After spending the night shivering on a rock ledge about 400 feet off the ground in Eldorado Canyon State Park, a pair of climbers are back home in Denver, Boulder County sheriff's officials said this morning.
....
Crews located the men within the hour by making voice contact, Stalnacker said. They were on an unknown route near the park's Red Garden Wall, but officers couldn't see them.

Stalnacker said the men told rescuers they were on a 6-foot-wide ledge about 400 feet off the ground, wearing only T-shirts. They said they couldn't find the climbing wall's bolted anchor, which they needed to attach their ropes to in order to climb down safely, Stalnacker said.

http://dailycamera.com/news/2008/mar/10/eldorado-climbers-sa>>>>>

Anyone know what climb these guys were descending from and which ledge they got stuck on?

Wow. That must have been a cold bivy, even if they were a spoonin'.

Hey, thanks for the link.

Glad everything turn out well for these two.

I've had worse epics; I'm glad mine didn't wind up in the newspaper. :)

--Marc

There was a party of two high on the Yellow Spur (but below the crux pitch) at about 5:30 pm Sunday evening. Looked like imminent benightment to me.

I am guessing this party got stuck on either the Dirty Deed or the West Gully raps. Maybe we'll find out later in the week.

I saw the party on Yellow Spur as I was driving out around 7 pm on Sunday. They were almost finished with the crux pitch and it looked to me like the leader was belaying his second from the summit. If they were not experienced with the rappels and did not have a headlamp they definitely could have gotten stuck. At least that area of the wall is somewhat sheltered from the winds!

They didn't want to leave gear and rap off that?

we got started on yellow spur at 1400. on the third pitch i realized i had forgotten my headlamp. the first multi pitch climb i have done was rewritten we descended in the dark but i had my head lamp so everything was fine. my partner has only been climbing outdoor a few times so i was leading every pitch. i will say that he did really good, kept it together throughout the entire ordeal. this was the second multi pitch trad climb i have done so my rope management, racking skills are pretty inefficient. as i set up the belay on the summit i was watching the sun go down, then watching night creep in as i was literally pulling my second up the crux pitch out of sight. i would have set up a belay before the 5.6 arrete but we were only working with one cordelette so i had to sling my rope around the peak. when he finally came up, i had him read me the descent from the mountain project printout i had brought with as i coiled the rope. we only had about fifteen more minutes before it was too dark to read, and i was trying to memorize all of it. we rapped down in the dark and i had no clue where to go. there were trees and fins and notches and gulleys every where, i could not remember what the paper said. i checked all the trees for slings or rope burn, scrambled and felt up all the rocks for anchors, then i down climbed a gulley for about 150 yards only to meet a vertical drop for a few hundred feet. that's when i realized we were spending the night up there in t shirts. we climbed back up the gulley and made a bed out of pine branches on a small low angle pad. wind kept us relocating through the night. we tried many different spooning methods to stay warm, it was a pretty miserable experience. but as soon as i found the anchors the next morning i was thankful for the lessons learned, and ready to attack another mutli-pitch climb. i learned alot that day, just to clarify what the news report messed up, my name is nandu, i am 23, i am a former marine, thanks pa and ma, thanks rescue team. onward and upward

Did you do the rappells in the first dihedral to the left of Yellow Spur in the photo? (red letters "rap X 50m")

http://www.mountainproject.com/images/14/67/1301467_large_cb>>>>>

There are a lot of webbing anchors around trees in that one that can fool you.

Yeah - it would be interesting to get more detail on where he went. Reads to me like he made Red Ledge, but couldn't find the West Chimney raps in the dark (understandable...), so spent the night on Red Ledge.

Glad to hear you are ok. Great to see someone willing to suffer a little in order to create a safe situation in which they rescue themselves.

Remember, what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger.

My respect for dealing with it on your own.

Chris

Nandu--

It sounds like you guys did the best you could once you found yourself in that situation. What you did is better than than cruising around trying to find anchors in the dark. What you did is also better than demanding a SAR team come up and rescue your party; I'm sure you realize that wouldn't be a safe situation either.

Thanks for the first-person account; I appreciated reading it after the news-web article.

Enjoy safe climbing!

--Marc

I can sympathize..had a similar NOOB experience on Petit Grepon in 96. Glad you guys made it down safe and wiser for the experience. Semper Fi!

Nandu, first off, I am glad you guys are OK. I am the guy who recommended that you and your friend do Rewritten instead of the Yellow Spur a few weeks ago. We saw you guys on something near rewritten, you were off route to the right, and were actually worried that you would get benighted up there because of your late start and stated (by you) lack of experience. I am glad you guys made it off that night as well. I do not mean to offend you or talk you down in any way, but there looks to be a trend here. Launching off onto a route like the Yellow Spur at 2pm without knowing the descent and it being only your second multipitch route is a recipe for being benighted, or worse. Please be careful out there and get some more experience before doing routes like these, I would hate to see you guys (or any other climbers) get hurt.

Glad to hear you're ok.

If it makes you feel any better, we had a mini-snafu on Yellow Spur last year.

We climbed up the easy slab at the start of the Roof Routes intending to doing Ruper. We got to the top of the slab, and instead of looking at the book, we just kept going! We went around that dirty corner, and realized our mistake too late. Instead of reversing the corner or hiking around, we decided to start Yellow Spur around 1. I racked up and lead all the pitches, which was at my lead limit, and my second's follow limit. We topped out at dark, but my partner found the raps before total darkness. We made the first two rappels fine. We got to the Red Ledge, and were deposited at a tree festooned with rap slings. Just assuming there would be another rap station below (we only had one 60m rope), I rappelled over the bulge into a free rappel. I was scanning the wall as I was going down, but quickly found the end of the rope before any anchors. At least we weren't totally dumb, and had knotted the ends of the rope, and I had myself backed up on rappel with an autoblock. After a few minutes of swinging around, looking for ANYTHING, I knew I was screwed, and had to ascend the rope. Which I had never done, only read about, and since my second had nearly all the rack, I had no extra slings. So after about 10 minutes of yelling, several slings on a biner came sliding down the rope. I rigged my prussiks, backed myself up with an 8, and finally got back to the ledge. We walked around till we found the bolts by the West Chimney, and finally got back down to our headlamps and water around midnight. Wooh, sure learned a few lessons from that one, and we practiced prussiking soon after.

So don't feel bad, I'd bet most climbers have some "situation" they've learned from. If I didn't get spanked for being dumb, I might have made a bigger mistake later. Even now I sometimes forget the proper clothes. But not my headlamp :-P

When Ron Olsen and I installed the Vertigo rap to replace the tree, Ron camouflaged the anchor to match the rock. In retrospect, I thought they should have been painted neon orange so they can be seen in situations like this. There have been other postings indicating of trouble finding the anchor.

• Carry a watch with you on longer climbs.

• Always know when sunset is (in Denver/Boulder, it's 7:02pm MDT tonight, 3/11/08).

• Know that it gets REALLY dark a half hour after sunset; earlier on a cloudy, overcast day.

• Keep track of the time while you're climbing, and figure out if you have enough time to summit or if you're better off retreating.

• Allow an hour for the descent from long climbs to get back to the base; perhaps more if you're unfamiliar with the descent.

• Plan to be back at your packs no later than sunset. Plan to be back at your car no later than a half-hour after sunset.

• Set a turn-around time on longer climbs -- one hour before sunset (6:00pm this time of year). Either you're at the summit by then, or you're retreating off the climb.

• Retreating at a designated turn-around time is easiest on routes where you rap the route to descend, but sometimes you reach a "point of last backoff", beyond which going up is far easier than going down. If you reach the "point of last backoff", assess the daylight left, how fast you are climbing, and whether it's better to bail or proceed.

• Better still, start early on longer climbs and give yourself plenty of time to get up and down before dark.

• Sh*t happens: stuck gear, getting off route, missing the easiest descent, stuck rappel ropes. Things take longer than you think they should, especially if you're inexperienced.

Glad you guys are okay. Way to keep your cool and do the right thing. Good decision.

2pm is way late to be starting. You are much better off starting early and finishing early than vice versa.