Red Rocks

After the Bugaboos I took about a month off of climbing. Sometimes when you aren't motivated the best thing to do is take some time off. Eventually motivation comes back. In the mean time I started working again at Emerald Builders, the custom home builder I worked for before my trip. I commuted 40 minutes for a little over a month and then an hour and a half for a few weeks. By this point I was climbing again and a few of us started talking about a trip to Red Rocks. That was all I needed. I quit, again, and hit the road for another month.

This trip was a little more casual. At the beginning of the trip there was four of us; Jeremy, Stephen, Don and me. After a few weeks Stephen left and then it was three. After another week Don left and then it was two.

We got on a bunch of classic climbs, did some sport cragging and just generally had a great time.

Some highlights for me were.

1. Climbing Ixtlan 11c and Triassic Sands 10b in a day
   
2. Climbing Levitation 29 11c
   
3. Climbing Cloud Tower 11d (again)
4. Sending Yin and Yang 11a
5. Sending my first 5.12 sport route Tortuga 12a.
   
6. Watching Jeremy send over 10 5.12s and send his project The Gift 12d.
7. Climbing Epinephrine (again)
8. Spending thanksgiving in Indian Creek
   

Birdland 5.7. This trip was Jeremy's first time leading on gear.
Jeremy working The Gift 5.12d. He sent after a couple days of work.
Looking up Ixtlan
The offwidth on Ixtlan
The 10a pitch on Ixtlan. Big runout in a chimney. The kind that is secure while you're in it, but can't move in while you're secure. You have to let yourself out and shimmy and then dive back in. I was very scared and considered downclimbing, but I went for it.
Here's a better shot of the chimney/slot thing
Looking down the handcrack that went for days on Triassic Sands
Jeremy on his first 10a trad lead
Don on Yin and Yang. I sent this first go this trip.
Don on the Epinephrine chimneys
Looking down the last chimney
The second pitch on Levitation 29. We all had 5.11 leads and we all onsighted them. The only pitch that I fell on was the crux pitch. Jeremy onsighted of course.
Looking down levitation 29
Jeremy leading the 5.10 pitch before the 11+/12- crux pitch.
Jeremy at the start of the crux pitch. I led this pitch and was able to do all the moves, but didn't send. I think it's possible with some work. You can see the fist crack above, which he also led at 10c. Great progress for someone who just started climbing on a gear a few weeks ago. His final lead of this climb was the last 11c corner.
After lots of stuck ropes and long climbs in Red Rocks we were ready for a change and decided to head to St. George Utah to check that out. Here's a crag 5 min. from town.
A really cool feature in St. George.
I sent the 11d on this called Banana Dance and then sent an 11c on the other one called Pinching Bird Shit. After these I decided to try and lead a 12a around the corner called Tortuga and after a bunch of goes I send it as well. The best day of sport cragging I have ever had. I guess climbing with mutants does pay off.
After our sending spree in St. George we headed over to Indian Creek for Thanksgiving where many a good climb was done and I took part in the best thanksgiving party ever. Dance offs, good food and great people. Here's Incredible Handcrack.
Here's a guy we met on my project X-tra lean 12a. I was close to sending but hurt my finger. This was the end of November and as I write this in August my finger is still not at 100%, but oh well. Tape does wonders.
After Indian Creek we went to Joes Valley for a few days. After a few days of Jeremy bouldering and me watching (hurt finger) we packed up and headed home. What a great trip.

Bugaboos

Well this is a little late, but I figured I would write up a trip report for my trip to the Bugaboos last summer. I was there with Josh and we did a couple climbs; Energy Crisis and the Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire.

On our first day we climbed Energy Crisis 5.11c. I first saw this climb the year before when I climbed Mctech Arete and noticed the beautiful corner next to it. It looked so hard and intimidating then and now I was about to give it a go. It is always cool to see progress. I wasn't able to onsight the crux pitch, but with a couple small falls I finished it out and from there it was smooth sailing. What a great climb.

The gear pile

Looking up Energy Crisis
The first pitch (Also really good)
Down low on the second crux pitch
Higher up
Snowpatch & Pigeon from up high
Josh rapping off the top

The next day we decided to climb the Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire. I know that this is one of the 50 classic climbs, but I didn't think it was that great. There was very little good climbing and a lot of loose rock. Having said that it is worth doing just for the adventure. The climb is long and it's on a beautiful mountain.

For this climb it was me, Josh and a guy that we met in camp. To keep a long story short we took a little longer to do the climb than I would have hoped, but eventually made it to the top and back down to the col right as it was getting dark. This is where the real story starts.

Early morning light on Snowpatch

The gully you have to climb to reach the ridge
The best pitch of the route
Snowpatch
Summit ridge
Pigeon at dusk

From here we couldn't descend down the pass between Snowpatch and Bugaboo because all the snow was melted out, which left big rocks just sitting in sand. A definite bad idea. The other option is to rappel next to the icefall on the backside of Snowpatch. This isn't too bad. It is something like six bolted rappels. The only problem is that now you have to walk all the way around Snowpatch and pick your way back to camp. It adds a couple hours to the adventure, but it's still better then knocking giant rocks onto each other.

So off we went on the rappels. We made the first 5 without incident, but this all changes when we get ready to make the sixth rappel. We already have the rope strung through the anchor and I'm about ready to leave our little ledge when all of a sudden we hear this super loud roar above us. Not only does it sound like we are about to be killed by rockfall, it looks like the cliff is about to fall apart with us on it because the entire thing is shaking. It actually looked like when you throw a rock into a perfectly calm lake and it creates ripples. That's what the cliff was doing. Shaking back and forth. I've never been so scared in my life. I actually though I was dead. In that second I believed that was it.

At this point we were hugging the wall and hoping that the rocks wouldn't hit us, but they never came. The roar didn't stop, but there were no rocks. After a couple seconds of confusion we realized that the noise was actually a little climbers left. We looked left just in time to watch a rock the size of a small school bus fly through the air. It was so weird to go from complete chaos to dead silent as we watched this massive rock silently fly towards the glacier. Within seconds it smashed into the glacier throwing September snow 50 feet into the air like it was Utah powder. It then careened down the glacier and finally stopped a long ways past any of the debris from the icefall.

Needless to say we were a little surprised by what had just happened and decided to make the rappel and get the hell out of there. After a long walk around Snowpatch and another rappel we were finally back at camp 18 hours later.

This is a picture from a previous trip of the icefall. We were rapping just out of the picture to right when the block rolled off the rock where the icefall meets the rock at the highest spot. Our guess was that the rock was frozen in place for a long time and finally melted out and slowly slid down the shelf, which is why it shook for so long.

I learned a lot of lessons from that climb. The most important being that the mountains really can kill you. You read about people getting hurt and dying and you always think that it wont happen to you. You know enough, you are careful enough, but the reality is that we are fragile in the alpine environment and things out of our control can end us in the blink of an eye. Am I done taking risks in the mountains, no way, but am I more aware of my surroundings and what I'm doing. I sure think so. I've always read that young climbers take risks early on and it's not until they experience close calls that they fully realize what they are getting themselves into. I always kind of laughed at this and said that I had my stuff together, but I didn't fully comprehend the situations that I was putting myself in. Climbing is a sport that can kill you. It can happen at the crag or in the mountains, gravity works the same everywhere. Have fun, but more importantly be safe. The whole point is to come back and climb again tomorrow.