Alex Savage

My last day finally showed up on Sunday. There was (surprise) a chance of rain and by this point I was sick of driving 45+ minutes then hiking an hour only to get rained out. So I decided to go to the Millennium boulder which is just 20 minutes outside of Denver. It is located near Red Rocks off I-70. I hiked out there by myself and luckily there was a crew of people already there. After warming up I sent Ghost Dance V7 which is a rather sharp pocket problem, like most on the boulder. Next up I started working on Purity Control V10. This is a simple yet difficult line consisting of two hard and precise moves on pockets. I stuck the first move on my second attempt but the next move was even more challenging. I was throwing for an edge but I was moving so far that it was hard to latch. Since it was now the afternoon, some dark clouds started to roll in over the hillside and it looked as though the rain was about to begin (surprise). I switched up my beta for the second move and after several more frustrating attempts I was able to latch the hold and proceed to the easy topout. After the send I hiked up the hill to Bambi V12 but my skin was totally shot so I didn’t put much effort into it. The video of Purity will be up shortly.

My Colorado trip finally came to a close and I couldn’t wait to get back home. This is the first time I’ve actually wanted to leave a climbing trip! Colorado just didn’t work out as well as I had hoped. I can’t say that you won’t have a good time in Colorado but I can say that if you have a week or less then I would choose one of many other bouldering destinations before going to Colorado. The hiking plus the weather plus the lack of concentration makes for a less predictable trip than most other destinations. I’m sure I will eventually return and have a good day in Colorado, it just didn’t happen this time.

Friday was a largely uneventful rest day. I toured around Denver with Roman and got depressed looking at the weather forecast for the weekend. Projections for Saturday were rain in the morning followed with thunderstorms in the afternoon and a high of 47 at the base of the mountains. Syked!!

I started Saturday morning by looking our the window at the menacing clouds in Denver. If it looks bad in Denver then it tends to be even worse in the mountains. I checked the forecast again and it didn’t appear to be raining yet and I didn’t have anything better to do so I drove out to Mt Evans to try to finish Clear Blue Skies (irony, oh so funny). Luckily Nate and John were crazy enough for some Mt Evans adventure so they met me up there. The first photo is the view when we started hiking. The boulders are near the center of the picture where the clouds are.

Mt Evans

As I started to warm up at the first area it started to lightly snow. By the time I got to the Dali wall a few minutes later the flakes had grown in size and were falling in large quantities. After some waiting and more warming up, the snow had transformed into mist. 30 minutes later it looked like there was a slight chance of the skies clearing. With some new hope I finished warming up and began working Clear Blue again. Despite 100% humidity and a soaked topout I managed to get to the last move a few more times but by the time I got there my fingers were numb from the cold conditions. After 10 minutes of clearing skies, it started to mist again. I began to lose all psych for climbing at all. This was a first for me on a climbing trip. An entirely unwelcome feeling.

We left the Dali wall and stopped at a V7 or 8 crack climb called Seurat. It stopped raining long enough for me to send. Nate worked on Silverback for a bit and then it started raining again so we went down to a steep climb called Bierstadt. I didn’t hop on it since the topout was soaked but John worked out some moves. While we were there it started hailing what looking like pieces of chalk. Then 30 minutes later visibility dropped to 25 yards and it started snowing again, only this time it started to stick to the ground. We hiked out in a full on snow storm and it felt about 35 degrees.

Low Visibility

Snowy Trees

Snow

Back to Mt Evans it was. After waiting for Al ‘lazy-start’ Lew to prepare himself for the drive, we left Denver at 11AM. The hike was beautiful again and only a couple drops were felt from the sky. We warmed up in the first area and I put a little effort into Bierstad but wasn’t super psyched to keep working it so we made our way to the Dali wall. I was most psyched for No More Greener but after a few attempts, the right hand pinch was started to rip my tips apart. A salt lake climber by the name of Amy was there putting some solid work into Clear Blue Skies. She had done all the moves and was trying to put it together. She got me psyched to give the line some more effort. It took me some tries to do the second move and then I did all the moves in isolation. I was feeling pretty strong for the first time this week and managed to pull through the first three moves to find myself at the last move, a dyno to a good crimp. I lunged but didn’t have the distance to latch the hold! After a long rest I arrived at the same spot on this simple yet difficult crimp line, falling with my fingertips on the last hold! By this point I was bleeding from two fingertips and was feeling a little gassed so I decided to give up on the Dali wall for the day. We hiked out to Gorillas in the Mist only to watch Al give it two attempts before deciding it wasn’t going to go that day. The light was fading so we decided to begin our journey out of Evans.
I am really psyched to get back on Clear Blue Skies but tomorrow will need to be a rest day since I feel exhausted from all the hiking and climbing!