Rocky Mountain High

We just got back from two excellent days in Rocky Mountain Park, and I thought I’d share a few lessons that were impressed upon us during our attempt to climb Notchtop via the Direct South Ridge. We got chased off by weather about halfway up, and though I’ve climbed in the Park a half dozen times before, we learned a few things that we’d do different next time to insure success.

Getting up at 3am isn’t just for crazy 14’er people.

You often hear about people in RMNP getting up super early, and I’ve always written off to them being slow, inexperienced, whatever.  I mean why would you really need to get up that unholy, early hour? Well, as it turns out, that’s about when you SHOULD be rolling out of bed when attempting alpine rock routes in RMNP, or as the clouds are building you’ll be faced with the do we keep going and potentially stress our marriage to the breaking point, or head down with no summit decision. You see, we woke at 4:45am, which seemed plenty early at the time, but we got chased off Notchtop from about halfway up the route, having to leave some gear along the way, and with an extra hour and half, we would have likely made the summit and finished the descent just as the clouds closed in.

Don’t bring your “A” rack into the mountains.

While contemplating our options, and ultimately deciding to bail, I looked around at what gear we could leave. Believe it or not, there were only wide cracks in the immediate vicinity, which would have meant leaving a yellow or blue Camalot. Well, that was unacceptable, lightning or not, so Tracy rapped down to the previous belay ledge, placing gear as she went, and I down led the pitch, cleaning as I went. From that belay, we slotted a couple nuts and continued down. Besides getting to enjoy the novelty of down leading an entire pitch (a first for me!),  it made me realize, as I looked at all our newest, lightest gear, that it might be wise to climb on some of the older stuff when in the mountains, just in case. It stings a lot less than leaving that new C4 or sweet Metoilus offset master cam.

Marmots really will eat anything.

We’d heard the marmots at the base were the worst in the park, so before heading up the route we hung our packs off some gear on an overhanging chunk of stone, figuring that would be good enough. And indeed it was, but we didn’t realize the little buggers had such a penchant for the grips on trekking poles, or we would have hung those too. Unfortunately we didn’t have that foresight, and came back to some seriously roughed up poles. They especially liked the cork, and I’m thinking about sending BD an email wondering why they lace their poles with marmot-nip.

Despite all the learning, we had a great day in a beautiful spot, even without the summit. And the following day at Lumpy Ridge was all the more sweet, climbing pitch after pitch of perfect granite, while the storms ignored us to instead harass the folks up high in the Park, some of whom no doubt slept a little too late that day and we’re going through the same dilemma we had the day before.