June Colorado 2024 (Heather, Kishen, Dave)

Making my way up pitch two of The Grand Giraffe

 I flew to Denver on Thursday evening June 20, 2024 to get in some climbing at the same time that Amy would be performing in the Boulder/Denver area. On Friday I climbed with Heather. We agreed to climb The Grand Giraffe and then see how the weather looked, as the forecast was calling for showers in the afternoon. We got a reasonably early start, arriving in the Eldo parking lot around 8 AM. After racking up at the car, we made our way across the bridge and over to the low-angle ascent ramp. This is the same ramp that can be used as an approach to Ruper. We carefully ascended this ramp to find ourselves near the base of our objective.

The Grand Giraffe (5.10a) - I enjoyed this climb even if it did spit me off of the cruxy wide pitch. Heather led the first casual pitch. I led the second pitch, which had a bit of a run-out above the belay before I was able to clip the pins above. This pitch was interesting, still reasonably casual, although a bit anxiety-inducing, with nice movement up into a crack system. Heather led pitch three. I had it in my mind to lead the final pitch (four), but after getting about 15 feet up and placing a #5 cam, I ended up having Heather lower me down. I just felt completely over my head in this off-width style of climbing, and had no idea how to do the moves here. Feeling as unsure as I did, I also wasn't confident about walking the gear up to protect the route higher up (for protection, you are walking the #4, #5, and #6 up the crack as you make progress). Heather did an admirable job of leading it for us instead of myself. The crux really is this low-down section. The key is to get your right foot out on the right face where you can find some small but reasonably positive edges/microfeatures. It is also key to have all of your protection racked on the right side of your harness so that it isn't in the way as you try to get parts of the left side of your body and left leg deep into the wide crack. With the right foot out on the face, the left leg is slowly worked up by grunts and shoves inside the crack. Someone later that afternoon told me that it is possible to avoid putting your body/leg into the crack and to just stem through the hard section, but I'm not sure how much easier this would really be.

We rapped the Vertigo rappels and were making our way over to try another climb when the thunder and rain started to roll in. That concluded the day's adventures.

On Saturday I met up with Kishen at the Eldo parking lot around 5:30 AM. He had very graciously offered to guide me up it for my third attempt. As I had done the day previously, we racked up at the car and headed across the creek to the base of the climb. In contrast with my previous attempts, we did not climb Touch 'N' Go as our approach to The Naked Edge proper. Instead we climbed an easier route a few feet to the left which led up a shallow ramp. From there we ascended through the cave pitch to the base of pitch one. Kishen led all the pitches of the Edge today, as I really wanted to focus on getting the moves in my head and done as cleanly as possibly. On this first pitch I followed his advice of moving deliberately but quickly through the harder moves to rest between better stances. I did fall two-thirds of the way up, but overall I felt reasonably confident on this pitch.

Pitch two was as usual more chill, working my way up the slab, around the corner, and up the vertical face and corner to the top. Pitch three was also casual, although I fell a few feet above the mantle move (which I always find challenging) when my foot slipped. Pitch four was my best performance yet. Here I worked my way carefully up the corner through the finger cracks, making my way towards the chimney. There is a _key_ tiny edge just a few moves before the chimney on the face out right that can be used for the right hand. When I got to the chimney, rather than trying to crimp my way much higher, I moved into proper chimneying technique, putting both feet on the right and my back on the left and applying lots of pressure. By slowly shimmying myself up this way, I was able to reach the decent holds near the toip. From here I leaned out and right to reach for the good edges up and over the lip. Overall I was very happy with this sequence of moves and techniques.

Pitch five was a sufferfest. I did the initial boulder problem without too much trouble, using the holds/edge out right and putting my feet out right to get through the hard part. However, when I round the corner to the right and started trying to climb into the fist/hand crack above, I fell apart (just as I did earlier with Dave). There is a small triangular foothold that can be used to get into the crack. I probably fell six or seven times above this trying to work my hands up the crack. There are some decent jams down low, and it is clear that there is a better set of jams way above those, but in between it's just a flaring hole that I can't really jam at all. And I didn't feel tall enough to move from the better jams down low to the good jams above. Kishen tells me that he jams his foot way back into the crack/pod and does full hand and foot crack jamming technique to get through this crux, but I honestly just didn't feel as if I would ever be able to do it that way. In the end I pulled on the cam above my head to get through this section. It would make sense to really project this one sequence of moves by lowering in from above and top-roping it a few times.

Many thanks to Kishen for getting me to the top of this spectacular route one more time!

Kishen and Kenton on top of The Edge

On Friday I met up at 6:30 with Dave and we made a short drive up Boulder Canyon to Upper Dream Canyon's Lost Angel area. This proved to be a spectacular spot to climb today as temperatures climbed well into the 90s. After a five minute hike to the edge of the cliff, we made two long rappels (Dave brought an 80m rope) to the base of a steep canyon cut by a roaring creek/stream. Because of the high surrounding walls on all sides, we were climbing in shade almost until 1 PM, and the slightly higher elevation we gained in driving up the canyon also helped to keep the temperature in check.

I started up what I thought was the first pitch of Divination (5.11b), but after I had made my way past the fifth bolt, we realized that I was actually on Dynamometer (5.12c). So, I lowered back down and started again on the proper climb this time. I took the sharp end on pitches one and three, while Dave led the second one. The climb was fun, certainly not easy, and made an especially good reminder of how to climb on small, sharp granite features. Dave in particular liked the awkward move through the final roof. If I remember correctly I fell one time in the middle of pitch one.

Dave approaches the top of pitch one on Divination

For our next and final climb Dave suggested we try Earth Voyage (5.12a). He told me he remembered the first pitch being hard but the next pitches being more like hard 5.11. That was not my experience on this route. Dave led all the pitches and I'm very glad he did. The first pitch had some tricky route finding with a crux involving a hand crack. I was wishing I had worn my crack gloves for this one. The next two pitches were extremely thin slab climbing on tiny sharp crystals for feet and with edges for one or two fingertips. There was also a section involving an extremely balancy thin ramp. On the last pitch I was so tired that I was pulling on gear to make progress (I also felt some time pressure because of my afternoon flight back to Atlanta). Overall I would probably have rated this harder than 5.12a, but perhaps I just need more practice on thin granite slabs. One takeaway was that I need to remember to put the ball of my foot flat against the rock on slabby granite rather than trying to stand mostly on my toe tips. No matter what this climb was a fun time!