have improved since the last I had been there.

Tired and thoroughly worked we left and went home.

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Super-Fun-Awesome-Pod-Climbing

Finally the weather in Colorado turned in the right direction for the climbing season.   This weekend in April, a bunch of fun dudes got together to climb the granite walls of clear creek.  It was less about being hardmen, than it was about having a blast on rock.

Saturday, I left the Springs and made my way to the walls of clear creek.  I met Ben, Bruce, and new friend Brandon at the High Wire Crag.  They got there earlier to make sure the good moderate lines were ours. (This turned out to be clutch because the area became a zoo later.)  As I got to the base above the road and river, Ben had threw up a 5.7 with a unprotected opening roof move (he kept saying his nut fell out).  After we all ran laps on it, Brandon and myself put 2 5.9s up right beside one another.  Mine was slabby pocket face, his was roof crack.   With these two routes put up, everyone was able to top rope the fun routes.   There was super fun 10a was on the same wall as the slab route that had nice vertical juggy moves and beside the crack was 11c roof route.

At this time, Barnoff arrived looking completely dead.  Apparently he had food poisoning but still made it out.   We made him the honorary photographer and seem to be pleased.    After messing around,  we packed up and headed to the next area,  Creekside.

At Creekside, we had the choice of a 4-5 pitch 5.7/5.8 or do some single pitch route in a cool setting.  The multi-pitch route was going to be cluster, because there with 4 parties already on route.  So we opt’ed for the fun POD routes.  The POD is a climbing area that is only accessible via a high Tyrolean traverse across the river into a scoop of rock that is missing from the wall.  This was half the fun, as we all had to get into this pod with all our climbing gear.

From the pod we picked 2 routes, they went straight up at 5.9+ and 5.8.  Both were full value vertical pitches at 35 meters.  They were some of the most fun routes I’ve done.  Ben put up the 5.8 first as I photographed from the static line above the river.  Brandon then put up the 5.9.   The 5.9 had some interesting crossovers and large solid roof pull, with just the right amount of headiness being 40 meters above the river. Brandon convinced me to pull the rope and lead it after him. It was good choice.

After super-fun-awesome-pod-time, we went to the canal zone (another zoo) and put up some cruisers.  Ben put up a super long pitch with 20 bolts, and I burned out on a 5.8.   All of us were thoroughly tired, but feasted in Golden on a Pizza Buffet. The damage count went as follows:

• Ben- 8 pieces
• Nevko – 7 piece and salad
• Bruce – 6 pieces and salad
• Barnoff – 5 pieces and salad
• Brandon – 4 pieces

The next day, just Ben, Barnoff and I went up to do some easy stuff on Der Zerkle in the flatiron.  All of us were sore from yesterday.  Barnoff ended up drinking all our water and Ben and I suffered dehydration, he’s a fricken camel. The climbs we did we 5.7, 5.8/9, 5.10.

I finally got to wear my super-lyrca-tie-dye pants and it gave me awesome powers.  Also, I was complement many times on my style, both in fashion and climbing technique.

Key takeaways from this climbing weekend:

• Never burn your foot, or else you won’t hear the end of it (even though you are very photogenic).
• Barnoff will drink all your water
• Ben tries to kill belayers and Fly fisherman by throwing carabiner from 35 meters.
• Brandon needs a short sling for traverses
• Bruce doesn’t trust shoes being thrown across a creek, and has trouble carrying rope bags.
• Lycra improves your abilities by at least 2 grades (don’t listen to the haters).

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Home for Easter

I was back again in PA for Easter and I got to experience the lush environment during the spring bloom.   During the weeks’ time at home, I started lots of activities and projects, but left them unfinished so my parents had something to keep them occupied with.

I got to go bass fishing at the Graham family pond.   I hooked into some very large bass, but the only pictures of fish ended up being the tiniest ones.   Easter was blast. I got to lots and lots of food and participate in the Easter egg race.  There was some stiff completion, and my metal egg came pretty close to dead last.

During the week, I worked from the house but still got out to have some fun every now and then.  Sophie didn’t enjoy me being home at first as I gave her a pretty good hair cut.  Tyler and I had lunch at the new Boulevard and went to the grand opening of the Crabtree Fruit Market.  One day later both us would be deathly sick, puking solid for a day straight.

The first task I did was to frame in the hunting (sars) room in the basement.  Being able to actually construct something was very satisfying.  Also much to my chagrin, I got to do more manual labor by fixing the rust on the Jeep.  This involved grinding, drilling, chiseling, welding, painting, scraping and hammering.   In the end, I only got the doors and the driver side rocker panel done.  But it ended up looking good with a 2 toned truck-bed liner paint job – and the new doors and rocker panel paint won’t be rusting out anytime soon.  (I left the passenger side rocker panel undone to keep my dad occupied).

Lastly, I was able to deliver Nick his long stand present.  He was ecstatic.

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Finally after a couple weeks off of rest due to my hurt ankle, I visited Ben, Garret and Bruce in Golden to introduce Garrett to Colorado climbing.  Saturday ended up being a scorcher of a day.   I made sure to get some rays while climbing.

We bounced all around the place, putting up two – 5.7 routes to warm up on.   The one felt little more stout than the other.  Afterwards Ben’s other friends showed up and did some climbs next to us.  They really enjoyed the wide cracks, which make me shudder.     Before moving on down the cliff, a climb caught my eye, a nice 10c with a funky cross-over move.

Afterwards, we were further down and got on a couple old routes. Ben put up an old 5.7 that was run out and me a 10b where I got to place a black tricam. Here we also played with my new camera lens and got come cool close up shots.

Lastly we went way down the line, when but climbed a horrible chimney (again just like last time).  Everyone groveled their way up it making the most awkward and horrible noises alongside impromptu contortionist moves.

The next day we did some moderate trad climbing boulder canyon across from Boulder Falls and my camera battery died during the climbing.  Lots of tourists took our pictures.

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Vast and Sandy

Another trip to the sand dunes was taken in the midst of winter.  Alexis was in town so I dragged her on the three hour trip down to one of the stranger national parks.  We lucked up and the morning haze which hung around the Front Range on the drive down, burned out or blew away, so we were left with bluebird skys.

The goal of the day was to have a photoshoot for several awkward gifts to give my long time mortal enemies and friends, Ben and Nick.  They day also held some other great landscape photo that didn’t include myself.    Hiking up the dunes, Alexis wasn’t a fan of the lack of oxygen, but intrigued the the opportunity of a photoshoot, she pushed on.

As we finished the shoot, we left the dunes, and saw deer grazing in front, thus more pictures were taken.  On the last stop before dark, we drove up and hiked into Zapata Falls.  Normally, the stream is rushing water over the falls, however being in February the falls were frozen solid.   This prime foreign landscape, allowed for another impromptu shoot.     The water was cut back far into rock, creating a cave like setting, with oozing water ice.   Even though there were several feet of ice all around, you could still hear the trickle of water underneath.

Leaving the falls we had one more adventure planned.  We went to the local Mexican Buffet in Alamosa. This by far was the best Mexican buffet I have feasted upon.

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