today my friend andy morgan and i solo climbed the
1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th flatirons.
we started and ended @ gregory canyon th.
it took 6hrs 45min car to car.

i don't know of any friends who have done this.
tell me about your stories if you have!

lots of fun, good bushwacking after you get past the 3rd for
the trails down. oh yeah, and the beer i carried all day
was very tasty on top of the 5th and final for the day!

cheers, cor

Great job guys! The "quinfecta" is a fun challenge. I last did it in 1997 and you can read about it here . Another great challenge is the Flatirons marathon .

Bill Wright has done these both many times, and even keeps records for this sort of thing. I don't know what the quinfecta record is. You may hold the record for carrying a beer the whole way!

I recently did the 3rd, 2nd, 1st in 2:58:00, car to car from Chitaqua. Gee, thanks, Cory; now I'm gonna have to add-on two more. :)

I guess I'll report back later...

--Marc

Nice job guys.

Is there a standard itinerary for the link ups? Regular East faces for 1st and 3rd? Other? Freeway on the 2nd?

What's the descent strategy? Need a rope for the 3rd? Or downclimb to some exit?

Ha, maybe I'll read George's report and see if the mysteries are unfolded.

marc - get to it.. and maybe carry a beer for each iron,
that would be the ultimate style!

fall seems like the time to do it, with the heat of the sun.
i took 2 quarts of water, and 1 beer. finished it all before
returning back to the car.

shawn - we did the standard classic east face routes on each.
i do have to say we were lost part of the time on the 2nd, and the
4th. i had only been on the 1st and 3rd before this, and my friend had only ever been on the 1st. so we were just kind of finding our
way along. we did take one 8mil rope for descent on the 1st, 3rd, and 5th. i just wore my 6mil cord chalk belt, and then used a double shoulder sling to make a harness for comfort on the rap.
we started at #1 and ended at #5, walked out royal arch trail to bluebell trail. each time we went down the gully to the south of each. the worst bushwhacking was between the 4th and 5th. with a scramble step down near the bottom where it chokes down. defiantly felt like i was in puma country!

cheers ~cor

George Bell's Flatirons Marathon site was the inspiration behind last Saturdays's (mis-)adventure. My girlfriend Brandi and I got the first 4 (1st, Third, Friday's Folly and GMP Chimney) done quickly. Then we got really lost wandering around high in Skunk Canyon trying to find the Stairway to Heaven. Routefinding for the numerous bushwhacks seems to be the crux. Stairway, BackPorch and Pellea are still unknowns for me. The remainder I am solid on (Fatiron, Maiden, Matron)

Next time after GMP, I will descend back to Royal Arch Trail, then bushwhack due south to the base. I am not really interested in downclimbing as George did in his TR. Skunk Canyon is wild. We walked through desert and deep jungle to get out of there and back to the Mesa Trail. We may try again this week. Big cardio and lots of cool scrambling. The highlight was the GMP chimney. One of my favorite chimneys ever.

A thought about the "quinfecta."

I've descended between the Fourth and the Fifth once by mistake and I'd rather not do it again. Has anyone tried traversing high from the summit of the Fourth, west of Schmoe's Nose, to the summit of the Fifth and then descending the trail on the south side of the Fifth? If one is going to climb the East Face South on the Fifth, the "southwest passage" would deposit him/her at the base of the climb and it looks much shorter than descending to the north of the Fourth. (Besides, the descent to the north of the Fourth is not exactly a piece of cake.)

good job c. i did five flats in 1986 and wished i'd brought some extra socks to give my feet a chance against blisters. i remember an interesting downclimb from the top of piece 1 of the fourth so i could climb the entire groove/crack that's so prominent on piece 2. for wicked bushwhacking, next on your list would be roach's flatiron top 10. something easier is the (unrepeated) 15 summits of eldorado.

nice mic, i figured somebody i know must have done this before.
i eyed up that nice crack on the 2nd section of the 4th. looked
really cool, and goes for a long way, of course we were up away from it... lost wandering our way up.
yeah that 15 summits thing you did sounds cool! do you have a little topo showing the path you took?

I did this for the first time a while ago. Great way to get a cardio workout! We did the fifth before the fourth. This order works well as the decent off of the fifth puts you close the base of the fourth, while the reverse is not as true.

Great training for the mountains. I'm a sucker for a good linkup.

We did the standard east face of the first, then freeway. From near the top of Freeway, we traversed over so that we could summit the 2nd via the south-east ridge, then the standard east face of the third, fifth and fourth, though we skipped out on the final section of the fourth.

I'd love to go back and do the north east ridge of the fifth, which is a great route and has twice as much vertical, and well as the full length of the fourth.

I did the 3rd, 2nd, & 1st again yesterday and brought my time down to 2:16:12. I'm curious to know if anyone else has a time on these. Not that it matters, but it might be interesting to know about where I stand. I'm sure people have done it faster...

Marc- yes i have but it's been awhile.

I need to be done early tomorrow though.

josh