Past Two Days

Weston already updated a bit about Mt. Evans, but I figured I'd just make a separate blog and talk about it a little bit.

We woke up early yesterday, luckily, and made it out to Mt. Evans at about 10 or so. The hike in is fairly tame, mostly downhill, but is decently long. The trail was obvious and we made it to the boulders in about an hour; complete guess since I don't take a watch with me. We met some climbers near the start to Area A and they pointed us in the direction of the main boulders we wanted to go to. The Dali Wall was impressive with 3 v12's, a 14, a 9, and a 7. All of the lines were really cool and fairly inspiring. The rock is granite and was much worse on our tips than the smooth gneiss of RMNP. Dan and I both knocked out the Dali quickly which goes at v9 and was a very cool climb. Weston worked out the moves quickly as well but wasn't able to link it all together.


Mt. Evans was really beautiful and is a great area to climb in. Meadows, snow-capped mountains, boulder fields....what more could you want?

We looked at a few more problems after the Dali Wall; some were uninspiring and some seemed impossible in the 80 or so degree heat. We walked back to a problem called Bierstadt, v10, which is right on the trail and figured it would be the last climb that we would go to. I was inspired by the climb since it involved some large moves on good holds, and was a cool feature. I was able to work out the moves in a fairly short time but had to fight the pump. I was fairly frustrated after falling at the lip on my first attempt from the start and then not being able to get back there due to pump. One punted chalk bag later, and I was on top. It felt good to fight through the agravation and be successful.Today, we meant to go to RMNP but ended up waking up at 1130... so we vetoed that idea and decided to check out Eldorado Canyon which is only a few minutes outside of town. It was an impressive canyon but the rock was very greasy due to the heat and most of the boulder problems were across a river that is experiencing a time of high water. We messed around on a roadside boulder with some easy climbs for a while to satisfy us.


We then went up to the Flatirons so that Weston could work on Turning Point.

Dan and I being lazy hiked much slower than Weston and ended up stopping at the bottom of the Second Flatiron to rest. Dan decided to climb up a little bit of the flatiron and he convinced me, so I followed along. We intended to only go up about 30 feet. And then we wanted to get above the tree line. And then we wanted to go up to a ledge in sight. And then we decided to go all the way up, somewhere around 300 feet. It was very easy and not very scary. We were careful but it was very fun. Dan and I are going to wake up tomorrow at around 3 am and attempt to get up it before the sun rises.