TR: Early Season Skiing!!

The season here went from non-existent to ON almost overnight. Usually we get a slower start with a few runs up on the WROD (white ribbon of death) and then some easy backcountry as things fill in. This year it went straight to the backcountry with some big storms dropping close to 48" at Loveland over a few days. I got a new tiny camera for better easy of portability recently and have been screwing around with the video function. Here's a little mock up of what I've been up to on the odd day off from grad school these last few weeks. Day 4 was yesterday!
Hope you enjoy!

TR: Kelso Ridge, Torreys, 09/28/2010

The banni-maniac hittin' up the knife edge

To steal the words of my friend Tim, this has been some SPLITTER fall weather. Absolutly ideal for running around up high. Recently, between my job and adjusting to a school schedule, getting out and about to go run around up high has been very hard to find time for, so pretty much since Longs I've been mainly running around crags on the front range(especially Eldo) and haven't really had a chance to get out much other than that. So when I saw the forecast of 60 degrees and sunny at the top of Torreys, I gave Ann a call (we've been talking about Kelso Ridge all summer) and said that it was time to go take a look at some aspen trees. From way high up.
So due to my totally screwed up sleep schedule these days, I got woken up by Ann calling me saying that she was at our assigned meeting location already. Learning from experience, (I do sometimes do that), I had packed everything the night before and was out of the house within 10 minutes of her waking me up. (Sorry Ann, I'd say it would never happen again, but that's probably not true :))
A short drive later(which the volvo totally made it up a classified easy 4WD road!!! NO PROBLEM!) we found ourselves below grays and Torreys with a short hike to the start of our climb bathed in beautiful alpenglow.

Our first view of the ridge, looks harder than it is
Kelso is a class 3 ridge, without too much difficult route finding, however, we'd made it a point that if we didn't like the way the wind was or if it had too much snow on it, we'd back off. However, when we got to it, we quickly decided that you couldn't begin to find better conditions and with helmets off the pack up we went.
Kelso is an awesome climb, great easy scrambling, a solid degree of exposure, and a 14er at the end with views of the continental divide. What more could you ask for! I can pretty solidly say that this is the most fun I've had on a 14er without being on skis, highly, highly reccomended!

The ridge from higher up

Author about to head into the chimney, photo by Ann B.

The first major obstacle involved a chimney section (easy moves, but definetly some exposure) followed by a winding ridgeline that moved to the right and left of the ridge, (basically, look for the easiest way up and it stays class 3 with no major difficulties). Climbing this with Ann was a total blast, we chatted while enjoying easy and fun movement, spectacular views, and scary exposure as we wound our way up. The major crux here I would say is route finding, it's nothing super difficult but you definetly have to pay attention, case in point. The most famous part of Kelso is the infamous Knife Edge, 30 feet of drop off on either side exposure over a jagged point of rock that requires the most stellar of all moves to overcome: the butt scoot! Now Ann and I had been climbing for about an hour and a half when we reached a point that we were positive was the knife edge. Both of us looked at it, compared it with our mental photos we'd seen, hemmed and hawwed, decided it was it (since no easy route appeared) and me being relatively chivalrous, started up.

Yours truly, feeling perplexed and pumped. Photo by Ann B.


The second I got on this thing I realized that it was harder than class 3, there was no feet, bad friction, and even though I was straddling it I was still yarding myself up with my arms. My first thought was crap, I can't do this, quickly followed by, oh yes i can! and the adrenaline hauled me up! Definetly 5.0-5.2 I'd say, but hey I thought, the hardest part is over! I turned around to shoot some photos of Ann hauling herself up and onward we continued.

Yeehaw! Airy! Photo by Ann B.

Ann crankin' it



50 feet later and here we are confronted with a second knife edge, which clearly indicated that we were off route earlier. This one was significantly easier than the one that we first encountered, actually requiring only some substantial butt scooting and some substantial exposure. A short pitch of Class 3 later and we're at the summit!

Myself on the ACTUAL knife edge, photo by Ann. B.

I have to comment that the weather on top of Torreys was absolutly unreal spectacular, clear skies, no wind and views all the way to the Elks.
Torreys sits right next to Grays, both which are 14ers and require no more than a class 1 ridge between the two of them. Neither of us having been up Grays we decided to make the quick jaunt up after downing some grub. 30 minutes later, and we were on top of the second 14er in an hour.

Grays summit shot!

After this it was a short retreat to the car and then straight to the bar (Tommyknockers as the Plume saloon was closed-sorry Chris, I tried).
Kelso Ridge=Highly reccomended!!!!, 4 stars from this blogger!

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