Golden Hour in the Wind River Range

Sometimes, the balm of the day is Happy Hour, when we can leave the stress and bustle of work and bike over to a friendly watering hole to enjoy a cold tasty brew. This is the time to relax and banter with friends, and enjoy a slower pace.

I enjoy the libations of Happy Hour sometimes, but the real balm to my soul is the Golden Hour, that magic time just before dusk when the sun does something ridiculous and paints the whole world in rich velvet rays. It's as if the sun realizes that it's about to leave and throws a final burst of its purest light over the world, a parting gift.

The Golden Hour is a special time. It's the time of my best efforts, but not my hardest...it's a brief relaxation of the day when gravity and fatigue lose their potency. These are the times when I float down the trail on renewed legs and climb with renewed vigor, buoyed upward by a new lightness before the close of the day. In winter, when I see that golden hue out the office window before I leave, I see the chocolate walls of Indian Creek in my mind's eye and recall days upon days of floating up splitters in the light of the fading day, scaling the improbable cliffs with no more effort than breathing.

As JD and I hiked over Jackass Pass into the Cirque of the Towers this weekend I couldn't help continuing to look behind at the splendid silhouette of Lost Temple Spire jutting into the horizon behind us, bathed in the light of sunset. "Man, wouldn't it be sweet to be up there right now", I kept saying. He said something about the annoyances of rappelling in the dark and I had to agree, but maybe it's worth the cost... 

We enjoyed a fun mellow day scrambling to summits in the Cirque and enjoying spacious views of the range, then returned to camp for a meal in the early evening. We'd been talking about the Lost Temple Spire too much to let it lie in the unknown future anymore. Satisfied with some Raman noodles and spicy peanut sauce, we broke camp, packed our bags and hiked south over the pass with the Spire floating before us like a sentinel in the sunset. Golden Hour. "Man, I'd like to be up there at this time tomorrow."

JD scopes the chiseled south face of Wolf's Head, some of the cleanest cracks in the Cirque.

Usually, I hit the Golden Hour at the end of day-long climbs, massive efforts that drain me to the core, and the rich thick sunlight comes as a blessing at the end of the day when I need a final boost of energy. The spire in our view is only six pitches tall, totally feasible to climb and descend in half a day. To be up there near sunset, we’d have to start late…

We were a little haggard from poor rest before the trip so we luxuriated in ten hours of beauty sleep at Big Sandy Lake and enjoyed a casual morning stretching and drinking coffee in the meadow. Buzzing mosquitos were annoying but hey, you forget all the annoyances easily. We set off for our destination with a super-alpine start of 9:30 AM and enjoyed the lovely walk to Black Joe lake (wrong way…oops), crossed the shoulder of Haystack to correct our error, and took an exhilarating dip in the cold clear waters of Deep Lake underneath the majestic prow of Lost Temple Spire.

Lost Temple Spire beckons from Jackass Pass

After a long scramble up from the lake we enjoyed great climbing on the Wind River granite as we inched our way up the Spire via Separation Anxiety. A sparse description in the guidebook kept things exciting, as a 5.6 pitch held a surprise no-fall-zone 5.9 mantle and a “5.0 traverse” involved inching out on sloping blocks over the sheer north face that drops off a thousand feet to the glacier below. The proud skyline of the tower was accordingly strenuous, with a burly “5.9” fist crack followed by the route’s signature pitch, a 65 meter hand crack. As in a 65 meter pitch with 63 meters of hand jams. With four red and three gold camalots on my harness, I gazed up at the immaculate splitter that cut the white granite above us beyond view, and felt my hands tingle with anticipation. The pitch was pure joy, perfect jams with a gulf of air beneath, so little gear it wasn’t even worth thinking about it. At the rope’s end I was huffing and puffing and couldn’t help the huge grin on my face.

We climbed back onto the sunlit west face as the day grew old and the light grew thick with the molten sun. We forgot the fatigue of the day and the bustling wind and worked our way through the final problems to the top of the Spire in a golden world of sky and stone. On the summit, the Wind River Range extended before us in unending waves of peaks and valleys, ridges and cliffs and dizzying vertical walls, each one holding the promise of unwritten trials and discoveries. At these times, in the dying sunlight, the future spreads as far as the mellowing horizon, in all directions, tantalizingly close.

We’d earned our time in the Golden Hour, and had to pay up too. Rapping the south ridge on-sight in the dark involved some uncertain rope-stretching rappels, some manky anchors, and an entertaining half-hour while I crouched in an alcove tied to a small block while JD finagled an anchor somewhere above me. The mountain’s geometry forced us down narrow ledges away from our packs and we had to descend a long way down and scramble the whole way back up, our feet swollen in climbing shoes. It’s easy to get dejected on a long slog back to camp, but the beauty of the place kept our spirits high. We sated our raging thirst with the cold waters of Deep Lake and ambled down the slabs of the valley, glittering in moonlight. We only got four hours sleep before waking to the buzz of mosquitos and a threatening sky but jammed some coffee and oats down the hatch and made the trek back to the car, tired and sore but happy with the memory of the Golden Hour still fresh on our minds and worn into the creases of our hands. 

Inspiring terrain for days

Great exposure and some steep "5.9" jamming

The money pitch: 2.5 inch splitter for days.

The sheer north face of the Spire has fueled my dreams the past few nights. There still be glaciers in these parts!

JD finishes 65 meters of hand jamming

dreamy terrain

alpine mariachi

They don't call them the Wind River mountains for nothing...chilly breezes on the north prow of Lost Temple Spire. Can't wait to get back for more!

Civilized Climbing at Potrero Chico

One more try on the crux of Habanero, 5.12b, in Mexican limestone paradise.

So this makes sense: I flew a thousand miles across the Mexican border to camp in a tent in the rain, and it was the most civilized climbing trip of my life. I must be either homeless, have really bad luck…or I’m a trad climber.

Day 3, I groggily awoke in the soggy tent, slipped on sandals as Andrew kept slumbering, and greeted the morning fog as I strolled leisurely to the kitchen at La Posada campground where a stocked fridge and pantry lay in wait. The night’s rain would take some time to dry from the cliffs, so I enjoyed the homey rituals of making coffee and toast while exchanging pleasantries with other guests. I had a sip and a nibble while reading my book (when’s the last time I read a book?) and when Andrew arrived we cooked up a killer breakfast of tacos with fresh mango and cilantro garnish, then after a stretch grabbed our rope and draws and strolled up to the crag for a lovely afternoon of sport climbing.

As we ambled back to the campground that evening, our arms a bit pumped but still limber and light of foot, it occurred to me that this climbing trip was really unlike any other I’d been on, and not just because I was in Mexico…it was because we were sport climbing! I’m so used to returning to camp sore and weary, it was refreshing to just walk back on a pleasant evening.

Ever since I fell in love with vertical adventure I’ve bent my life around getting out in wild places where we could wake up before dawn, bushwack to some monstrous cliff, spend all day thrutching up it in a perpetual state of moderate terror, then descend in the dark and bumble back through the night to a primitive camp where we’d refuel the tank and crash out for another burn the next day. It was all about the type-2 fun. It was TRAD! It was RAD! And scary, exhausting, and has caused more soul-searching than I may have been looking for some days. Of course, that was usually the point.

It wasn’t until this trip to Potrero Chico that I realized how civilized sport climbing can be. We slept in, enjoyed great meals of fresh local produce, and were always home for supper. We enjoyed high-quality steep limestone every day, and rarely had to worry about a fall.

air time

Of course, we couldn’t resist taking a run up the Time Wave Zero, a unique route of 23 bolted pitches to the top of a 2,200 foot tall fin of limestone. (Much thanks to the people who dragged all those bolts up there.) The route consists of mostly moderate climbing, so linking 60 meter pitches one after another as we climbed higher into the sky left us grinning from ear to ear. We did need to wake up kinda early for that one—dawn in fact, but after enjoying the views from the summit we simul-rapped 23 rappels, chugged the water we’d cached at the base, and strolled back into camp for dinner.

I’ll always be a trad climber at heart—my blessing or curse—but during a hard semester of grad school, I think I’m learning to appreciate the simple pleasure of a sport climbing trip.   

 Farmers market

These gorditas are so good. Fried thick corn tortillas stuffed with spicy shredded pork, what more can you ask for?

Tool, duct tape, and N64 game cartriges. Should I have been surprised?

Community bingo with bottle caps as tokens.

Andrew approaches the Bronco Cave

David Fay rides the Celestial Omnibus 5.12a

And we didn't even need to bring Tecate...turns out they have plenty down there! Until next time, Viva Mexico!

Mental shifts in the dark canyon: how perspectives change when we Tague our Time

(contributed by Rowan Hill, partner in silly things and purveyor of fine cheeses)

Most of our thoughts are not based strictly in reality. I work in wilderness therapy with young adults whose minds are constantly sabotaging them. Through this experience I have become more adept at noticing when my own thoughts start to lift off from the grounded 2+2=4 level, to the wild and fantastical realms where climbing a little harder equates to being more loving and more valuable as a person. I was relatively grounded when I set the long term goal that I would some day climb Tague Yer Time in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. “Some day” meaning in a few years when I was regularly sending 5.12 on gear and had a few more grade V climbs under my belt. It was from that grounded mindscape that things started to twist and evolve into the un-grounded state of expanding possibility, and suddenly Drew Thayer and I had concrete plans to climb the route this year...in two months...I still had never actually sent a 5.12 pitch on gear, and the route had 5 of them, and 5 more that checked in at 5.11...and the gear is really thin, which I also don’t have a ton of experience with. But as I said, this is a mindset not based in reality, a place that creates greatness and kills people who say things like, “dude, dude, check this out” before doing something excessively stupid.

With Drew in Rhode Island and myself in Durango we planned in bits and spurts and began to work out the logistics. We would climb the line in two days, spending the night on the comfy “two boulder bivy.” When the day came my stomach churned with anticipation. We had a lot going for us, we felt strong, we knew that we can climb efficiently when necessary and we were familiar with that section of wall, having climbed both The Flakes and Astrodog together in good style.

We rappelled to the bottom of the canyon, leaving our haul bag with sleeping bags, plenty of water, and even some cinnamon buns waiting for us on the bivy. I took the first lead up a pitch of fun .11 face climbing past 3 bolts and some small gear to the base of a beautiful tips corner. Drew came up to me and jumped right into the meat of it, falling at the crux of the pitch several times and popping two nuts before finding just the right placement to hold him on his next attempt. He battled his way to the top of the pitch and I followed, falling and resting my way up the corner. It was hard, but we were doing it, and the climbing was soooo good. Another short .11 pitch for me and another .12 pitch for Drew, but this time something happened that neither of us had ever done before; we went for the redpoint.

Drew fell at the crux and asked to be lowered. He pulled the rope and tried again...and fell again, and then asked me if I wanted to try. This concept was so new it felt like cheating. We’re allowed to take our time and work the moves? I thought multipitch climbing was all about just getting to the top. I know that Tommy Caldwell works pitches half way up El Cap, but I honestly don’t compare myself to him, ever. I tied into the sharp end and headed up for the tricky looking sequence that had shaken Drew off. I clipped his highest piece and went for it, delicately smearing and palming my way through the thin corner until the crack opened up. The rest of the pitch was fun and secure climbing and soon I was at the anchor. Holy shit, I just sent my first pitch of 5.12 trad on the middle of South Chasm View wall, what a trip. I brought Drew up and using the key palm move he climbed the pitch smoothly without falling. The rest of the climbing up to the bivy was fun and varied. We sat on the big ledge in our underwear and marveled at our success thus far.

The next morning we awoke on the ledge and saw that our friends who were joining us for breakfast were only two rappels away from us. Nick Chambers and Tucker Hancock were going to climb The Flakes that day. We bustled about to get the stove going for some cinnamon buns, which we had already decided will become a staple on future climbing trips. This time it didn’t work out very well, we ended up melting the plastic on the Jetboil stove and were left with warmed dough. Tucker and Nick still appreciated the gesture and moved on with their rappels, leaving us alone again with another full day of hard climbing ahead of us. The first pitch off the ledge was another unlikely looking corner, similar to the two hard pitches the day before. Drew lead it, getting through it with rests in between several tough sections and then braving some runout and very thin face climbing to get to the anchor. We decided that this was the hardest pitch so far. At this point we started regretting that we had forgotten the topo in the car and looked up unsure which of a few potential systems held the most promise. I lead up some face and found a bolt, and kept going, encouraged that this must be the right way, only to come to a corner that didn’t protect and looked hard. I turned around and tried going the other way from the bolt, and sure enough, this system was good and took me to an established anchor, just in time to bring Drew up before it started to rain.

We decided it would be best to continue, so Drew pulled the ladders out of his bag and began to aid the next pitch in rain, hail and thunder. Some small portable speakers helped to keep our spirits high. By the time Drew had finished the pitch it had stopped raining and the rock was relatively dry. I tried to follow it free, but ended up pulling on some gear to get through a damp lichen-encrusted crux. Drew was excited to lead free again now that it had stopped raining, so I gave him the next pitch, which involved some crack switches, nut-tool gardening, and classic runout mank that he braved beautifully up to the base of the crux.

The crux of the whole route is an overhanging seam with a few small fingerlocks and I couldn’t even get off the ledge initially. I decided to aid the short crack and work it on toprope. Thus I embarked on my first bit of aid climbing. I loved it, as a means to an end, which was working what amounted to a boulder problem 1500 feet over the Gunnison River. I worked the moves on toprope and figured out a sequence that seemed possible. Drew got on too and refined the sequence a bit. We switched back and I climbed the pitch without falling on toprope and then so did Drew. We marveled at how things were working out.  We had just had a proper session, with music and everything, working out some awesome moves in the middle of the most intimidating playground in the state.

Suddenly this place infamous for forcing people to find out what they are made of felt friendly; we had found a climb that was just plain fun…but it wasn’t quite over yet. It started to rain again and the sun left us. Grabbing onto loose, wet blocks in the dark, using hands that threatened to go on strike, I remembered that it was still the Black after all. Tired and scared I clawed myself to the rim and onto horizontal terrain. Drew cruised up to me, unfazed by the wet night; the ever-intrepid rascal of adventure gave me a big hug and I realized how grateful I was for our friendship. By now it was 10 pm and we were ravenous. This time, with a cast iron skillet in the car, we could make the rest of our cinnamon buns in the fashion they deserved. We both agreed they were the best cinnamon buns we had ever tasted, and that Tague Yer Time was one of the best, and definitely the hardest, climbs we had ever done...Maybe we can come back and free it at some point in the distant future…

-Rowan Hill a.k.a "the Rogue" is one of my best buddies and steadfast climbing partners. He's always been strong as a Swiss hay-baler, but was more of a pebble wrestler when we met. When I convinced him to climb The Flakes (V 5.10+ X) with me as his first grade V climb ever and we topped out 2000 ft of arduous cracks before dark, I knew he had grit too. I try to keep him around because he always shows me better beta, he usually has quality aged cheese on his person, and he gives the best hugs in the four corners region. For a hairy swissman.

Turns out you need the "frying pan attachment". Result: hole in glove, melted stove, warm dough.

It's nice when friends drop in for breakfast halfway up a 2000 ft wall

Nick and Tucker preparing to drop back into the chasm

Cinnamon rolls done right

The Sanctity of High Places

Dawn over Chasm Lake

The clean smell of wet granite brings me to my senses like nothing else does. (Except maybe coffee…yeah, let’s all say it: thank god for coffee). Lately, it seems I’ve been basing my whole lifestyle around chasing that scent. I dream about it, in my nights, in my foggy mornings, in my information-choked days, during my after-work pain fests on the local trails. I can smell it, on the gear in my closet, in my clothes, on my skin. One whiff and I’m gone, transported to a high perch where the thin air warms lovingly with the sun and cools just as quickly with a gust of wind.

June 2014: The change of seasons and the inevitable forward march of time has brought me to Laramie, Wyoming, a town I drove through once and didn’t think much else about and a place I will call home for the next two years as I explore the nuances of hydro-geophysics in grad school. I’m getting to know a new town and a new region, and among the unexpected benefits of my new situation are good bike trails, violent hailstorms that blossom into gorgeous sunsets, a couple good breweries, and close proximity to Rocky Mountain National Park and the iconic East Face of Longs Peak, the Diamond.

The last few weeks my Friday routine has been: drag myself home from work, throw my mud-spattered field clothes in the corner, sit down for one beautiful minute, throw implements of ascension and whimsy in a duffel bag, pack the cooler, make a mug of tea and turn the Brave Little Toaster south toward Colorado.  The bustle of the workweek fades away with the soft curves of highway 287 on the way to Fort Collins. I set cruise control, put on an album, and follow the sinuous curves of lithified Cretaceous beaches though a lush pastoral landscape. By the time I emerge and join the Interstate-25, I am a clean slate, and I spend the next hour staring west at the beautiful massif of Longs Peak rearing above the Front Range, dreaming. The Diamond beckons across the foothills, and in good light I can make out distinct features from the road: the Dagger… Table Ledge… snow on Broadway, remember to bring crampons…

crossing Chasm Lake toward a chilly bivy at dusk

There is nothing I like more than waking up in the mountains. Sometimes I think the real reason I get involved in all these alpine shenanigans, the reason I own all this fancy-pants gear and put out these massive physical efforts, is just so I can savor those crystal mornings waking up in the frosty heights and sipping coffee while watching the sun greet the clean silent world.

A bivy above Chasm Lake is perhaps the most wonderful place to wake up in the whole world. You wake and start the stove as the sky turns light grey, and just as you pull a steaming mug to your lips the sun rises above the flat eastern horizon and shoots its rays across unfathomable space and our fragile atmosphere and the whole flat state of Kansas straight into the Longs Peak cirque, igniting the Diamond with promethean fire. To rise in the frigid dawn air and behold the sheer wall glowing in the light of a distant star, there is no question that the high places hold something sacred, and we were meant to venture upwards to chase it.

Of course, the uncommonly cold morning we awoke to did not magically thaw, and after ascending snow and ice up the North Chimney we arrived at the base of the wall happily wrapped in our puffy jackets. We had our sights set on Ariana, but we quickly realized we wouldn’t be climbing 5.12 with frozen fingers. Tucker won the rock-paper-scissors and began the first pitch of Pervertical Sanctuary. The climbing was excellent, and luckily I could climb the easier pitches in gloves, but at the crux it was clear the gloves needed to come off. We climbed through the steep finger locks with wooden fingers and endured the screaming barfies as warm blood pumped back in. Ominous cloud streamers were coursing over the bulk of Longs Peak, threatening weather. We took stock of our situation; getting dumped on at this temperature would be pretty grim, and I think we were both looking for an excuse to avoid freezing our hands again, so we rapped off.

It never rained, but on the hike out we ran into an impromptu rescue underway and dropped our packs to join the effort. A hiker had lost her footing on a snowfield and slid down to a harsh impact in the talus; she was getting hypothermic, wearing what little extra clothes other hikers had, and we were able to wrap her in our sleeping bags and give her some comfort while we all waited for the Park Service SAR team to arrive. Five strong guys arrived with neon shirts and radios and organized us to package the woman on a stretcher and haul her up and across a couple hundred meters of soft snow, then carry her to a clearing where a helicopter could land. Pushing the laden stretcher across the snow was probably more physically exhausting than the hardest offwidth struggle, but we had a narrow time window before dusk, so we pushed all-out with our best Chris Sharma redpoint grunts and got the patient to the LZ with just minutes to spare.

It was quite rewarding and awe-inspiring to watch the whimsical contraption fly up into the narrow cirque and nimbly hover down on a small gravel bar, blasting us with the gale force of its rotors as we sheltered behind boulders. The NPS team loaded the patient and the chopper took off into the darkening sky, bearing the grateful woman towards the hospital. We all high-fived and stumbled down the trail more tired than if we’d climbed the peak, but satisfied after a well-rounded day in the mountains. The day's events were a good reminder that success can be defined by much more than a send, and that in our quest to experience the sanctity of high places, helping others through their day of darkness is just as important as our own pursuit of the light.

Morning glory on the Diamond

Whoops. We find our room at the Hilton, and one bed is still occupied by Old Man Winter. And man does he snore.

cold yet buddy?

Tucker gets into the goodness

Why didn't I bring a bigger jacket?

Can't beat the exposure up there