Climbing in the Black Hills with the Woods and Coopers

The featured photo shows Bob Wood climbing in the Chopping Block area of the Rushmore Needles. Typical of the beautiful scenery up there ...

The kids really enjoyed the opportunity to get together - unlike last trip when Julia was stuck w/ us for most of the time.

Night time entertainment was provided by Bob and Garett and their instruments.

More photos here! (Added to the end of the Aug Black Hills Climbing Trip)

Wyoming's Bighorn Range - Climbing & Exploring

If I felt my job was secure until retirement, I'd want to move here. Even if I didn't .. Mia vetoed any such ideas quickly though. She needed face to face contact for her work. I work remote and need only a decent internet connection. Such is life. Maybe later...

The Bighorn Mountains are the most easterly mountain range in Wyoming. The Winds are to the West and the Tetons West of that. The Bighorns are more sedate than either but the exploration potential is huge - especially from the pure rock climbing perspective. Dolomite/ Limestone is everywhere and not just the little cliffs like Wild Iris or Sinks. It would be expensive to live here for a climber. Think of the cost of bolts for new routes ... I saw the alpine rock only from a distance - more jaw dropping terrain. And the Winds a few hours West. Damn! As I said .. maybe later.

Climbing was good in Tensleep Canyon. We checked Raven Wall and vicinity and French Cattle Ranch. Above Raven Wall is an "Indian" ice cave. Even in hot weather, you need a pullover to climb nearby. It blows cold! The 5.10s on Raven Wall + a number of new nearby routes made for a great day. French Cattle Ranch was a hike but well worth it. Good quality and long routes.

On a rest day, we drove up to Lower Medicine Lodge Lake via Hyattville. Beautiful country but it took about 2 hours on 4x4 roads. Glad it was Mia's idea. The hike around the lake was calming .. after hitting my head on the roof for 2 hours. This convinced me I need an on board compressor so I can air down the tires and air them back up after the goods. I wish I had a fishing pole and some time here but we were out of food and everyone was getting grumpy.

We drove North to Shell Canyon semi Baja style (i.e. fast) and it still took an hour to get to a paved road. (Shell Canyon could see a lot of route development on granite. Just frigging heartbreakin'. No one around to climb the stuff.) We found a nice restaurant in Shell and ate. We were lucky. It seemed to be one of two places in town and it was reservation only. They took pity on us since we were early. Wagon Wheel restaurant - good place - reserve a place on the deck if you have a chance.

On the way home, we found the "perfect" camping place. This will be the subject of a later post.

Pics are here. Enjoy!

Black Hills - Climbing, and the Harley Culture

We picked a loud time to climb in the Black Hills. It was the week before the Sturgis Harley motorcycle ralley. We saw thousands of bikes every day. The campground was filled with them and their fanatic culture - awake at dawn, cleaning their bikes before even taking their morning pee. Crazy like Islam might be to a Christian fundamentalist .. They were all nice folks though!

The good part was that all the climbers were elsewhere, the climbers familar with the ralley anyway. We had the climbing areas to ourselves. We would have been climbing all day except for the daily afternoon rain and the draw of good ice cream in Custer.

Bill Daniels and his daughter, Sara, joined us for a day so we could get a couple of decent climbing shots. Above is Bill on Hrum Hroom, a great 5.7 in Custer State Park (official site, map). Many climbs in the park are quite run-out so no sniffing at 5.7s here. We also climbed in the Rushmore Needles. See a nice climbing shot of Julia here.

At some point, we said enough and left for Tensleep Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Stay tuned.

Black Hills pics, including motorcycles, here!

Exploring the SE San Juan Range

We made our first foray into the Southeastern San Juan range last weekend. This area is much less traveled than the "normal" San Juans, i.e. Silverton, Lake City, Durango, Ouray, Telluride etc. It does not have the jaw dropping rugged mountain views but it does have jaw dropping pastoral mountain views and remoteness.

Starting at Antonito, we drove west thru the beautiful Conejos River Valley. Lot's of crags on the North side of the road. After Horca, we headed generally NE toward Platoro Reservoir. Along the Lake Fork of the Conejos, I had trouble staying on the road while driving. I wasn't even drinking. There was SO MUCH ROCK of different types. Even if only a fraction of it were of climbable quality, it could be a destination area. I didn't see many cracks which means it would have to be developed (bolted). Unfortunately climbers in this region are rare. More on this another time since I didn't have time to stop and hike up.

We made a nice camp at Lily Pond Lake (11,900') near Stunner Pass. While getting firewood, I let Julia find her way back to camp. While great practice, I'm very glad it was practice. :-)

We drove up to Kerr Lake the next day. We hiked around the lake while teasing the fish. No go there. We did attract two DOW officers though. There was another group close by. The officers split up and one came towards each group. I couldn't see a uniform until the last 50 feet when he opened his vest. I did NOT like this approach and was worried about our family's safety until this point. I was getting into defense postion until at last I saw his uniform. He was a nice guy, of course, after we talked. Bad way to approach though. I could see being a DOW officer ... getting out in the forest on a daily basis.

We headed towards the Stunner mining camp, past the Crater Lake trailhead and then to the infamous Summitville - where the environment mining disaster happened. The entire area is worth much more exploring. We'll be back. This was only the first foray.

I mapped the general route here.
All the pics are here.

Between Saguache and Ohio Pass

We drove 114 between Saguache and Gunnison (map). Beautiful country. Reminds me of Wyoming's South Pass region, south of Lander. By the time we reached North Pass (topo), I realized there was much to explore in this little traveled region. Yeah, 114 was paved but we had passed only a few vehicles since Saguache. Only need more time ...

Gunnison was bustling with activity. At a population of 5000, it was 10 times as populated as Saguache and Saguache has 8 times as many people as Crestone. It was fun. We stopped in a sports store to pick up fishing licenses and then to the climbing/ bike shop for a guide to Taylor Canyon. I hadn't climbed in Taylor Canyon for 27 years. Mia hadn't ever. I DID remember that Taylor was a funky place ..

We found a great place to camp at the North Bank campground. The site was next to the Taylor River and next to another site with 2 kids. Perfect for everyone. The in place for the kids to play turned out to be the bed in the truck. That made them easy to keep track of. Also we could walk to the crags.

The old guide we picked up left much to the imagination (c'mon Fred, where's that new Sharp End guide?). Climbing with Julia makes it a bit more of a challenge to pick out routes that we can get down from - ie. one pitch routes. We started w/ Tony's Tango (Mia leading), a really nice 5.6. I led Left Hand, a 5.8+. Both were exellent routes. I remembed why Taylor's Canyon is funky though .. realistic ratings can be obtained by adding a full grade to the grade in High Country Stone guide. Julia climbed and we toproped a few more routes - then it was HOT !!

So we headed up to Crested Butte for ice cream .. and did a driveby of the cliffs along Cement Creek when Julia fell asleep on the way. CB is fun. We had Pizza and beer too - after the ice cream. A scenic drive via Lake Irwin and Ohio Pass (pic) took us back to camp.

Sunday was to be hot also. Mia was still cooked so we drove to a small climbing area near Powderhorn hoping to find some shade. We did one climb in the sun and Mia called it quits. Even at 9000 feet, it was still too hot. The rock at Powderhorn looked like crap but was actually pretty decent. I'd come back if in the area.

Driving back via Powderhorn (map), Cebolla Creek, Cochetopa Pass was worth the detour. We also saw lot's of potential new crags ... just need more time.

Trip pics here !!

Climbing at El Rito, New Mexico

We climbed here 3 years ago. We forgot how much fun El Rito (Mountain Project, map) was. I bet we'll back within 3 weeks. El Rito is similar to Maple Canyon, Utah in that the rock is cobbled. It's different because one usually pulls on the pockets between the cobbles. In Maple Canyon, one pulls on the cobbles.

Beside great climbing, it was also Mia's birthday on Saturday. We poked around in El Rito, for a restaurant, and found Walt's Place. Walt's was a beautiful, rustic place but lacked a liquor license. Luckily, I could pick up a bottle of wine close by. We had pork ribs all around. Julia loves ribs. We'll be back!

I don't know if the climbing suited us or if the grading was soft but we both pulled off a 5.11a on Father's Day. We really hadn't been climbing that much lately.

We took off a bit early to swim at Abiquiu Reservoir and drive thru Chama on the way home. What a drive! Lot's of eye candy! Trip pics here!

The land where nuns drive pickup trucks

I did a double take on a large white object sitting on the driver's head. A bit more focus and I figured it out. It was a nun wearing a habit driving an old beater pickup truck. This was Crestone, Colorado (map, sangres.com).

We're breaking away from Boulder for awhile. Our Crestone renter was taking a vacation and we "needed" to fill in. Luckily we have a fast internet connection so we can work. Julia is going to the Rahula Community Preschool.

It will be interesting living in rural Colorado. Crestone fills a nice little pocket of the San Luis Valley and the eye candy in the valley is awesome! It's a lot quieter than the Colorado front range but will it be too quiet? So far not. Climbing, hiking and biking is working fine and oh yes .. working. One thing is the same as Boulder. Crestone has a B20 pump (20% biodiesel). More to come ...

Oh yeah, Julia's pushing the 5.7 climbs at Penitente Canyon - especially if we pull her just a little. :-)

Climbing and Camping at Sinks Canyon, Wyoming

We found a great camp in Sinks Canyon State Park with the Popo Agie (pronounced "po PO' zha") River backing the camp site. The river was a bit loud with the spring runoff. We didn't complain too much though because we could see this view from the site.

Some kids adopted Julia the next morning or was it the other way around? This really made the trip for Julia. Especially on Sunday, when we took all the kids climbing ...

Climbing was good. Cool on Saturday, warm to hot on Sunday. A little heat was nice after the cool temps at home in Colorado. From the cliffs, we could see the Wind River Range to the West. Can't beat that! Click on the picture above will display a better view of the Winds to Julia's left.

More photos here !

Is this the right canyon?

We had a writeup for the canyon, Good Day Jim, on Ticaboo Mesa. It was from a friend. There was a keeper pothole early on. We never saw it and we were well into the goods. We read the description again, after warming up after yet another swim. We decided the keeper must have been filled up w/ sand since our friends did it. Not too uncommon. We made the description fit our canyon - not that it had to, as long as we had long enough ropes.

The canyon stayed in our face. Lot's of water. Everyone was shivering at some point. Many narrow sections. At one point, it had to back off a few times to figure out where to put my chest. I finally ended up crawling on the ground. Chris went high and Bob came across at an an intermediate position. The girls asked: What is the problem, guys? I say: Get some chest! ;-)

It was one of the best canyons we've done on our family canyon trips. Some good laughs too, like when Bob spotted Chris down into a pool. As Chris got close to the water, Bob launched him into the deep section!

Garett, Emma & Julia had a great time too. Roselle took care of the kids. Roselle's daughter, little Sara had a great time too. Here's a pic of little Sara & Julia.

Back at camp, we consulted the Hard Day Harvey canyon description and map. It was pretty obvious, I'd switched the GPS waypoints of the two canyons.

If you're interested, here's the correct coords. Good Day Jim and Bad Day Harvey.

The view from camp was phenomenal. After a few hours solving the worlds problems, we hit the sack. We had another canyon tomorrow along with the drive home.

The main fork of Maidenwater canyon (topo, picture) was a good canyon, on Sunday, even if Hard Day Harvey was a tough act to follow. The rattle snake provided some good entertainment in Maidenwater.

The full set of pics for the Haaland/ Wood / Mestdagh 2007 spring family canyoneering trip are HERE !!

A week in Western Deserts

The goal was a climbing trip to Joshua Tree National Park, California. I hadn't been to JT since spring 1986 when Chris Haaland, Steve Vanderburgh, Doug Frost and I found some $60 RT tickets to San Diego. Our rental car was not available so they gave us a Lincoln. What a trip that was!

This trip started out great. We camped at the Fremont Indian State Park, west of Richfield, UT. We woke up and found they were just about to have an Easter egg hunt. Perfect timing for Julia.

Later, we drove thru the Mojave National Preserve, in (drumroll...) the Mojave desert, California. The restored train depot/ museum at Kelso (sat map) was really cool. I'd like to spend more time poking around the old mining towns.

We had 4 beautiful days of climbing and enjoying Joshua Tree before the sandstorm hit. Even then we squeezed in two climbs the day it started snowing. Well, the 2nd climb wasn't totally snow free .. It was really strange. One minute the sky was blue, the next minute it was cloudy, then it was tan from the sand. It really wasn't even windy until some time later. Then it started snowing. Back at camp, we decided to pack it in and head to the Las Vegas area.

A day climbing at Red Rocks NCA (official cheesy BLM site, Supertopo climbing site) on Friday was a good way to break up the drive on the way back. We had to stop at the Bonnie Springs Ranch (sat map, pic) to see the old mining town and petting zoo. This isn't an ordinary petting zoo. We were suprised to see a Canadian Lynx and 2 Wolfs. They looked too healthy to pet though.

A beautiful primitive camp and a hike in Arches National Park finished off the trip.

Trip pictures here.

Cheesebox Canyon - BoyZrUs Canyoneering Trip

The West Fork of Cheesebox wasn't a gruntfest of slotness (Hmm, that doesn't sound so great. Oh well.) like some of our recent trips but it was a winner in variety and beauty. The water was cold though and we used many tricks to stay out of it. We still got wet. Real wet. Don't let the pics fool you you. Both Bob Wood & Charlie King wore wetsuits under their clothes and were happy about it. Luckily there was only one real swimming section. Of course, when Charlie or Bob went first, they'd say - Only chest deep, no problem. This translates to nose deep for me!

There's a lot to exploring to do around here. Without trying we bumped into an Anasazi ruin and Charlie found a nice arrowhead point.

After the canyon, we continued driving on Cheesebox Road. It became much rougher and turned into 4WD before we hit a decent dirt road. Another half hour of wondering where we were driving and we found a good camp. Here's a great view from close to camp. Wooden Shoe Canyon is in the distance. There's roads all over the place around here and they ALL go to cool places that need exploring. It's a definite problem! Since I strained my foot in one of the pools and Charlie hurt his knee, we decided to explore by vehicle. Gorgeous country ... Saw turkeys too.

Here's part of the route we took. Red is road. Blue is our canyoneering route. At our most northern point, the snow got too deep so we backtracked for 1/2 hour until we could travel East to Blanding (not marked).

All the trip pics are here!

A Peek at Spring

I know we'll have some hard weather before it smoothes out for summer but right now it's spring. This last weekend we climbed at Shelf Road. Climbing was a bit cool to rainy on Saturday (see Julia climbing at right) but great on Sunday. When it started raining, we checked out the Marsh [Felch] dinosaur quarry .. which every climber drives by on the way in. Julia found a dinosaur tooth, Mia found a Stegasaurus fin plate and I found some dino skin. (Not really but that's what we told Julia.) Julia was really excited because she wants to be a palentologist and can even say it correctly. :-)

Sunday, I was feeling my oats and tried climbing Purple Toe Nails, 5.11b/c. Unfortunately, my oats bag spilled on the way up. We did some great routes though especially after I decided to stick with 5.10 .. for now.

Spring was popping up at home too as evidenced by the daffodils sprouting and hammock testing.

Highlights of the El Potrero Chico climbing trip

We climbed 6 of 9 days. This included 2 travel days + one rest day. We worked out a sitter for Julia on 3 of those days so we could do some longer routes. We were constrained a bit, of course. We couldn't do any bivies. Also we didn't want to stick the rope on rappel and get back too late to pick up Julia.

Most exciting climb: Aguja Cela Rey. Two pitches of 5.10. It is described as classic but we forgot that "classic" is really a code word for run out. The 2nd pitch was really EXPOSED. Aguja Cela Rey climbs the thinner spire on right (in picture). Here's a pic of Mia on top.


Best of week: Pancho Villa Rides Again (topo on photo). This was 5 pitches of 5.10. The last time we did a climb this hard was on the Diamond (Mountain Project site) and before my accident. We were pretty proud at the end of the day. To the left, is Mia finishing off the 1st pitch.

The best single pitch climb was Selam in Virgin Canyon. Although it was "only" rated 5.10a, I'd say this was a bit of a sandbag. The crux for me was clipping the bolt at the crux and avoiding the 25' fall. Since my foot popped at the crux, I almost took the dive. This was a real pitch. A 140 foot pitch. A beautiful route but I'm bring a stiff draw for the crux clip next time.

Another high point was the excellent food. We ate mostly at the Posado but Checo's was just as good. One thing I don't understand is why Mexican food in the US has cheese. Ain't no cheese in Mexico .. except for quesadillas.

Our rest day seemed to have some magic going on. There was a breeze ruffling the trees. The air seemed vibrant. I don't know what was going on but we liked it. I spent a good part of the day reading in a hammock. Some of that time Julia was on top of me talking & playing. I loved it.

We met a lot of good people. It was hard not to. The climbers walk the same road, eat in the same places and the camps are so close. Julia seemed to know everyone. At least she talked to everyone. One of her conversations somehow leaned to how we (Mia & I) met. Of course, Julia knew it all - Papa came to Germany on a climbing trip and met Mama at a party. Mama said to Papa: You are mine! What a laugh ...

This was a fantastic trip! We'll be back - hopefully next year.

The El Potrero Chico ... custom car show ?

As we walked towards the canyon, we were passed by a line of VW beetles. We looked at each other and shrugged. We were soon to find out ... about the El Potrero Custom Car Show. Actually, we heard it before we saw it. The music ranged from an elongated boooom to mariachi. Almost every car had it's stereo blasting. Maybe it was a sound contest instead of a car show? There were some pretty wild customizations for a sound contest though, as evidenced by this and this.

Eventually, we made it to mini super wall and did a few easier 1 pitch routes to get a feel for the area. The melange of music didn't take long to drive us back out of the park. It was beer o'clock anyway.

2007 will be a good year ..

Coming up quick - a climbing trip to El Potrero Chico (wikipedia) in Nuevo León (wikipedia), Mexico. We've been climbing indoors a few days a week for the last 1-1/2 months. Hopefully it'll be enough practice to get our bones off the ground. It's going to be nice to escape the cold for a week. As I'm writing this, it's 11° F here at home.

Last year we burned 3 out of 4 weeks vacation on an east coast trip - part family & family reunion, part climbing & sight seeing + lots of driving. While interesting and fun at times, we won't do it again - unless we're retired. One place I would revisit is the Gunks (blog post).

So we have lots of road trips planned this year. From the weekend warrior version to as many as 3 week long vacations. Also it looks like our Crestone (our rental site) renter may be gone a bit this summer. This will leave us a some time down there before he comes back. I'm hoping .. lot's of potential first ascents in the Sangres .. I think. Looks good from a distance anyway.

Stay tuned ...