Sandstone Valhalla

The Desert Soutwest is one of the most unique place in the world and maybe my favorite place that I have ventured to yet. It features seemingly endless parallel sided "splitter" cracks. In the coming weeks I will be leaving the Colorado Front Range for an extended trip to this majestic destination. My first stop will be in Colorado National Monument to climb some of its testpiece tower routes such as Medicine Man and Get a Life. Following my 2 days spent in "The Monument" my travels will take me to the world class cragging area Indian Creek, Utah. Here I plan to spend at least a week getting "honed" again on the off-size testpiece splitters littered throughout. I have to be in Moab for 2 days of AMGA Instructor Pool training, then back to the Creek for some more training. Finally, I will end the road trip in Zion, one of the premier big wall venues in the US. There are a few routes here that I have had previous failures on that I hope to rectify this year. Three months of dedicated training should prepare me for some of the free climbing challenges that Zion boasts. Rocktober..........its time to send!!

(The picture above is the ultra-classic Castleton North Face)

Alexanders Chimney

With the new snow falling and freezing temps in Rocky Mountain National Park, many of the classic early season alpine routes are now forming. Last week, Mitch Musci and I went into the Longs Meeker Cirque to climb the ice and mixed classic, Alexanders Chimney. The climbing was characterized by sections of steep snow, thin ice, and lots of rock climbing. We found conditions to be fairly lean as most of the ice was rotten and detached. Although lean, the climbing was good for the most part. We encountered hardly any ice on the crux chockstone pitch, negotiating it with difficult dry-tooling. We rapped from there as there was virtually no ice remaining on the route and it was late in the afternoon. Our late start found us hiking out in the dark for the last half mile below tree line. The ice is in in the high country. Look for conditions to improve but avalanche danger to increase in the coming days/week.