TR: First Flatiron

Photo Courtesy of Google Images

The Flatirons are a pretty decent sized massif right outside of Boulder. Their known for easy technical long climbing, great views both east and west and are generally considered to be a classic ascent. Couple that with the fact that you generally see them every day whether you live in Denver or Golden and I've wanted to climb one of them for a while. So Tuesday morning when Andrew, Brian and I were sitting at Big Daddy's Bagels in Golden and Brian suggested we nix going to Eldo and we go climb the First, I was stoked.
We headed up to the trailhead and hiked up to the base of the climb. The classic route is rated 5.6 R and it's entirely because of the first two pitches, which Brian also mentioned that it's required to take the sharp end on one of those two pitches your first time doing it. Andrew rared up for the first pitch and led it off. The first pitch is actually pretty scary, it's almost all friction climbing and smears with very little pro and one eyebolt that you can clip in between the starting point and the first belay station. Andrew pretty much killed it on this pitch, leading off with a killer sense of humor, joking about a mono-undercling and humping the belay tree when he arrived at it. Climbing the pitch myself I was even more impressed with his calm of mind as I woulda been SCARED! (note to the reader: we used a pretty interesting system of climbing for this climb being that the two followers simul climbed on different ropes while being belayed from above by the leader using an ATC guide set up., it worked well for speed, sucked ASS for rope drag)

Andrew about at the belay on the First pitch
So being that it was my first time as well, it was time for me to take the second pitch. Up I went, placing in a little tiny red nut about 8 feet off the belay, and then running it out for about another 15 or 20 feet until I found a MAMACITA cam placement in a bomber crack! I was so happy to get that placement in, I'd started singing to myself lightly to keep myself from getting freaked about how high above the pro I was. 15 feet up, slung a piton and grooved on up to a ledge through some easy smears and big jams and setup a belay station. This was pretty fun! It took me a little bit to hunt out some appropriatly sized cracks that I could build an anchor on. Belaying the simul climbers up was brutal. Way more pumping out than any of the climbing had been.



A few pictures from around 2 pitches up
The next two pitches went pretty uneventfully with Brian, Andrew and I swapping leads on pretty easy climbing and terrain, I'd say one highlight was Andrew getting a booty call text message while we were two pitches up and then Brian and I simul climbing an easy pitch and talking about girls the entire way up. Fun day!
Now we got to my lead which was on the 5th pitch up, the weather had been getting darker and gloomier looking for most of the day and by this point we were starting to hear sounds of thunder getting closer. I almost bailed on leading this pitch in favor of a faster trad climber heading up so we could bail if necessary but I decide to take it after some encouragement from Brian. I'm so stoked I did, this pitch was super fun climbing varying from some long easy runouts, to some good crack jams and stemming problems, purely a joy to lead and anywhere there was a scary move, I was able to get a good piece of pro in. Couple this with the distant rumblings of thunder and being close to 1,000 feet off the deck and this was a truly interesting lead to have. The only down side was the thunder was SCARY and CLOSE and the pitch certainly meandered so that the rope drag was un real. I had to do a final traverse to the belay station after laying back a big flake and I shoved a piece in simply because I was worried that the rope drag would make me peel off 15 feet above my last piece of pro.
So we got to the belay and once the other two guys got up we had to make a decision to rap off the back side or finish the route. By this point the thunder was right over head and it was starting to rain, so after a small debate we decide to check out the rap station and bailed off the route. Brian scoped it out and after looking at it said it wasn't half as sketchy as he remembers and went off the back. I was pretty in favor of bailing as I'll admit the thunder was freakin' me out so I was pretty happy with this decision. Although, it does mean, I'm going to have to head back and climb the thing again and make the true summit sometime soon. Oh well, the climbing was fun enough that I'll gladly do it again even though we were probably 40 vertical feet from the top.
The rappel was a true freaker though, total free hanging at one point. Definetly a song creater! (I sing sometimes when I get scared enough)

Rap city on the backside of the first with lots of air underneath!

This day was awesome, I can't wait to get out with those guys again and go climb something big and tall like that. Even though we didn't finish it we were all pretty stoked with our progress and pleased with our decision to take the safer course of action of bailing. Although, when we were sitting at the sun and eyeballing the lack of rain up there it would have been sweet to high five on the true summit....next time.


Andrew lookin' pleased with our attempt