5 Min Plan

So I decided on a whim to waste the last day (Friday) of cold, allegedly dry weather before the weekend storm came, to go have a full on Media day on the 5 Year Plan, a 13+ trad route I did recently up on Dinosaur mountain in the flatirons. It turned out to be a great decision though, because we ended up getting a lot done. Brian got some rad footage of the climb, of me actually linking sections (so it won’t looked as posed), and Andy Mann absolutely killed it in the photo department, using the natural light first, then and making use of a strobe on a pole hanging from his harness in a way I’ve never seen before. Even though I had already done the climb, I still had fun climbing on it again in pieces for the camera since, it’s so much fun.

This weekend I hunkered down in boulder and waited out the rain. It wasn’t so bad though. I was badly in need of a rest from the rocks. Now the storm has passed and there was a light dusting of snow on the trees on the way up to Estes park today. A reconasince on The Tick was my mission today. After some hesitation about where the actual cliff and approach was, we located the climb and scrambled up the quarter mile scree slope to the base. The line didn’t seem all that obvious to me, but I decided to throw a rope down and scout it out on tr anyway. There was no actual bolted anchor so I had to place a couple bomber cams for an anchor which was a first for me. I threw in a couple directionals on the way down and gave it a go on top rope. It was bitterly cold with a wind chill, even in the evening sun, but I scrambled up the beginning part of the route, finding the slightly chalked corner extremely chossy. I tried the cryptic crux section several times, but couldn’t find any way to do the move over the short roof, and climbed up the rest of the route which was kind of dirty and nondescript to clean my anchor. Not really so psyched to go back on it again, mainly because I got so shut down on the crux section, but also cuz I just I wasn’t so inspired by the route.

So what else is there in this world besides climbing? Well, apparently a lot! But it’s way too overwhelming to think about right now, so tomorrow we go out to the infamous, but still somehow secret, front range highball test-piece Fish Out of Water, established by Kevin Jorgeson. Hopefully I don’t break my legs..

I will end with these random pictures of a herd… no wait, a gang? A gagle? We can call them a herd for now. The buck of the herd has a crazy mateing call, sounds like an “outer space whale” (not my assesment, but pretty accurate). It’s called bugling, when they make the noise.