The last couple of weeks have been an absolute flury of activity. I haven't seemed to really do much except the usual hang out in Denver and climb and work, but I also moved, took a trip to Copper Mountain and explored some crags up there and now I'm off to Alaska on Friday. Work surprisingly enough, has been going pretty well so we can table any discussion about that, which is good as that's the boring stuff.
So about two weeks ago I wrote about taking a buddy of mine up to boulder for the first time.
I think that the joy of introducing a neophyte to the sport and the joy of finding a strange trailhead and heading up it towards a crag, have very similar impacts. The trailhead unfolds towards you and winds its way through pine and growing piles of rock much as the beginner grabs for holds suddenly finds themselves at the top of something that they thought was so impossible (or at the bottom). Mel and I went and explored the sport climbs at Haus Rock in Montezuma a couple of weekends ago. A beautiful 60 foot boulder that juts right out of the hill side, this climb is on awesome gnesis and has a collection of great moderates on oneside and up to 5.13c on the other side. One of the better 5.9's I've climbed was there and asides from a couple of bro brah locals (it is there crag so I can't complain too much) the scenery was absolutly gorgeous. (pics to come later-they're on Mel's camera) The day after this we went to a crag in Leadville that the 10th Mountain division used to climb out. This turned into an adventure of getting two dogs across a single beam bridge of a raging runoff stream, Mary Jane waltzed right across it while Copper (Mel's parent's Golden Retriever) ended up having to swim the river because she was too scared of the beam. This looked like great rock that had barely been climbed on with great bolted 5.8s and 5.9s. I say looked because before I got barely 2 feet above the first bolt, ran came pouring in and we had to make a hectic escape and go for plan B (a lowkey hike up Mayflower Gulch) instead. (We'll be back Labor Day)
The weather let up in time for us to have a great leisurely hike up the Gulch until we ended in the valley where your greeted by an ancient group of dilapidated huts from Colorado's mining history.
The second we found this valley, the skies came rolling in from Fremont Pass, and we went scurrying for cover in a ferocious summer hail storm. After about 20 minutes of hiding it let up to the point where we scrambled back down the trail to the car.
Mel hiding from the storm
The following two weekends I've spent climbing at Canal Zone in Clear Creek Canyon right near Golden. This is a GREAT new crag, it's all in the shade until about 3 pm, it's got a collection of great moderates and everything up till 5.11 and it's on great rock. It's also being constantly developed by the route setter Kirk Miller, who I met two weeks ago. A great easy going chatty guy, this man has built this crag into a phenomenal sport climbing area from the ground up and seems to have the productivity of 8 men. In the week that I was gone, three more routes were completed! It's pretty sweet to have an opportunity to go to your favorite new crag and have there be tons of new routes popping up left and right. I'm excited to see what else he'll set up soon, and I promise I'll get some digging in for him.
Other than settling in to a new apartment, I'm just getting mentally prepared to take off for Alaska on Friday. I absolutly cannot wait, this week seems to be crawling by. The plan involves some time in Anchorage, Denali National Park, Kenai Peninsula, Talkeetena and hopefully, just hopeully, some bouldering off Hatcher Pass (if not it's starting to look like we'll definetly get some bouldering in in Denali National Park). One more day!
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