Easy climbing with Jack and his brothers on Treasure Wall in the morning to avoid Bolder Boulder congestion. Green in the evening with a tiny (6 maybe) RMR group, we made great time though!
5/31, Tuesday - AM: Jamestown Peaks Duathlon - Bike: 30 miles, 3600', 2:08; Run: 8 miles, 2800', 2:09 || PM: Salomon Run - 4 miles, 1700', 0:43
Biked up to Jamestown which (un)fortunately includes Lee Hill with the Lefthand construction so I got two doses of that beast. There are three ranked peaks just north of Jamestown, Bald Mountain, Porphyry Mountain and Golden Age Mountain. None have trails and a few have a bit of private property to skirt around. Fun little outing in the hills. Salomon group run to Royal Arch in the evening.
6/1, Wednesday - Off
It may have been national running day but I was beat from yesterday so I rested.
6/2, Thursday - Tomato Rock, Regency, Royal Arch, 5th Flatiron, Fist, Green Mtn - 6 miles, 3200', 1:57
Quick-ish lap on a linkup that I should probably frequent more often. In the case where I go from the 5th to the Fist it would probably make more sense to do use the "hole" descent rather than the south side ledge.
6/3, Friday - 1st Flatiron, Chase the Sun, 1st Pinnacle, Slot - 4 miles, 2100', 1:17
Out late last night so I just got out for an easy scramble with Kyle in the evening. Met him at the base of the 1st before running through the list. I hadn't been down into the Amphitheater in ages and had only ascended the 1st Pinnacle by its Southeast Face once so it was fun to get up that once more. After downclimbing the west bench dihedral I was feeling good so I went for the Slot which I had only once ascended (and had to use climbing shoes). This time I felt very comfortable though still had to suss things out quite a bit for the exit move from the slot to the face. The whole Amphitheater has really great routes I should do more often, a lot more honest climbing too.
6/4, Saturday - Golden Gate Canyon - 14 miles, 2100', 4:43
Managed to get completely lost on the approach to the aid station we were volunteering at (luckily we left several hours early) so we ended up taking a rather large tour hike around the park. Then I was running up the hill to grab bottles from runners, bombing down the hill to get ahead of them, then filling up their bottles so they wouldn't have to wait around for that. So that gave me about eighty 8ft hill repeats before hiking back out (on the correct course).
6/5, Sunday - Free For All, Butterfly/Fandango, Red Slab, T-Zero, 1st Pinnacle, Slot - 5 miles, 3100', 3:37
Fairly tired from being on my feet all yesterday so I took it pretty easy effort-wise. Started with practice lap of Free For All then randomly decided I needed to check out Butterfly. I'm not sure if I ended up on the correct route (may have been on Yellow Brick Road), but I started at the base of the 1st and stemmed along the Witch's Cabin boulder until I hiked up a bit of dirt to a large slab which I climbed up into a series of strenuous roofs. There were several places where had I had a rope to catch a fall I would have made very fun moves but alas, without that safety net I limited the risk taking and took generally safe lines. Rather than rejoining the Direct route I branched farther over again and climbed the Fandango dihedral which was pretty fun. For a second lap of the 1st I worked on Red Slab before descending to the Amphitheater. There I went through a counter clockwise circuit ending with the Slot. My hands were sweaty at this point I could barely lock them into the jams to pull out of the chimney, certainly a tough route for me which is at the limit of what I'll solo.
Week Totals:
10 unicorns
4 goblins
0 wizards
6/6, Monday - Longs Peak - 12 miles, 5100', 5:56
A proper day of alpine scrambling! Kyle and I made good time to the Keyhole where we donned crampons to ascend the class 2/3 ramp to the False Keyhole and join the sort of technical Keyhole Ridge. The ramp up was all snow so we used crampons and axes. After we finished the ramp Kyle said he wanted to dry off his shoes, I informed him then that it was futile and he could expect to be climbing on wet rock for the next hour or so. We managed our way up to the first tower finishing with some precarious sloping ledges and a vertical flake with enormous exposure. The second tower didn't seem quite as hard but the exposure was consistently huge. The final notch to gain the last piece of ridge to the summit proved to be the biggest time-suck, we ended up downclimbing almost all the way to the Northwest Gully. We finally gained the summit in about 3:30 elapsed and I decided on the Loft as our descent route. variable snow conditions from dry to icy crust to soft led us to Clark's Arrow before glissading some 800ft down to Chasm Lake, probably the highlight of the day. Ran most of the way back down at a good clip -- setting the bar high for good times in the alpine already this summer!
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| Kyle working his way up early on. |
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| We weren't sure this part was "on-route" but it provided the most exciting move of the day: a layback to mantle with only smears for feet! |
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| Big exposure but easier moves on the second tower. The Dove snowfield lurks a few hundred feet under Kyle's heels! |
Went for a quick lap up and down Freeway and ended up PR-ing by a good margin on the round trip (27:41 car-to-car). Salomon group run afterwards.
6/8, Wednesday - Bike: Brainard Lake - 52 miles, 6400', 4:03
Wanted to duathlon my way up Queens Way to Apache peak but I arrived far to late to be climbing up warm and soft snow. I tried to salvage things by heading to Mt Audubon but the approach was solid with about 3ft of snow, so I just turned back around. I was feeling dreadfully tired most of the time so I stopped in Ward for a cheap espresso and a couple cookies before coasting back to Boulder.
6/9, Thursday - Kelso Mtn, Torreys Pk, Grays Pk - 9 miles, 4800', 3:34
Parked at the decrepit old cabin with Kyle and Barkley'ed up some obscenely steep terrain (2,000ft in a mile), of which half was postholing in the trees. The ridge from Kelso Mtn to the saddle had some painful ice crust but thankfully the final couple hundred feet of 3rd class downhill was dry enough to enjoy. Kelso Ridge was in way better shape than I thought, which is good because I only brought poles. Tagged Grays and decided the ridge over to McClellan/Edwards/Ganley looked too snowy to enjoy so we dropped back down and postholed back to the car.
6/10, Friday - Tomato Rock, Regency, Royal Arch, 5th, Fist, Green. T-Zero, 1st Pinnacle - 7 miles, 2900', 2:40
Kendrick had been fixin' to get up a couple new scrambles lately so today I aimed to take him up the Fist. Of course, getting to the Fist is an arduous enough task so we made sure to take the line of most excitement beforehand. Our first detour was to Tomato Rock when I learned he had never done it. Made it through the Regency and passed Nick on the arch. As expected, the downclimb off the Fist took a bit longer than usual as Kendrick had never seen the thin crimps before. Tagged Green (as bushwhacking back down would probably take longer than up and over), and descended to the Amphitheater to tag T-Zero and the First Pinnacle.
6/11, Saturday - Grays Pk & Torreys Pk - 8 miles, 3800', 2:29
Guy and I were meeting friends to camp in Leadville and figured a sunset ascent was in order. I felt great on the ascent and PR'ed big on the climb up Kelso Ridge. I jogged back down to Guy and we made our way over to Grays to enjoy a truly unbelievable sunset. Pushed the descent just enough to not need to turn on my headlamp.
6/12, Sunday - South Massive & Mt Massive - 14 miles, 4900', 4:10
Started with a big group that eventually broke up to some running on the Colorado Trail and myself, Clare and Guy heading up to Massive. I managed to find myself a good distance in front of the pack so I pushed ahead to tag South Massive. Jogged back down to regroup then finished to the top together.
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| Guy and Clare heading back down the ridge. |
Ah, the summer alpine, can't beat it...
This are some ridiculous pictures. The sunset shot with the snowy mountains is fantastic
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