July Climbing in Eldorado Canyon

Derek near the start of Yellow Spur

On Friday July 6, I flew to Denver. My climbing bag with all my gear came on a later flight, because Delta forgot to load it onto my own flight. I stayed with Derek and Sarah in Golden. We had to wait for my bag to be delivered the next morning, so Derek and I weren't on the rock until late in the morning, around 10 AM. We climbed The Yellow Spur (5.9+). We were in full sun the entire time, because we were stuck behind a party of 3, and the party refused to climb simultaneously. So the climb ended up taking us about 6 hours to complete. I thoroughly enjoyed this climb except for a few easier but runout sections and except for the fact that I was overheating half of the time.

On Sunday we climbed two more routes. First we climbed West Buttress (5.10a). The first pitch was one of the hardest, and I ended up doing a variation (unintentionally of course, but I felt that it was better protected than the standard route) which bumped the grade even higher to 5.10b (see photo below).

West Buttress variation that I took (image shamelessly stolen from Mountain Project)

I struggled in the crack/chimney on pitch 2 but managed to finish it without hurting anything but my phone (cracked in 3 places as I did a "beached whale" at the base of the chimney). Derek led the third pitch to the top of the Bastille.

Derek in the chimney on West Buttress

We came back down to the base and set ourselves up to climb Werk Supp (5.9). I had climbed the first pitch of this route more than 10 years ago with Rebecca, but at the time I had been too intimidated to climb the crack that formed most of pitch 2. This time I did it (hanging on gear a few times, unfortunately). I will have to return yet again to get it clean!