Carrots and Peanut Butter: Black Canyon Shenanigans

This June Noah and I met in the Black for some good old-fashioned sketchin. We decided to start with the classic Astrodog, and our first night we drove to the Chasm View overlook to scope the rap anchors and subtract some bumble factor from the next morning’s efforts. It was my first visit, and standing on the rim gazing down into what seemed like an infinite abyss of blackness, I felt the unsettling fear of the unknown grip my stomach. I tossed and turned that night, troubled by stories and rumors the Black’s burly reputation.

Looking across to the Chasm View Wall

We woke at dawn and made the dozen raps to the canyon floor without incident, and as we pulled our last ropes the beautiful simplicity of climbing in the Black was obvious: just get to the rim. The night’s anxiety melted away as we cruised pitch after pitch of quality stone; the rock quality far surpassed my expectations and every pitch seemed about a grade easier than the topo suggested (the payoff from a season in the South Platte). The cruxes were interesting, gear was solid, and the pitches above the two-boulder bivy were downright splitter goodness. Even crossing the pegmatite band was decently protected, and I reached a belay beneath the crux with plenty of daylight left and a full head of steam. We did not admit it to each other, but we had both been thinking, “are we going to crush Astrodog?”

Noah leading the 2nd crux of Astrodog, V 5.11+

In the 2nd crux

The next pitch said no. After some grundle-clinching attempts at stemming up the overhanging slot, Noah resorted to aiding. We did not have the recommended 000 cams for this endeavor, so as he was pulling up on a tiny nut, there was a loud POP and suddenly all 190 pounds of Noah was sitting in my lap. Oh boy, things were getting serious now. Some grunting and creativity got him up to better gear on the next attempt and he finished the pitch free.

The next day we were in no shape to climb so we spent a delightful rest day scoping lines across the canyon, replenishing calories at Dragon Wall Chinese Buffet, and purchasing matching green hospital scrubs at a very eccentric thrift store. Dawn the next day was inexplicably freezing, and as we crouched in our sleeping bags to eat breakfast, the thought of climbing seemed ludicrous. The day soon warmed, however, as we rapped and scrambled the seldom-trod gulley to the base of Crystal Vision. This route, a bit off the beaten path, was rumored to be loose, wide, and spicy, but clad in our stylish new threads we were confident that speed and boldness would get us back to the rim somehow. In contrast to Astrodog’s aesthetic splitters, most of this climb was a jungly mantle-fest of chimneys and stem-boxes, with a fantastic splitter pitch thrown in.

After much fun climbing, we reached the route’s namesake pitch. Noah courageously lead up a blank arête with no gear, then began traversing a slab protected by three sparse bolts. The “Crystal Vision” name soon became apparent; the smooth slab glittered brilliantly in the sun, and the climber crossing it only finds purchase by smearing fingers, palms, and toes on miniscule slick crystals. At one point Noah was perched precariously in a sea of crystals, his legs shaking and his nearest bolt 30 feet away, and I heard him yelling “Noah, calm the fuck down!” He had taken a more direct traverse which unfortunately demanded a 45-ft runout to the nearest crack, however he got his shaking legs under control and avoided the sickening pendulum fall that awaited. When I crossed the slab next I found myself in such an absurd position trying to stick to the rock, when I looked across another 20 ft to next bolt and saw no recognizable holds whatsoever I just wanted to give up. In the next instant I recognized that since the rope ran horizontally, giving up was not an option, and I told myself that this was one of those times when the only way forward is to turn the brain off and let the body do what it needs to do. All I can remember of the next 60 feet is the blinding glare of the stone, then I grabbed a positive hold and rejoined the conscious world, where Noah and I could laugh it off. Once more we scrambled over the rim, trotted to our waiting car and Tecate with lime, and toasted another successful day in the Black.