The Organic Climber – Vegetarian running, cycling, swimming, rock climbing and raw foods.

Lumpy ate my rope
Late night under the moon light
Indeed, epic fail

It started out as a lazy day… our rest day. We slept in until about 7 p.m. Typical wake up time earlier in the week was 5-6 a.m., so sleeping until 7 was quite enjoyable but near impossible to sleep any latter. After waking up and milling around the campground a bit we decided to head over to The Stanley in Estes Park for breakfast. One of the girls from the group we helped out at Longs Peak the day before worked there; she ended up hooking us up with some great food at an amazing price. I had an awesome vegan burrito with the most meat-like “sausage” I have tasted since becoming vegetarian – it was delicious.  After filling our bellies with food we made a trip to Starbucks in hopes of seeing an acquaintance from the Dallas area that worked there, we didn’t see him so walked around downtown a bit and then headed back to the campground.

Since this was our rest day I began spending some time reading, writing in my journal, reflecting on the trip and on things going on in my life. It wasn’t too long before we realized that it wasn’t going to be easy to take a rest day. So we brought out the guidebook for Lumpy Ridge and started searching for a climb we could do that was close to the parking lot since it was already around lunchtime at that point. After selecting a climb we hopped in the Subaru (in the land of Subaru’s might I add) and headed to the crag.

The parking lot was surprisingly empty for such a beautiful day, but this never bothers me, it just means we will have more solitude while climbing. As we made our way down the trail we saw that the number one climb on my tick list for that week, Batman and Robin (5.6) an awesome climb that follows cracks, slab and ends by spiraling up a juggy pinnacle was only .10 miles down the trail, so we shifted gears and blazed our way to the climb, but we soon discovered the .10 mile sign we saw merely referred to the distance to the trial head leading up to the climb – despite realizing our mistake we pressed on to what would eventually be our own demise.

After much difficulty, scrambling around and changing directions multiple times we finally found the base of our climb. John the first there and already had the rope flaked out by the time I got there. So I quickly got into my climbing shoes, racked up my gear and was ready to get my climb on. I was quickly slowed down though, for some reason my lead head wasn’t quite there. I timidly made my way up the rock, frantically searching for places to put gear, but wasn’t finding any. Eventually I got up just enough nerve to advance up the rock to a place offering a good gear placement which at this point was about 15 feet off the ground. Getting that first piece in gave me just a bit more security and finished the first pitch of the climb not to long after that.

However, I was still a bit intimidated by the Lumpy Ridge rock. I’m not sure why though, I had climbed with confidence the whole week up until that point, maybe it was the late start that got to me, but whatever it was it never left me the rest of the week. After advancing up the second pitch I came to a thin finger crack that for some reason scared the piss out of me. It’s not that the crack was that hard to climb, after all it was slab, and an easy 5.6 slab at that. But no matter how much I talked myself up I was hesitant! I even practically built an anchor to protect the start of the crack, which quickly came in handy.

During this whole process of trying to advance up the thin crack a storm was rolling in off Longs Peak. I knew we either had to finish the pitch and wait it out at the next belay or lower off. I wanted to finish so kept at it, but was still unable to move more than a few moves off the ledge at the start of the crack. Eventually I decided to lower off and rap down to the base of the route to wait out the storm. Just about the time we hit solid ground the storm had passed. It was all for not. Being frustrated I wanted to just leave and come back the next day for my gear, but with the encouragement of my partner John we pressed on. I tied myself into the rope and self belayed myself back up to the first belay station and brought John back up so we could continue the climb.

This time around I brought John up to the ledge under the crack I was having trouble at so I could receive motivation from John. During our first attempt we were trying to combine pitches to save time so bringing him up to the ledge was actually the way the climb was intended to be done. With John closer by I was able to press through and finish the crack section of the climb, but not without a lot of frustration and feeling like I was going to fall, especially during the run out section above the crack to the next belay station.

At this point I was so thankful our climb was nearing and end, but I began to get nervous as the sun was starting to get low in the sky. Neither one of us had a watch with us so we had no idea what time we started our climb, had we known the time of day we might have come back the next day, but we were already on the rock and had to finish our climb. After John reached the belay we had one pitch left before reaching the summit of Batman Rock. The final pitch was an easy 5.4 climb, but was overhanging in parts so it was a bit of a head-trip.

I wish I could have said the final pitch went smoothly. After placing my first piece of gear I realized I needed to go further left, so I placed my longest sling possible on the piece of gear to eliminate rope drag. Soon after clipping in I was above that piece of gear and about 15 feet to the left of it and was unable to advance. My rope was stuck. So I simply attempted to flake the rope out and pull it out from whatever it was stuck on, but the rope didn’t move. The cool, calm and collect climber would simply down climb at this point and get the rope unstuck, but I was tired and frustrated and far from calm and collect. I sat down on the ledge I was on and let out a yell of frustration that could likely be heard in Estes Park.

But after sitting for a moment and catching my breath I re-gained my calm and patiently worked at the rope until it was unstuck. Once that was out of the way I advanced to the summit without fear, but was greatly worried because at this point the sun was almost down. After belaying John up to the top of the summit we took a brief moment to rejoice, take a couple photos and drink a bit of water while soaking in the setting sun, but time was money so we began our rappel off the pinnacle without much delay. After getting down from the pinnacle we were not safe, in fact we were nowhere near, neither of us had a head lamp on and we still had to make it back to the car.

We received beta from some  other climbers to just follow the cairns to the base, but we never saw these said cairns and we had a bit of a panic moment trying to find a way down. But I had remembered reading something about a decent gully in the guide books and thought I had found it. John and I began our descent and at this point it was almost dark. We eventually got to a point that the gully became too steep to scramble down so I decided to sacrifice a sling, wrap it around a tree and rappel down to the ground from there. This would have been a brilliant idea had the rope been long enough to reach the ground.

As I neared the bottom of the rope I saw another tree in the gully and thought this was just going to be a simple process of having John rappel down and then making another rappel down from the second tree, but I was wrong. The tree was actually a large bush and had a poor root system at that, there was no way we could wrap down by slinging a bush. I could tell at this point John was growing impatient and was worried, after all he was the one watching the sky turn black and the city lights of Estes Park appear right before his eyes. My next solution was to sling a rock horn that I found just a few feet below the tree. I yelled at John that I found our way down, so I stuck a cam between the horn and another rock to secure myself while John rapped down, but after giving the cam a good tug to set it, the rock moved. Another plan foiled.

At this point I knew we only had one option, but didn’t want to take it. It took me another five minutes of trying to think of another solution before finally deciding to rap off using a single line. After getting in a comfortable position in the gully near the tree I had John pull the rope back up to him and tie one end of the rope to the sling at top. Once the rope was secure we had enough rope to reach the ground, with about 20 feet or so to spare. The downside of this of course was my rope was fixed at the top with no way of pulling it down. My new double-dry, bi-color Mammut rope was gone! The bright side is, we still have our lives.

Being back at the base of our climb was an amazing feeling, but we still had to hike back to the car in the dark. Thankfully the moon was pretty bright, although it went in and out of the clouds during our entire hike back. After packing up our gear we slowly made our way back down the trail, but eventually lost the trail and found ourselves bushwhacking for a majority of our trip back. We often times found ourselves back on a trail and found cairns, but would lose them again due to the darkness.

My eyes did become somewhat adjusted to the dark though. I remember at one point making out what I thought was the large field at the base of Lumpy Ridge and a fairly wide trail. At this point we had been zig zagging our way down, partly mandatory due to running into granite bluffs but partly due to just not knowing where the heck we were; so I decided we were just going to head straight down a gully we spotted just to our right that seemed to lead right to the base of this trail. The gully was full of down trees, which deterred John, but being overly confident I spotted the main trail I lead the way and sure enough, we eventually came to the main trail at the base of Lumpy Ridge.

Despite being tired we both kicked it into high gear, hauling full bore across the meadow, eventually losing the trail again, but not caring just continued on towards the parking lot and eventually meet back up with the trail again. We had also been out of water for some time, I had been feeling parched for quite a while at that point and was happy to come across a water fountain along the trail on the way back to the car. I stood there and drank for what seemed like three minutes straight. That drink of water thought gave me the energy boost to pick up the pace even more to get back to the car.

Not too long after our pit stop at the water fountain we arrived back at the parking lot, at this point we were the only car in the lot and it was 11:15 p.m. Our epic had finally come to an end. I think somebody may have even alerted the Rangers of our presence in the Park, just before we were leaving a Ranger rolled through the parking lot and shined his spotlight on our car briefly and then drove away. Not sure what that was all about, but we were happy to be back on solid ground. Needless to saw our plans to meet one of our new friends at the local pub in town didn’t happen. I’m sure we could have still stopped by, but both of us were far too tired to say up a moment longer.

I find it strange how the mind can play such a huge factor in one’s climbing ability. The following day John and I meet a couple friends of mine from Twitter for some climbing, but due to various circumstances it ended up just being a nice hike. I had actually fully geared up for a very aesthetic looking route with called Oregon Pipes, and it looked just like a series of pipes running up the rock, but my mind wasn’t in it, so we packed up and headed back into town. The prideful side of me hates to admit that, but I’m starting to realize that this is just part of climbing, some days your on, some days your not.

For those of you longing for another food related post I won’t let you down. My next post will be about anti-inflammatory foods. What to eat, and why we should eat them

Climbing, Trip Reports by OrganicClimber
batman and robin, batman pinnacle, Climbing, Colorado, epic, fail, gear, lumpy ridge, RMNP, rock climbing, Rocky Mountain National Park, trad, trip report
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As you might have guessed, I am saving our “epic” experience for last. Granted, it’s nowhere near the best part of our trip, epics just make better stories, so I will begin the tale of our journey up Longs Peak and save the best for last.

Our day actually got started very late. Because of the lack of camping available in the Boulder area, we were stuck fending for ourselves again the night before we started Longs Peak, but lucky for us we discovered Boulder had an International Youth Hostel (thanks to our wonderful waitress at the Italian joint on Pearl Street) that we ended up staying in. Though it was better than driving 30 miles South to Wheat Ridge for a Motel 6, we were not able to check out until 7:30 a.m. My goal was to be at the Ranger’s Station at 8 a.m., right when they opened.

So, after waiting around on for over an hour eating breakfast on the porch we were finally able to check out just before 7:30 a.m. However there were still things to do before we hit the trail, and we still had nearly an hour drive ahead of us to Rocky Mountain National Park. After gassing up the car, getting ice for the cooler and making a “quick” stop at Whole Foods for some water we were off, but not without me stopping at the smoothie-juice bar first! It honestly wasn’t a planned stop, but it worked out well for me even though I had already eaten a bowl of fruit that morning I couldn’t resist a fresh carrot based juice.

We finally arrived at the Ranger’s Station at around 9:15 a.m. The parking lot was totally full and cars were lined up parked about a quarter of the way down the hill to the entrance of the trailhead.  By the time we checked in and were given our backcountry permits it was nearly 10 a.m. We were currently parked in a no-parking area close to the station. We did this to avoid hiking down the hill to pack our bags and then hauling them back up again.

So we “quickly” packed our bags at the trailhead, which resulted in a few items left behind (but we still made due without them), and were finally geared up and ready to go close to 11 p.m. My goal had been to be on the trail at 10 a.m. but packing up our gear took way more time than it should have. However, I wasn’t worried, we only had 6 miles to hike until we got to the Boulder Field where we would camp for the next two nights.

After parking the car down the hill, we finally hit the trail around 11:30 a.m. Despite being almost lunch we pressed through the entire six-mile hike without stopping for lunch. There were several stops along the way though to catch our breath and to drink water, but even with such a slow pace we made it to the Boulder Field in less than six hours, which gave us plenty of time to set up camp and cook food before nightfall.

John was more gassed than I was after the hike up and was the first to go to bed. My plan was to stay awake until it got dark so I could see the stars, but ended up joining John in the tent shortly after dinner out of boredom of waiting for the stars to make their grand appearance. I regretted that decision latter though after I found out from other campers there was a “pink” moon and the next night had too much cloud cover to see any stars.

The next morning I was the first one awake (as was the case the entire trip aside from the day we left) and could hear people outside the tent looking for a water source in the boulder field, which happened to be right outside my tent. I was thankful for the early wake up call though so we could get an early start on the North Face Cables Route. I wanted to be up there as early as possible because another group in the Boulder Field was planning on going up the same route.

So after breakfast we began our ascent towards the North Face, scrambling over boulders and making our own path to the base of the climb. There was actually a lot of snow on sections of the North Face and I became increasingly worried, as we got closer to the climb. It appeared there was snow on our route. A sinking feeling hit my gut as I thought we were not going to be able to summit Longs that day.

But, as we got closer we could hear other climbers bellowing out commands like “on belay”, so we knew somebody was on the route, but we were not able to see them yet. Not too long after that, I was able to make out what looked like a party of three up on a ledge, but it was slightly left of where I thought the route was, so I first thought maybe I was just off and they were on the correct route.

Once we were almost at the base of the climb we discovered the climbers we heard was actually the group of four from the boulder field, and they were rappelling down off the route. One of the girls in the group said there was too much snow on the route for them to continue, but I had made it that far and wasn’t convinced she was right. She wasn’t even sure they were on the actual Cables Route, and neither was I, since I didn’t see any of the old eye bolts in the rock.

The last person down was their guide. Once he made his descent I was able to find out that they were actually just left of the route as I had originally thought and that he thought we could easily make it across the snow patch and onto the route. It seemed the guide just didn’t want to lead a large group across a patch of snow, adding an extra pitch to the route.

The guide was confident we could summit within a couple of hours, so we began our climb up the North Face of Longs! The first pitch we did was not a part of the actual route, that was covered in snow, so I lead the first section, placing only two pieces of gear climbing in my hiking boots and arrived at a ledge parallel to the snow patch leading back to the actual Cables Route.

After bringing up my partner, we swapped belays, and I was back on the sharp end making the traverse across the snow, sans crampons. Lucky for us the snow was soft and there was already some divots in the snow where somebody else had crossed before us. I was able to use those as a guide and safely make it across the 15-foot snow traverse.

About this time a guy free soloing the route came up to our belay ledge. I let him pass us as John readied himself to move over to the next belay. The climbing from here on out was fairly easy, aside from a few areas of the rock that had water running down it. I wondered how our free soloing friend confidently made it up the rock. I’m sure he had his doubts! The climb was only rated 5.4, but if compared to our climb in the Flatirons that was a 5.5 I would give the route a 5.6 rating, even though we were able to climb it in our hiking boots.

The only problem we encountered on the way up was having to add an extra pitch to the climb because I was not able to spot the next eye bolt, but was it turned out it was about two moves up from the belay I had made, so it was pointless for us to break up the climb into an extra pitch. After finishing the last pitch I belayed John up to the ledge using one of the large eye bolts as my anchor. At this point we were not yet finished, we still had a lot of third-fourth class scrambling to do to get to the top. But as it turned out we had not actually finished the climb! As we scrambled our way up the rock we passed two more eyebolts, but I felt they were unnecessary to be a part of the climb, so we continued on with confidence.

Not too long after leaving our belay ledge we made it to the summit! Our path up the peak actually brought us out right in front of the summit block, in which I immediately jumped on and let out a loud battle cry! Okay, just kidding, there was no battle cry, but I did victoriously climb on top of the summit block!

Not three minutes latter another group of climbers came up from behind, they had just finished D7 on The Diamond. We had actually seen them on their climb from Chasm View. I was impressed with the speed they had made, unless of course we had seen a different group of climbers.  There was also a storm rolling in at this point so we decided to head down after having a quick bite to eat, signing the summit log and snapping a few photos.  The storm ended up passing us though and we got nothing but a few snow flurries out of it.

Our descent down Longs Peak was made via the Keyhole Route because half our route was covered in snow our 60m rope was not going to get us to the ground from the last eye bolt. The trip back was long and arduous, but I consider the journey down that direction providential. The reason being, we encountered a group from the YMCA of The Rockies that had an injured person in their party. She had slipped and twisted her ankle and cracked her head open on a rock. At the time it seemed like she was going to be okay, but latter her condition worsened.

After moving on down the trail we ran across some others in their group at the Keyhole and talked to them a while before heading back down to camp in the Boulder Fields. Not too long after we arrived back at our campsite we ran into the same group from the Keyhole and their friends condition had taken a dive, she likely had a concussion and could no longer walk. She was being carried down the treacherous boulder field piggy back style by her fiancée.

We decided to let her and her friend along with her fiancée stay at our tent while her friends went to alert the Rangers. We had thought we would only have to wait a few hours for help to arrive, but after other campers in the Boulder Field caught wind of what was going on they let us know help would not even arrive until the morning. So we decided to let the two girls stay in our tent for the night and use our gear.

At that time John, her fiancée and I had no idea what we were going to do for sleep that night, but it was really cool to see how the campground came together and helped out. Former EMT’s came by and checked out our new friend and determined she was concussion free and was going to be able to sleep for the night, which was a real blessing that nobody was going to have to wake her up every hour to make sure she was okay.

Others pitched in by re-arranging their sleeping arrangements, some people even had extra sleeping bags they lent us so we would be comfortable at night, granted the bag I had was a summer bag and it was pretty cold – even with the emergency blanket I was given. John only had a down jacket, he was perhaps the coldest that night. Our new friend JR probably slept really well considering he slept in about two hours past everybody else.

After milling around camp a bit that morning, cooking breakfast for our new friends and ourselves we decided to pack up and head back down the trail. We figured at this point it wouldn’t be long before the Rangers showed up, and sure enough they were. We ran into a trail crew about a mile down from the Boulder Field and they let us know that the Rangers were already on it. We also ran into a Ranger on horse back near the trailhead that was on her way to bring her down the mountain.

Our six-mile descent time was about three hours. We made it down in half the time it took us to get up. Going down is always my favorite part, aside from my big toe rubbing wrong in my shoe. I remember thinking a lot of the trip that I don’t know if I would ever want to do it again, but on the way down I was already thinking about my next fourteener and was dreaming of climbing The Diamond. Who knows, maybe that will be my next trip to Colorado.

Climbing, Trip Reports by OrganicClimber
alpine, boulder field, Cables Route, camping, Chasm View, Colorado, Estes Park, hiking, keyhole, Longs Peak, RMNP, rock climbing, Rocky Mountain National Park, The Diamond
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