Well if you have never heard of this crag then you really should. We were drawn to it because of where we ended up camping last night. We look in the Colorado climbing guide and found some crags in the Rockies, after we were tipped off by a local guide about ‘Lumpy Ridge’. The rock is amazing granite, and I mean amazing, i thought it was as good as anything for free climbing that you’d find in Yosemite.
We had two minor epics the first was turning up to find notices that parts of the crag were banded, but no notice to tell you which parts. So we had to drive to the park office, where a warden who was about as on the ball as the idiot who charged me twice for the hire car, and managed to freeze my bank card (Twat). It transpired that the piece of paper with the routes on we can’t climb was posted at the car park, only about 50ft away from the car and any notice boards. Which meant we wasted 40 minutes on an unnecessary goose chase.
Our first route was meant to start at 5.8, a particularly nasty Off-width section nearly sent me packing, but somehow i stayed on. Although I ended up really running it out, as I reminded myself of the fact that a hand crack forever means that you never have enough cam three’s! Anyway after Llion’s pitch I had to try and man up into another Off width chimney, I got myself so ticht in I placed a cam, but for the life off me could get a hand up to it with the rope in to clip it. We engaged reverse thruster and tried an easier route left a nice five pitch 5.9, with lots of stuff a little easier.
Llion lead the crux, as very hard tenuous, but very well protected crack up the head wall. A grand effort. At the top we sat exhausted, as our easier day out had seen climb another 7 pitches at 5.7 to 5.9, roughly VS to E1. What a day, although I am glad we taped up.
I have been suffering a bit with dehydration, and it wasn’t until I asked a local our altitude that we realised we were in fact at about 2-3000 metres above sea level. Llion had thought it was a little tiring going up hill out of the car park!
God knows where we will climb tomorrow, hopefully somewhere without a massive walk in as my legs are tired after the last two days, and my arms and shoulders hurt, and….
Again some pictures of the days.
