Faces of Limestone
With the first nice warm day in a while, I headed down to Shelf Road for some sport climbing on the hard-as-a-bullet limestone cliffs. Pascal was visiting from the Netherlands and wanted to experience some of Colorado’s famous sport climbs. Dave and Katie also came along to get some sport climbing action and training in.
We took the road less traveled through Cripple Creek and down through the canyon. Passing the normal herds of cows, loose granite cliffs, and old abandoned mines, we drove down the windy road. We parked at the Bank parking, and headed down the cliff’s face to the Bank Area. We started at “Cj and the Lesbian Seagull 5.8” to warm up on. Pascal originally started up a sketchy 5.10 route with bent bolts and hangers, but then traversed over to the Seagull’s Anchors. Dave got a nice workout, and then Katie took up the climb. She struggled a bit at the first crux, but then pulled it together and powered through the rest.
Next we headed up the cliff to the Bank’s “Back to the Future Wall”. Pascal flashed both the “B/C 5.9 (Crack Classic)” and “From Russia With Love 5.10a” some 45’ft slightly overhung climbs. B/C was a lot of fun and required some fancy lie backs and foot work. We also put up a weird 5.8 climb called “Concentrated Weirdness 5.8+”. It was weird face climb that worked back and forth up the wall. David got some great practice leading by concentrating on quickdraw clipping.
Lastly we headed up the Bank a bit more to some taller climbs. These climbs averaged about 80-90ft. Pascal put up an impressive climb on “Richter Scale 5.10b/c” by powering cleanly through the slopey crux. I cleaned up the route and got worked pretty good by the overhung crux. Next, I setup “Shelfish 5.9” a fun climb that snaked its way up a vertical crack system. There was sketchy flake that seemed like it would fall off soon, but it was cool enough not to during our climbs.
We ended the day with a few warm bud heavies in the fading light, then made our way back the Colorado Springs, before a freak winter storm would roll in.
