Rain

We've been more or less rained out of both The Park and Evans since this Sunday so we've not done a ton of climbing. We got one so-so day that eventually dissolved into rain at Evans and I was able to climb on a boulder lower down in the Park when it was not wet. Luckily, Weston was able to send the Dali (V9) while at Evans. Satch it up. Other than that we've spent a lot of time driving to climbing, and turning around and driving home. We leave tomorrow sometime in the afternoon and, fingers crossed, we can climb a little bit at some area close to boulder in the morning before we leave.

Day 24 of the Colorado Experience

We went back to rocky today. Overcoming bad weather and worse skin I managed to send Automator (V13) and as fun as it was I'm glad we won't have to go back...

Next, Tim made a proud ascent of the Skyscraper (V4) an intimidating 30ft highball. I tried to climb it next, but made the mistake of not really resting after the Automator and had to quickly down climb when I got flash pumped near the lip.

Skyscraper (V4) from Tim Wilkens on Vimeo.

Tim and I both climbed Potato Chips (V7) a cool crimp problem on the warm up boulder. Tim and Weston went on to try Tourist Attack (V7) with Tim sending and Weston coming close.

Potato Chips (V7) from Tim Wilkens on Vimeo.

I worked on Secret Splendour (V12) and came close but blew the final move.

Lastly, I repeated Handicapps (V9) for video.

Handicapps (V9) from Tim Wilkens on Vimeo.

Oh, and we got some righteous Tank Tops. More on that later.

Thx Mom!

I am happy to point out that i have now gone longer without a shower than i ever have in my life that i can remember....12 days in a row.........SWEET!w a mere 12 days. SWEET!

Meow that was strange

Rawr
So, Dan, Tim and I were sitting at home surfing the web when we were startled by a kitty cat that was lurking in our house......

Total Chaos

Yesterday we headed to Chaos Canyon. Weston worked on Handicapps in Lower, and then did the hike to Lower chaos twice. Dan and I worked on several problems in Upper and Dan satched up the Green 45 stand (V11) and Sunspot (V11).

Green 45 Stand (V11) from Tim Wilkens on Vimeo.

Today Dan and I rested our skin and we headed up with Weston to Upper so he could try Right El Jorge (V9).
After, Weston and I showed our masterful glacading techniques. Dan thought it was too slippy.

Glacading Chaos Canyon from Tim Wilkens on Vimeo.

Moraine Park

We planned on going to Chaos Canyon today but unfortunately we got to the Park and the weather looked rather poor. Oh ho hum! Instead we went over to Moraine Park to check out a cool problem called Both Sides of the Spectrum (V12). I climbed, Weston modeled, Montana napped, and Dan took pictures and napped.

Lower

Today Weston, Dan, and I headed up to lower chaos, while Montana worked on homework and cleaned up our place. Score. Dan got very close on The Automator (V13) but had to stop due to less than perfect conditions and poor skin. Weston booked around. Dan and I did Handicapps (V9). We got food at Red Robin and are getting ready to watch Silence of the Lambs.

In Search of Time Lost

So we've clearly fallen behind here, we went to Alamosa and sorta got out of the habit of updating every night. Anyways, we'll try and fix that. We're going to be kinda succinct here, sorry.

Wednesday July 15: Montana and Mt Evans

We picked up Montana at the airport and took here immediately from sea side San Diego to an hour long hike at 10,000 feet. No big D. Weston worked

on The Dali Sit (V9), with slightly better weather conditions and actual calluse I took vengence on Clear Blue Skies (V12) and worked out the moves on No More Greener Grasses (V12) but didn't have enough skin for one of the linking moves. Tim and I then went and tried Gorillas in the Mist (V11) but we were both tired and ended up falling off the final move. We will return here soon to finish up a few things, but then we plan on spending most of the rest of our trip at RMNP.

Untitled from Tim Wilkens on Vimeo.

Thursday July 16: Lower Chaos

We spent a mellow day at lower chaos enjoying the sun and trundling around on the rocks a little. Weston was tired and Tim had a split, so we just took things easy. We started off the day by knocking off some easy moderates, Tim and I did Mikala (V6) and I did Revenge (V6). We then went over and I gave the Automator (V13) a co

uple redpoint burns but bad skin and poor weather left me with no send but high hopes. Before we moved on I decided to actually climb Tommy's arete (V7) from the real start, having done it from about halfway up several times before. On the way out we headed to the centaur boulder where Weston and I finally did this aggravating climb called Gang Bang Arete (V8). I tried Nothing But Sunshine (V13) briefly but it felt wierd and

hard. The last thing we tried before we left was Handicapps (V9), a cool but strange line climbing a series of underclings. Tim and I both got to the last move but found ourselves to tired to stick the finishing jug. Yet another climb to try and polish of next time.

Gang Bang Arete (V8) from Tim Wilkens on Vimeo.

Friday July 17: Exploring Upper Chaos

We started the day off late, sleeping in because we anticipated clear skies, but the forecast had changed overnight to isolated thunderstorms and so we decided against climbing but rather spent the afternoon searching around the tallus field to find the problems we hoped to climb on Sunday. When we got home we ate at a reasonable Thai place and then watched the new Harry Potter move. Shibidang.

Saturday July 18: Rest Day and Inner Tubing

Okay, whoo, last one. We stayed up late doing nothing meaningful then slept in to 11ish. We then promptly, around 2, went and got innertubes and rafted down Boulder Creek. The sun was hot, the water was cold, we had a blast and no pictures... whatevs, my Dad once taught me that water and camera's don't play nice, or something like that...

So, now we're caught up, we'll try to update every day now, but who knows.

Rock Band

I think tim could go platinum with the skill that i witnessed on the drum set......


Thanks for hosting us Grandma

Alamosa

Sorry about the lack of updates over the past few days, though we later learned that wi-fi was available, we elected not to bring our laptops, oops...

Anyways, we drove 4 hours south to Alamosa to visit Weston's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Day one we just kinda hung out and met everyone, barbecued and played corn hole, which has apparently made it out here. After that we played Ultimate Frisbee and Tim and Weston tried to kill themselves with Sonic's Route 44 / Blood Transfusion. The Next day we went to the Great Sand Dune's National Park ("where the bitches only walk half way and then turn around" - Weston) which is home to the tallest (possibly from sea level) Sand Dunes in the Country. Weston trudged all the way to the top, while Tim and I came to the realization that hiking uphill in hot soft sand was not the rest day activity we were looking for. We then checked out Zapata falls and went back to Weston's aunt's house for dinner and guitar hero. Next morning we got up late, ate some Mexican food for breakfast, hung out at the park some then bailed back to Boulder. We Watched Bruno at the AMC on the way home, and though we laughed, it's not exactly a family film...

Anyways, we're off to pick up Montana in a few minutes then we're off to Evan's to hopefully dispatch some projects. I'll try and upload pictures and maybe translate the above in to more intelligible English when we get back.

Day 10.5

So, long explanation shortened to the point of uselessness:

Tim and I are very tired, Weston sent Tommy's Arete (V7) and we're going to Alamosa.

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.

Udate Yall

On friday we headed to Mt Evans which is about an hour south of boulder. It was interesting and a little bit different than the park. Here are a couple pics of dan and tim climbing on some problems at the boulders.
Thats Daniel on Clear Blue Skies. A pretty pure line that goes up an overhang






<-----------------Tim on Bierstadt which was one of the first problems we stumbled upon when wandering through the woods looking for the boulders.

Pebble Wrestling is serious buisness as shown above.

Rest Day

So... We've been a little slow updating things, oh well...

On Monday we finally got a real, if short, day of climbing in. We fooled around a little at Emerald Lake where Weston and Tim had quick sends of The Kind Sit V7. After warming up we headed over to Whispers of Wisdom, a classic V10. Tim made quick progress, but though he did all the moves, he was getting to pumped and will have to wait until we return for the send. I tore my hand up pretty quickly on one of the holds, so I went over to try The Kind, a soft V11 traverse. Surprisingly, after quickly sussing the moves I finished the climb on my second go from the start, perhaps 10 min of work total.

Tuesday we ventured back to Rocky Mountain intending to check out the Lower Chaos canyon area, but out lack of directions ended us around 11,000 feet, near the Upper Chaos canyon area. Luckily we found the proper bouldering area shortly after though it was a day laden with hiking. Tim proceeded to climb Tommy's Arete (V7) and worked on some other problems. Weston worked out the moves on Tommy's and will certainly send next trip. I did the top portion of Tommy's and worked on a traverse called the Automator (V13). Having done the crux several times, I hope to complete the problem next time. Our adventurous hike prevented us from getting to much climbing in, but fortunately the weather was the best we've yet had and we successfully identified several problems for later trips.

Today we took a rest day, and just hung out and wandered around the town. We ate lunch at Half-Fast Subs, 'Barack Obama's favorite sub shop'.

Afterwards we headed to the pearl street mall and watched street performers such as this contortionist:

Our plan is to head to Mt. Evans tomorrow and cash in on our last day of benevolent weather.

Hopefully we'll post up tomorrow night. Cya.

Wisper

What you see here is a photograph. A picture of Tim working on Whispers of Wisdom at Emerald Lake in RMNP. I captured this photograph using a 5.6 apperature and 1/100 shutter speed. As you can see the sky did bleed out. The photo is also grainy.
Shwizzle

Climbing, Independance Day and More Rain

We missed a day here due mainly to a lack of news. Yesterday we went and investigated Boulder Canyon in hopes of climbing out of the reach of mountain storms, but though we found the climbs we were looking for, most of them were out of reach or unclimbable due to a swollen river. Still, we found a manufactured traverse/overhang called the Barrio that we dabbled around on. There were enough holds to contrive a couple lines straight out the overhang and Tim and I both did a couple things in the 8/9 range.

After we came home we grabbed some food and headed over to the CU Boulder campus to watch fireworks, hells ya, nothing like blowing things up to celebrate being an American.

Today we tried to check out another area we were psyched on at Mt. Evans in Idaho Springs. We got there and waited half an hour or so for our friends to show up and show us around and while we were waiting it started pouring again. After a little more waiting we did the only logical thing and hiked for half an hour in a down pour to try and find the boulders. Luckily we ran into another group of climbers who pointed us in the right direction, but now that everything was soaked, ourselves included, and the storm didn't seem interested in stopping we bailed out and headed to The Spot in boulder to get a little work out in.

Tomorrow the forecast looks slightly more hopeful, so we are going to try and get to bed before 2:30 for once and get up bright and early and get some climbing in at RMNP before afternoon showers arrive.

Rain

So, you would think that a forecast of four consecutive days of thunderstorms would serve as clue, but no, bright and early, ~11am, we headed out to Rocky Mountain only to get rained out as we began our warm up.

The upside of course is that we got to look at this sweet tree for an hour:

That and we ran into some people we met at Joe's who said they'd show us around, so all in all a reasonable use of time.

Not content with the 6.5 minutes of climbing we'd gotten in we headed over to the Flatirons for an evening session. After warming up again Tim and I did a cool 7/8/9 called turning point, while Weston worked out the moves.

The game plan now is to try and wake up in the am for once and head over to Boulder Canyon to get some climbing in before we seek out some prime real estate for a Fourth of July Extravaganza.

In that vein, night y'all.

-Dan

Here are some photos of the climbing at the flatirons... This is Tim freestylin' on Sputnik #1 trying not to slip.


Daniel doing the buisness.

100% dundee

Arrival

We arrived yesterday after a long 15 or so hours of driving over night.
Luckily, Weston's mom hooked us up with a place in the middle of the Hill in Boulder. We checked in and went to check out the place...it's a little old.
Most everything is ok, except the basement which looks like it would be the scene of a brutal murder.
We were exceptionally tired after staying up all night, but we needed to go check out at least some climbing. We drove up to Flagstaff Mtn. which is only a few minutes out of town and looked at few boulders, most of which were not too inspiring. We then drove over to the Flatirons which are also right outside of town to check out the bouldering. The hike was really not that bad, but being tired and having a headache and being at a much higher elevation than San Diego, it made me at least feel pretty shitty.
We climbed on several problems including a couple easy slabs and some v8 roof that seemed fairly hard but probably required some trickery. We hiked down as it started to get dark and the view was pretty nice of the campus and the rest of the city.A trip to the grocery store saw us partially stocked with essentials like bread, tuna, grapes, and water. We were mildly surprised by a large thunder/rain storm around 10 but it was actually kind of nice. We then drove over to the movie theater in the 29th street mall to see Public Enemies. It was good, but felt very long due to our state of exhaustion. We got back to our place around 1:30 or so and crashed.

We woke up today around 11:30 and grabbed some breakfast and drove out to RMNP.
RMNP really is spectacular and is an amazing setting for bouldering. We hiked up to Emerald Lake which is only about 1.7 miles and really wasn't that bad of a hike.
We checked out the boulders right near Emerald Lake including the Kind, Whispers of Wisdom, and Large. I was very impressed and more than a little dissapointed that we decided against bringing up climbing gear. We are heading back tomorrow to actually climb, and hopefully it will be as good as it looks. We ended our time by hiking up to Emerald Lake, which was fairly spectacular.
After Rocky, we drove back into town, grabbed some snacks, and headed back up to Flagstaff to do some climbing. It was underwhelming, especially after having looked at the amazing climbs in Rocky, and we only climbed for a little bit. We drove back to town, grabbed some groceries and walked over to the Pearl Street Mall. We saw a badass street performer juggle fire while walking on a ball, and got some food at a Chicago style restaurant.