Vedauwoo Trip Number Two & Trek Home

We stopped at the 1.4 billion year old granite climbing playground of Vedauwoo as part of our trek back to Oakland after finishing up a month at the Denver Veterans Hospital podiatry program. Kimber flew back out from Oakland to spend the last week with me there, see the area, spend time with friends and drive home with me. We love Colorado! Much of the week was spent with Brody and Kiley Hatch who also joined us for out Vedauwoo pit stop, along with Salomon the dog.

We setup up camp and hiked from our campsite to do some climbing. Our objective was the 5.8 Satterfield's Crack. The climb has been recommended from friends who had done it. I took the lead with Kiley, Kimber and Salomon on cheer squad and Brody on the belay. I was able to do the entire climb in one pitch and could have used a few more larger cams but made do.

The first section was a bit awkward with two side by side cracks and a smooth face in a corner. I sewed it up tight to reduce anxiety of my cheer squad and to eliminate the chance of decking if I were to take a fall.

The second section was a widening crack that was encroaching on the off width status near the top. I was looking for a wider piece to place but had used them to stitch up the lower section. I kept my cool and ran it out a bit with no problems.

The final section included a smooth chimney that narrowed at the top and popped out onto a huge chock stone to belay from. This required some chicken winging and using my leg as a Big Bro cam to top out.

Brody followed me up showing his enjoyment with the occasional grunt and curse word. He topped out with a smile.

We spent the night around the campfire which we hadn't done in way to long. There is something about a campfire that just makes life awesome.

Emergency fireside wedge resection of an ingrown. They hurt so much worse in climbing shoes!

Saturday morning we set out to climb Oslund's Delight but found people just starting the route so ended up on Silver Surfer, a single pitch 5.9 crack. Our approach to the climb was about the least direct route possible. We just considered our inefficiency in getting to the climb as part of the learning process that occurs at any new area. Silver Surfer has two sections, the first an awkward (word used often in Vedauwoo)  chimney up to a chock-stone and into a diagonal hand crack. I took the lead with my usual cheering squad and made it look really hard so that Kimber would think that I was cooler. We set up a top rope and Brody had a lap. It was a great climb.

We had a quick lunch and departed ways. The 17hr journey back to Oakland was broken up by a birthday dinner for me in Salt Lake City with my parents and Amie and Matt and their family. It was a good stop and great to see them again. We ended up sleeping in the car somewhere past Elko Nevada. Coming back into the Bay Area was a breath of fresh air, literally the air quality is so fresh and cool! Nice to be home.

Climbing Vedauwoo and Greyrock

Vedauwoo Wyoming is about an hour north or Fort Collins Colorado.  I had the opportunity to go up there climbing with my good friends Brody and Kiley. Spending the month here in Denver has been great because it has all of this new stuff to check out and play on. When I pulled out of Oakland a few weeks ago to head over Kimber and I were in a hurry and I ended up leaving my entire climbing bag in our living room!!! Luckily I had thrown Kimbers harness and my climbing helmet in a different bag but I ended up having to spend the weekend climbing in some of Brody's old shoes that had a hole in the toe and in Kimbers women's size small harness. I made it work.

We started the day off with a 5.7 mountainproject "classic" off-width rout called "Mother 1". It was a deep groove single pitch rout. None of us had brought tape for our hands and we regretted it big time while climbing. I decided to take the lead. Off-width is defined in wiki as "a crack that is two wide for effective hand or foot jams, but is not as large as a chimney." Translation, rating mean little because they are freaking hard and you have to jam all different parts of your body into the crack to get up the thing. I will let the pictures tell the story of how it went. By the end I had ripped up hands, shoulders and ankles. Not sure how "classic" it was but I still had fun.

Kiley making her way up.

The second climb of the day was  up another single pitch 5.7 low angle off-width climb called Edward's Crack. It had a fun start, went into a low angle shallow groove and then finished with pulling a roof which was pretty fun. Brody took the lead of this one, Kiley followed and I brought up the rear.

Edwards Crack is the vertical arm of the obvious cross on the left face. 

Greyrock is up Poudre Canyon about 30min outside of Fort Collins Colorado. Getting to it required an hour approach hike. Brody and I took it at a good clip and were a bit surprised to see that it even hiking that fast we didn't beat the mountainproject time. This rout had 4 pitches and went at 5.8. Brody took the first pitch which had the crux move requiring him to pull a roof off the ground. He then worked his way up through a maze of cracks to the belay. My lead was basically a walk up with another fun roof move that had a huge hero hold making it more fun that scary. The last two pitches were on the verg of us just freeing them because they were so easy. It was great to get out anyways. There is something about being in the mountains with friends that makes me feel good about life....real good.

Me on pitch 2.