Travels and Vagabonds
Colorado Balloon Time
This year I finally got to go to the Colorado Balloon Classic in the Springs. Its the 35th year of this three-day long festival where a bunch of hot air balloons fly in the mornings and set up at night and glow.
Longs Peak
Kiener’s, Colorado’s most classic mountaineering route is what was described by others as we summitted Long Peak in mid-august. Kiener’s ascends the dramatic east face of Longs Peaks, involving snow climbing, ledge traverses, technical roped pitches, and classic scrambles above the sheer diamond face.
Mt Royal
Now the first Saturday back from my vacation at home, Eli and I met Ben in Frisco for some multipitch granite climbing. Our goal was to climb Mt Royal, which sits right above the bustling town of Frisco. We would be climbing the royal flush, which was awesomely put up by a word class climbers but for normal people.
New River Bridge
The last Saturday on the East coast, I took a trip down to Wild and Wonderful West Virgina to explore around Summersville and the New River. Alexis has done this several times already and had the entire itinerary lined out (WITH NO DEVIATIONS!).
Crabtree Fireworks
In the middle of July, the annual family reunion took place back on the farm. Everyone converges for the Crabtree Fireworks. I flew into Charlotte and drove back up to Crabtree with Alexis. Before heading back, I went to a standard trivia night at the FOX and HOUND. I also lived and enjoyed the trophy lifestyle and hung out with cougars at the pool during the day.
Continue reading “Charlotte, Crabtree Fireworks, and Dunbar”
Chicago Basin
The weekend of July 4th, I scrambled to get my work done after some catastrophic failures in the office. This allowed me to venture off into the wilderness and test my mountain survival skills in the Chicago Basin. Continue reading “Chicago Basin (Windom and Sunlight) (14er)”
Down the Barr Trail
In the mid of July, I experienced Pikes Peak in a different light. That weekend, I would mountain bike down the front of the Peak on the Barr trail. As with most activities, there was very little planning done to do this. I woke up in the morning and got a call from Jimmy that him and Paul were going down Pikes.
Airplaning
About a year ago, I was clicking through some email and saw that there was an Intro to Flying Groupon. For 70% off, I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slide by. 11 months go by and I completely forgot I have this Groupon waiting to be used. So one week before it is set to expire, I make a reservation and pony up to play maverick.
Over the past 10 weeks, I have been in involved with a training program at the local rock gym (cityrock). As my session starts to wind down, I thought I’d type up a little bit of my experience with the program. Back in early March, I was pretty low-average by normal climbing standards. Bouldering, my levels were around v2 and pushing v3 max after projecting. In the gym, I didn’t do much wall climbing, but I think I could scum my way up a 5.10b but be very tired at the end of one climb.
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.