Gnubbs Blog

When coming over the hill on 36 into Boulder Valley, there are two landmarks that immediatly strike your eye. The first are the glaciers and alpine peaks of Longs and the Indian Peaks range to the north. The second is the line of thousand foot cliffs that border the southwest corner of town. If it weren’t for these two features, Boulder would just be another town where the plains hit the mountains.

Alarm goes off and I look down to see that it is 7:10. Fsck. I am supposed to meet Scott at Eldorado at 7:30. I still have to pack my gear, and Eldo is 20 minutes away. Why do I keep suggesting that we start early? 7:35 I pull into the parking lot and Scott is waiting. We chat for a minute about where we want to climb and he suggests the First Flatiron. Sounds good to me. We were hoping to go to Lumpy Ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park, but the weather has been too unstable to do long routes there.

We pack the gear into my car, and head for the parking lot at Chettaqua park. From there, it is an hour hike all uphill to the base of the climb. We decide to do a route called ZigZag that sits left of the route that everyone climbs. Good choice. As we walk past the standard route, there are parties already on the first three pitches. Would have been a traffic jam. As Scott suspected, the route he was planning on is completely open still.

We rack up our gear, and Scott heads out of the first pitch. He had warned me that he would not be able to get in much protection. He quickly climbs through all 200 feet of rope, builds an anchor and I am on belay. As I traverse out onto the face, it feels a little funky. The Flatirons are low angle sandstone, and the faces are pitted and worn. Handholds are few and far between. For the most part, I am just grabbing the best holds and using them for balance. Everything is footwork today, but the angle is low and friction good. As I climb, I notice that I have went quite a ways before running across Scott’s first piece of pro. By the time I get to the top of the pitch, I have two cams hanging from my rack. That means Scott would have been looking at 100 ft leader falls if slipped. Damn.

I settle in to the shade on a comfortable ledge, handoff the gear, and put Scott on belay. He makes quick work of the pitch, climbing a crack system up, past a tree, until his rope runs out. He sets up the anchor at a questionable stance, and puts me on belay. The climbing is trivial except for trying to get past the tree without using it for holds. When I get to the belay ledge, I look over my sholder and am struck by the expansive views out onto the plains from here.

The third pitch is the crux. We have to climb a short section that is vertical to get onto an overlaying slab of rock. Scott makes easy work of the pitch, getting in what protection he can, and quickly disappears on to the slab above me and runs out of rope. I break the anchor and follow up. The crux is not hard, but is the first challenging rock of the day. Two moves, and ten feet later I am back on the easy ground we have been climbing all day.

The fourth pitch heads up a dihedral to the summit ridge. Scott heads out, and gets a bit along the ridge before running out of rope. As I follow him up, the pitch is really quite nice. The dihedral has a crack system running right next to it that provides an abundance of holds. As I get to the top of the dihedral and exit on to the summit ridge, I am immediately struck by views to the West of the snowcovered Indian Peaks, and to the East of the plains far into the distance. That moment of going from a world dominated by rock to a world dominated by sky is amazing.

We quickly traverse three pitches along the ridge to the summit. The ridgeline is crowded, but we get up there before most of the parties so do not have to wait for them. We spend a minute enjoying the views from the summit, thread our rope through the rappel bolts, and rappel the 92 feet to the ground on the other side of the crag. This is my first long hanging repel (the backside of the cliff is overhanging, so the rock is far from where the rope falls). On the ground we pack up our gear, answer some questions from tourists, and start the hour hike back to the car.

Two hours of hiking, and seven pitches of climbing and we are right back where we started. It is about 12:30, when I head home, get Stephanie and go out for a burrito and a beer at Pete’s.