Another thing you might want to add to your list of realizations is to start earlier than 11:30am especially if your unfamiliar with the route/descent. That seems like a lot of wasted daylight to me, but that's just my opinion.

The new Eldo guidebook has a very good description of how to find the Chockstone Chimney raps from notch between Lumpe and T1. We followed it and with a couple of mild blunders which became quickly obvious we walked/scrambled right to the top of the Chockstone Chimney. Finding the next station at the top of the Veritgo raps (picuted earlier) was tricky and involves a fairly exposed 20 foot or so move over the lip to reach the anchor - this can be belayed.

Looks like folks have done a nice job on some advice and pointing out that this happens to lots of folks and you did seem to handle it well.

Has anyone mentioned the start time? 11:30 is really really late for a big multipitch in Eldo that you haven't been on and for which you don't know the descent. This is especially true as the days are getting shorter and shorter. One thing you might do in preparing for a route like this is try to work out your whole timing ahead of time and compare it with the available daylight.

On a route you're new to and with a person who hasn't done any/much multi-pitch work, you could easily average 1+ hours per pitch. Yellow Spur goes at 6 pitches, right? So something between 7-9 hrs climbing time from bottom to top is a quite reasonable estimate.

Obviously it takes some time at the base to gear geared up (30 minutes) and hiking in plus ensuring you have the right location takes time (30 min). Getting pass, going to the rest room and gearing up at the car (15min). Driving up from morning meeting location (93&I70) perhaps 45 min. So 2-ish hrs meeting time to climbing start.

So if you meet at 9am and it takes something like 2 hrs to start climbing (I think you said 2.5 hrs here) and 7-9 hrs to top out then, at this time of year, darkness while finding an unknown descent route is sort of a given.

Glad it worked out for you.

john

agree with SAL on the cairns, a really bad idea.

I'm glad everything worked out for you but I think the word "epic" is being abused here. So you got a little lost (in plain view of town and your car no doubt), and you got home a little late for dinner. That stuff happens; instead of an "epic", I'd call it "routefinding".

Sure, next time, bring some descent beta, a headlight and a cell phone so you can call off the rescue parties. But I wouldn't go around talking about an epic unless say, you were stuck on a ledge overnight, in the rain, with a broken ankle for example.

Put another way, when talking about an epic, think of Homer's Odyssey...

oh dear... just realized you said your meeting location was at the intersection of 93 and 170 (not I-70). Ooops, sorry.

So in terms of managing your timing on a route like this, 2.5 hours (9am - 11:30am) from 5 minutes driving time outside Eldo to starting the first pitch of Yellow Spur is a really really long time.

If you've thought through your timing ahead of time you have the option of comparing it against your actual speed during the day (approach effeciency and average pitch rate). If this comparison starts to look bad at any point then at least you have the information you need to determine your risk has increased and can start thinking about backing-off or taking some other sort of risk reduction measures.

john

We bring cell phones almost everytime we're out, and about (just in case we have to call off rescues), but only get reception in the areas we ad-venture into approx 15% of the time. Go figure. If we have to hike out with a broken ankle for 25 miles to finally get reception to save our own ass, then we have to hike out 25 miles to get reception. We'd probably then Phone-A-Friend to help us out (we would have already used up our 50/50) ; ) Unless it's an "obvious" life threatening adventure/situation.

I realize that your partner was new to multi-pitch climbing, but over the years I have noticed that a lot of people get themselves into tricky situations like this one simply because they move too slowly.

A perfect example of this was what I observed in Squamish a month ago on the Grand Wall. My partner and I weren't setting any speed records, but the gumbies (not saying you're a gumby) who were a pitch behind us hadn't even topped out by the time we were back down in the parking lot having a beer. They weren't struggling on the actual climbing as far as I could tell, but they were taking forever between pitches to flake the rope, re-rack, eat, drink, etc.

There are a lot of ways to save time on multi-pitch climbs-- too often I have seen parties stop for 20 or even 30 minutes at belays "preparing" for the next pitch. I'm not suggesting that you rush or start simul-climbing, but it is possible to cut a couple of hours off of a big climb's time just by being more efficient. I'm all for bringing less-experienced climbers up cool stuff, but I make sure that I am able to control the pace well enough to keep us out of trouble.

Glad you guys made it out ok though. Those experiences definitely build some character, and you'll be glad for the knowledge that you gained from it.