Gates into the canyon
The first weekend of June ended up being a whirlwind tour of climbing across the front range of Colorado. I started in the cold morning winds of Eldorado Canyon and finished in the baking-smoke filled sun of Shelf Road.
Saturday, Ben and I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn (5:30am) to get to Eldorado Canyon to make sure we could get on the wall without other people. We ended up being the 
first ones there to climb. (Most climbers love to be lazy). Our goal for the day was to do a good bit of classic easy trad. (Now, what Eldo easy trad equals, I have no clue.) The first climb would be the Bomb(5.4), a crack climb with easy face moves. I ended up dropping my very first piece here, a #16 nut. I floated up the 1st pitch and Ben did a run out on the 2nd. Next, we would do Breezy (5.5), which follows a face and crack below an large outside arête. Ben did the first pitch and ended up just climbing the whole thing in one rope go. It was real cool climb with sold pro and fun moves. Next, I tried to do Tigger (5.6). I am not sure if did the route right, cause it ended up being pretty tough compared to the other two. I also tried to do this in one pitch but got killed with rope drag and had to create some improv-anchors. Ben then came up and led this weird roof section and we pushed for the top of the rock. When we got to the top, we didn’t find any belay chains. So we then down climbed the last pitch to a tree. We did a bunch of funky moves and rapped from a protruding tree stump. From here we rapped down, searched and found my dropped nut, and a random carabiner (MICRO FRACTURES!!) Ben and Amanda went to camp and climbed a snow couloir and I went back to the Dprings.
The next day I met up with Pascal and his girl, they were visiting the US and thinking of relocating here. They are really good climbers and wanted to go down 
to Shelf Road for some aggressive sport climbs. Mirthe lead a warmup crack climb, but it ended up being really buggy near top so we busted out of there and moved to an open cliff. Pascal then led a slab to crack climb that was pretty fun (5.10a) and we all followed suit. The goal was to knock off a bunch of classics on the catus cliff. Next was Funkdemental (5.11a), which walked out and around this cool arete. To the right of it was Politically Incorrect (5.10b/c) which was really sharp and powerful. Then there was a crazy crack climb I Claudius (5.11b), which turned out to be a lot of really cool jams for every part of your body. Then, last was small crimpy, slappy route with a route called I Lean(5.11a). It was great to join Pascal and Mirthe as they are some great strong climbers and pushed me on route that I probably wouldn’t get a chance to climb anytime soon.
