Visitors to Colorado: Shelf Road to Eleven Mile

Fishing and Climbing

The second days adventure included Bobby, Nathan, Tyler and newly appearing Ben.  After feasting on breakfast and handing out the proper attire of the day.  We all packed up and tried to find somewhere where the weather was dry.  The only place that I knew of having the faintest of possibilities was Shelf r\Road.  And as luck would have it as we pulled into the Galleries parking lot, the cloud broke and the sun was shining.

With the window of good weather, Ben put up a 5.8 with Tyler belaying.  He words were that made it a 5.9+ at minimum.  Tyler followed suit and worked his way up with stylish flair.   In the meantime, I belayed Nathan up First Blood.  This was pretty stout lead, and Nathan pulled it to the chains right as the wind started to pick up.

Around the corner, we climbed a couple more 5.10 and 5.9.  Tyler was able to trutch himself up the 5.10. Lastly we climbed the far wall. During one of the rappels, Tyler and I ended up having flying karate battles.

We then left Shelf and drove up the road for a place to camp.  We found a nice spot, on top of hill with some good fishing.  Nathan, Tyler and Bobby caught a good many fish, but I got called back into work that night so I couldn’t camp the night.

The next morning, I woke up and drove to Woodland Park and met them at the Hungry Bear.  Apparently, the food for camping was forgotten so they ended up going to bed hungry last night.   At the Hungry Bear they had 2 meals each.   After eating, there was still a possibility of bad weather, so we headed off to Eleven Mile Canyon. Here we ended up fishing instead of climbing.  We end up getting on to a hatch and hooked in to several fish.  During the last catches, the weather had turned violent and we were fishing in a hailstorm.  We pulled up stakes and cruised back to Colorado Springs, drank some beers in the hot tub, concluding the whirlwind weekend.

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