Hangdog History - Stories of First Ascents

Hey folks, I love hearing stories from FAs and wanted to jot down some of my own to share. Feel free to share your own on this thread as well - bonus points for included pictures.

Right Hand of God - Pearly Gates, Clear Creek Canyon

As a still relatively fresh climber, I had relatively recently learned how to rebolt routes with the now-head of the Boulder Climbing Community's fixed hardware replacement program, Peter Thomas. This, mixed with my general loathing of crowds meant I was consistently climbing in low-traffic areas that often seemed like they had potential for new routes. Pearly Gates in Clear Creek was one of these areas, with a formidable roof looming to the left of the, at the time, two established lines at the crag. While the roof looked intimidating, it did look like there was a weakness through it. Was it a pretty line? Not particularly. Was it good-quality rock? Absolutely not. Was it also just my third FA, and as such, I had a very low threshold for how quality a line should be to equip it? Hell yes.

Coincidentally, my interest in this line was piqued just before this section of Clear Creek Canyon started a months-long closure that would dramatically decrease traffic to the area, meaning it was a great opportunity to rain loose rock down without risk of it affecting those below me. The closures didn't prevent people from using the canyon, but they did prevent vehicle traffic and parking options for about a mile and a half in either direction of this crag. So, I did what any enterprising climber does. I strapped on my rollerblades.

That's right - I strapped on my rollerblades and 55lb development kit and cruised on down the Peaks-to-Plain trail that runs below the crag. Other than nearly getting a mouth full of concrete and old guano when my sunglasses disguised an incline transition in a tunnel en route, the commutes were fairly pain-free. 15 minutes of strenuous uphill, passing the trusty big horn carcass as a route marker and I was to the route. I won't spend much detail on the 3 days of cleaning that I went through for the route (it could probably use another 3 in just a single 10ft band), but I finally completed the route. Not without 1 more last laugh, however.

On the last day of cleaning and equipping the route, I ended up pushing my timeline a little bit so that I wouldn't have to re-visit with my heavy kit again. No big deal, I should still be hiking back at dusk, I thought. I unfortunately forgot two major points - I still had a two-mile rollerblade back to my car, and I was wearing prescription sunglasses, and my normal glasses were back down at my car. Now, to be honest, I wasn't really sweating this. This whole season I'd been making that mistake and hiking back to the car with a phone flashlight in one hand and sunglasses on my face at 9 PM. So I sauntered on back down to the trail, fruit-booted up, and started to coast on to the car. Unfortunately, I had underestimated how heavy my pack was that day - and I was really struggling to maintain a slower speed - this, combined with my low visibility, had my nerves high. As I turned the corner around another crag, Fiscal Cliff, I was shocked to see a group of climbers 3-wide on the bike path. I imagine they were equally as surprised to see a traveling salesman of a person, ripping down the trail close to 30mph with sunglasses on and a phone flashlight in hand at about 9:30 PM. As I swerved around them, I managed to hit quite a solid tree branch that had found its way on the trail, marking the start of what I thought was going to be an FKT of the Peaks-to-Plains-to-Hospital linkup. 

"Sorry!" I heard them call. "All good!" was the response they got, as I started running with rollerblades on, desperately trying to get my feet back under me while slowly bending my legs more and more under the added weight of the pack and speed I was traveling. Unbelievably, and I did have to go to Google Maps to confirm this, I milked the process of falling for about 1000ft before finally just tucking my shoulder and committing to it in a tunnel where the concrete became smoother and I figured I could hide my shame. Other than some road rash and bruises to both body and ego, I was ok, and I slowly gathered myself back up and completed the hike out.

The climb itself ended up being pretty fun, involving a bit of a flying heel hook and right-arm lock-offs - and at the time, was one of the hardest climbs I had ever sent. No real interesting story about the FA itself, but rather, the shenanigans that seems to surround them, no matter what.

Right Hand Of God

Open Project - Cultist Crag, Devil's Head

Finally, I had found not just a crag, but a whole sub-area that was untouched, with a great potential for new routes of a variety of styles. There was one crown jewel, however. A steep, beautiful, curving crack that varied from a #0.2 to #2. Much steeper than originally anticipated, I was mostly pulling on gear and cleaning en route to an anchor placement for the line. Acknowledging that, while I could probably send the line with a bit of projecting, it would be much easier to get people to actually come out with me if I offered them the FA instead, I called in a few friends and told them to go crazy. Shawn, my hardest climbing friend at the time jumped on it, giving it a valiant effort but ultimately falling at the outro to the crux. Shocking both of us, his crux piece pulled out of the wall, and thankfully a combination of quick action on my belay and quick action on him to lift his legs, he missed decking by about 3 inches. 

"Man, that's probably the second piece I've ever pulled in a decade of trad climbing - most of that being at Eldo" was Shawn's response. Another attempt up had the fatigue from the previous go and a bit of gear fear resulted in a much lower fall, and we ended up playing around on TR and doing some other lines before leaving.

Over the next few visits, a few others would TR but no clean lead was had. Soon I started getting more confident in my ability to do the route, so I went to give it a lead attempt. Shocking myself, I made it right to the end of the crux, placing a beautiful #0.5 in just above the crux before blowing it early in the second crux. As I was falling, I felt my #0.5 shift. "Weird", I thought. "That's a complete splitter crack with a perfectly cammed #0.5 that's probably 6 inches deep in the crack". I didn't stress out about it too much, and instead repositioned it a bit deeper into the crack and continued on, sussing out my gear and beta for the upper section. I placed a decent #0.4 somewhere above and continued to the outro of the 2nd crux, where a beautiful gold DMM offset nut would slot into a constriction that could hoist a yacht out of the water. I went to slot it in and quickly realized it was still halfway up a route my partner was projecting for the day that he had lowered off of on a failed redpoint attempt. 

"Shit", I thought. Surely I could come up with a substitute piece there. "A #0.3 maybe? Nope, too flaring for that to stick. Ok, let's try a #0.4. Hmm, not there, let's try" - and I was off. "Pop". "Pop". I heard my two previous pieces shoot out of the wall, slowing me down a little, but not a ton. I landed down on two feet, standing straight up - shockingly not immediately devastatingly injured. "...Well that sucked", I said, turning and looking at my partner. He wasn't laughing and looked like he had just seen a ghost. I looked up at the wall to see the cam I had tried to place sticking out about 25ft up. If I had been able to clip it, I surely would have full-speed decked - thankfully my crux piece - the one that had pulled out on Shawn, was still in the wall and my belayer had managed to take in just enough slack to keep it from being a catastrophic accident. 

Once the adrenaline started to wear off a few minutes later I started feeling extremely stiff - as if I had been put in a hydraulic press. We decided to end the day there, and my partner went up to the anchors and rappelled in to clean my gear. As he took at my crux piece, the rock surrounding it crumbled and fell out of the crack - the fall having shattered the surrounding rock. A few days later, an MRI revealed 2 herniated discs in my back and 2 light compression fractures in my lower vertebrae. While sleeping sucked for a few weeks, and I couldn't boulder without it causing debilitating pain in my back for almost a year (thankfully a lacrosse ball and some PT have seemingly solved this), I was otherwise alright.

There's no resolution on this one - over the years I've given up on going back - more due to Devil's Head only being open seasonally, its relative distance from Denver, and the change to paid parking everywhere that would be a casual approach, and this has become an open project. Get on it if you want! It's a stellar line, likely between 5.11c and 5.12a Cultist Crag

Happy Trail - Pleasure Dome, South Platte

Pleasure Dome, a long-forgotten and recently re-discovered formation in the Platte, is a roughly 1/4mi wide, 200ft tall formation with a variety of cracks and slabs at mostly a moderate grade. While I had been looking forward to developing it for a few months, I had torn my labrum and required surgery (funny enough, also on an FA, but there's no story here - was just repeating it and had a freak tear on easy terrain). As a result, I got to watch as the cyborg that is Nathan Brown cleaned house on the crag, graciously leaving me some routes I had requested. I was finally back, and mostly healed, having recently tested out the shoulder on a casual climbing trip to Kalymnos. I enlisted my friend Shawn from the earlier story, who, after a bad fall resulting in a shattered heel and extensive surgery, was in a similarly decrepit state as me, also frothing for adventure. 

While all of Pleasure Dome is, as the name suggests, quite a pleasant adventure - there is one obvious crown jewel of the formation. A steep roof, 150ft off the deck, with an exceptionally thin crack/seam potentially allowing passage. We weren't aiming to do that line today, but we were aiming to get up to the ledge below this roof on a recon mission, and then finish off an easier, obvious hand crack to the right. Armed with a standard rack, a drill, and enough bolts for rap stations plus a couple of lead bolts, I set off from the ground up a corner system. While the climbing was pretty moderate, the gear was a bit sparse, and I couldn't tell from any of the views I had what the gear above me would look like. At roughly 60ft up I realized I had in some pretty bad gear - a #3 RP about 10ft below my feet, a questionable #0.5 about 5ft below that, and a great #0.75 about 15ft below that. I couldn't see any gear options above me, so I hollered down to Shawn that I was going to tag my drill up and put in a bolt. 

"Why there? Why not do an extra move or two up to that horn above you and just sit down on that and drill the bolt from there?" he replies. I look up, confused as to how I missed this sit-down-rest horn he mentioned. All I could see was a rounded, sloping protrusion about 10 inches across - not only was it not a sit-down rest, it would certainly not serve as anything resembling a hands-free rest either. Before I could reply, I got a heartwarming addition of "You might as well just go for it - if you fall you're either breaking a leg or, if a piece blows, dying, anyways". 

"Thanks, buddy, I'm just gonna go ahead and throw this one in though", I shout down and start drilling. Clipping the hanger brought about some relief but it looked like the hardest climbing was still above me. I continued up, getting in an okay #000 C3 and another bolt in before reaching a blind step around a bulge into a flaring, lichen-filled finger crack. I hmmd and hawed for a few minutes before blinding placing a #0.4 and committed to the reach-around move. Once in front of the piece, I could see that it was pretty good (upon subsequent ascents of this line, I realize in hindsight that the piece was actually pretty horrible, but compared to the other stuff I had placed to this point, seemed great in comparison), and scrubbed my way up the finger crack. I got another #0.4 in high on the crack and tip-toed up the lichen-covered slab, trying not to skate off, for about 20ft to an obvious anchor stance. 

"Ok, maybe I was wrong about the horn. Nice lead man", Shawn said as he got to the anchor. We looked up at the beautiful corner above - a well-earned prize from the first pitch and cast off to wrap up the 50ft to put in the P2 anchors. On the rap back down we did some additional cleaning, added a bolt to the slab runout at the top of P1, and scoured the roof to see if the line of weakness was big enough to accept fingers and cams or if it was just going to be a never-repeated aid line. We couldn't be positive and knew we'd have to make a return trip in the future.

Devhellopment - Pleasure Dome, South Platte

9 months after the scouting mission on Pleasure Dome with Shawn, I was back with my brother to show him a bit of this area I had been developing. It wasn't originally on the docket, but a significant snowstorm coupled with Pleasure Dome's south-southwest exposure made it an obvious change of plans. We made our way in and climbed a few established lines (namely, "Reacharound", the multipitch comprising of the seam in the lower right corner and splitter hand/fist crack above it in the picture above) and then decided to check out this king line once and for all. I gave my brother the lead for "Happy Trails" and he made it to the anchor with little fanfare. We slid left so we could check out the upper line and see if the big block at the base of the crack would trundle. It did not, so I threw in an anchor for the scouting mission. We rapped down a bit to see if there was an obvious passage to the anchor we had just put in, and found a fun stem-to-slab variation to the ending to Happy Trail would get us there, so we did some cleaning before returning back to the anchor to work upwards. My brother had done some development work with Randy Leavitt and some of the ECM crew in San Diego but hadn't done anything on lead - so I handed him the drill and told him to have fun. 

He cruised up the first 35ft or so of 5.9 crack to the base of the roof. A pause. "I think it would go!" He shouted down. "On Gear?" I replied. Another pause. "Not anything good." Was the response I got back. We quickly figured out that the very few gear placements the crack had were also the only potential holds, and they were far enough apart that trying to protect in them after leaving them would not only be shoddy at best, but also would really ruin the flow of the climb, and even then, would offer likely R rated protection. "Alright, let's drill some bolts where we can't protect then". 

The process of bolting on lead takes quite a few bolts to get into a rhythm, especially if you've never done it before, and especially on a 30+ degree overhang with 150ft of air beneath your feet. Unfortunately, he didn't have that luxury. He did a great job - cursing and swearing his way up, placing barely bodyweight (and sometimes not even that) gear to enable the next bolt placement. In total, we added 4 bolts to the roof, with gear placements above and below the bolts where the seam opens back up into a crack. 

"Hey, uh...watch out. I'm definitely about to pull this block off", I hear from above. Trapped on an anchor 100ft off the ground, I didn't have a ton of options of where to go, so I tucked in the corner. "Throw it hard if you can", I shouted up, and watched as he lobbed a good 2ft wide flake off from above me. Continuing on, he pulled the lip of the roof. With it being very easy climbing above, I told him to go ahead and throw in an anchor as soon as you're established above the roof and to come back down.

Cleaning the draws on his way down, we quickly realized that the rope fed directly into the seam/crack on the way to the anchors, and the lip of the roof is exactly where it opened back up from a seam to a usable crack...at exactly a rope width wide. Trying to lower was a nightmare between the normal rope drag from running over a steep lip like that and the rope pinching into the crack. While the climb up might have taken an hour and a half, the lower probably took another 30-40 minutes itself - all while free-hanging at the top of the formation. Significant rope shenanigans later and we're back on the ground - my brother swearing to never do anything like that again, and me looking at my trekking poles broken into about 12 pieces from the aforementioned 2ft flake tossed off from the top of the formation. I committed to adding a short permadraw/cleaner biner onto the last bolt when I went back up again to redpoint and we started the slog back to the car, notably sunburnt and beat down.

Modal Soul/To A God Unknown - Almost Heaven, South Platte

Being an absolute sucker for long, dick-dragger approaches, it was only natural that I found an exceptionally inspiring crag a solid 2+ miles and, at best, 2 river crossings away from the closest parking. At the right time of year, this approach is just under an hour. My friend Josh and I, however, decided to do this in the winter, when the best option, i.e. river crossing was likely going to be a no-go due to not being frozen but too cold to ford. What we didn't anticipate was the shear amount of snow and ice we'd encounter on the hike, and the approach ended up taking us close to 2 hours - with about half of that being post-holing around, mostly lost. 

We finally made it to the formation, and due to the steepness of the route, and desire to keep things as low visibility as possible so as to both not affect the local landowners on the other side of the river nor alter the experience for the whitewater users on this world-class whitewater run (i.e. use camoed glue-ins), we opted to do this line on rappel. We thought we could knock out 2 short multipitches, one moderate and one that was more difficult. From the pictures from scouting we had done previously, we were expecting somewhere in the 5.11 range for the more difficult one and maybe 5.8 for the moderate. We threw in our top-out anchors, each fixed a 200ft line and single strand rapped down our routes - he the moderate and me the more difficult one. I quickly realized that the "5.11" was going to be another case of me grossly underestimating how difficult a route was going to be, when I got to the last roof below the anchors and looked down and saw that, on a 160ft line, it was overhanging for all of it except a 20ft section in the middle where the P1 below would go. Whoops.

The line I was on was a newfangled Sterling 9mm static line that I had been talked into buying by someone at the local gear shop as being "totally durable enough". Despite that, the rope was running on some suboptimal edges and the route really did not offer almost anything for gear placements as redirects. I rappeled down, put the one rope protector we had on the sharp edge, and built a pretty horrible gear anchor about 60ft below the roof, before hitting the lower, overhanging section of the climb. What I thought would be a crack in the corner where I could put gear to redirect ended up just being a corner with no crack. The rope was still rubbing an edge, but it was much less sharp than the upper one. I wasn't thrilled about it, but I'm historically a huge weenie when it comes to free-hanging rappels and chalked it up to my normal fear and rapped down to the water below, doing some light cleaning on the way.

I got down to the ground to find Josh, having already marked out some bolt placements and done some cleaning on his line. We both scoped out underneath the giant lean-to boulder at the base of the wall for potential hard lines, I got a shot of him jugging up his hilariously overhanging fixed rope (remember, this was for what we thought was going to be 5.8), and we switched ropes. I went up his rope and scouted out the 2nd pitch, cleaning holds and marking bolt placements. 

"Oh what the fuck! That's not good" I hear him shout. I look down and see him standing over the lip of the roof. "What's up, man?" I shout down, but between the river and the distance we can't hear each other. I go to grab my walkie but he's already buzzing me, "Hey man, I've got a coreshot in this rope." Oh, that's not good. "Uh, how bad is it?" I radio over to him. "It's...I mean it's pretty bad." There's a long pause while we try to figure out what to do here. "Can you tie off the coreshot, pass the knot, and work your way over to my line?". We end up getting him transitioned to my fixed line while I get back on the 9mm, rap down, clean my gear anchor, and pull the line. It made it a full 2 pitches of climbing before getting brutally core shot almost dead in the center of the rope.

In the end, we managed to get the moderate, "Modal Soul" fully cleaned, threw in the glue-ins, and made it out safe after another grueling bushwhack/posthole combo. We recently went back to finish the harder line recently but got skunked by the river, this time being too high to cross. Here's to hoping the third time's the charm, with a couple more rope protectors and a few temporary bolts on our side this time. Also, turns out our grade estimates were quite a bit off, with "Modal Soul" coming in at mid-5.10 and "To A God Unknown" likely to come in at 5.12+. Whoops!

I Want To Lay Beside You And Scream (AKA Scream) - Ghost Town Crag, South Platte

I really can't overstate enough how big of a weenie I am with free-hanging rappels. I'm not sure what changed in my mind, I used to love them when I first started climbing and now I typically will do what I can to avoid them. But when the line is inspiring enough...enter: Scream. Close to the above "Almost Heaven" is an open book of a crag, with the left side routes being fun, nearly 100' face climbs, and the right side being consistent 20º overhanging, 60ft jug hauls, all on excellent rock. I was eager to fill it in, even the steep stuff. Josh, from the above story, and I actually went out here prior to our Almost Heaven experience. Josh had just gotten back from a 3-day bender of a wedding overseas and was combo jetlagged and mildly hungover. An excellent combo for the hot 40-minute hike in.

I started the day doing a new route ground-up (Lord of the Flies, 5.10-) before we turned our sights to the right edge of the overhanging wall. At first, we tried to rap bolt the route and find a way to tension me into the wall but it just wasn't working, and honestly, I really was sick of the shenanigans on a free-hanging rappel. Plus, the route had a good collection of holds and it looked like maybe even a good seam for gear, so doing it on aid lead wouldn't be too bad. Josh wasn't feeling that great anyway so he was happy to just hold onto the rope - it should be all upward progress, right?

The first two bolts go in easy, the first one being drilled off a good stance and the 2nd being drilled off of a high step up on the first. This leads to the corner, where I was hoping to get gear. Turns out that corner wasn't quite as accepting of gear as I had hoped. After blowing 3 pieces trying to get in the bolt, I told Josh we were going to have to do this the painful way. I climbed up to where I had started my hole, grabbed onto a jug, and started drilling. I finished the hole, pulled the drill out, and whipped back onto the second bolt. Holstered the drill, took out the bit, climbed back up to the bolt hole, cleaned it out with my blow tube/bolt hole brush, and whipped back onto the 2nd bolt. Climbed back up to the bolt hole, set the bolt in the hole, pounded it in a bit, and managed to go in direct. Rested a bit, finished pounding it, went in direct, rested, and tightened the bolt. Oh boy, this was going to be a fun one.

At each subsequent bolt, we were convinced that surely this would be the one we'd be able to get a piece or a hook or anything to not have to repeat that process. By bolt 5 I had said the phrase "I'm going to fucking scream" probably 20 times - knuckles full-on bloody, fingertips ripped open from sliding off jugs, had burnt myself multiple times with the drill bit, thigh bruised from whipping with the drill. After bolt 6 I called it quits, we were close enough to the top that I was confident I could rap in to place the last bolt as I had climbed to the stance I wanted it at multiple times and just didn't have enough juice to place it. Josh's 2.5-hour marathon belay session came to a close, I went up and placed the last bolt on rap, and we endured the long slog back to the truck.

I came back 3 weeks later with a crew to actually redpoint the damn thing. My frustration at the end had led to a last bolt that was a good 10-12ft from the anchor, with the redpoint crux being the last move before clipping the chains. Many whips were taken from the top - with them being about an equal split between soul-crushing heartbreakers and hooting and hollering victory jumps. The route ended up being one of my favorite 12as on the front range (likely soft for the grade if you have any semblance of endurance). Coupled with the Almost Heaven experience, I went and bought a few temp bolts to make those experiences a bit less miserable in the future.

A bit of a wall of text incoming - a piece I've been working on lately. Less of a trip report, more of an overall reflection

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For me, climbing has always been this weird synaesthesia of music and movement. Not that I have any sort of musical ability myself - anyone who has ridden in a car with me for longer than 20 minutes can confirm that - but the rhythm and structures that dictate sounds and climbs feel one in the same.

If the first time I climbed was a song, I can say with certainty that it wasn’t one that gets much playtime. Moving up the polished basalt of North Table Mountain in Denver certainly wasn’t a symphony for me, but rather the sound of a horse on the loose in a store full of poorly tuned instruments. Moments of absolute chaos separated by long periods of silence and maybe a whinny or a whine depending on how far above my last bolt I was. The closest thing I had to a conductor directing the performance was the tension of the rope as both my belayer and myself were terrified to let an extra inch of slack into the system. 

Reaching the anchors wasn’t the gong-hit crescendo I thought it was going to be, but instead a whimper of a sad trombone - followed by what can only be described as anxious flutes as I tried to then clean the route I had just stumbled my way through. Remember when Daft Punk was #1 on the billboards with a hit that only had 3 words, “Around The World”? Well, not to brag, but my piece had just one - “Take”.

As I continued to climb more, I began to better learn the instruments. I started making melodies that didn’t cause stress to the people at the crag around me. Each hold became a different note to play, each route was a different piece of sheet music to follow. The length between moves was now the breaks between notes; bold moves to beautiful chords that my fingers refused to correctly land on. 

I came to understand the rhythm of the rock in what was one of the most useless, but ultimately fulfilling, types of synaesthesia I had heard of. I knew that different lines were beautiful not because of what I saw with my eyes but because of what I heard with my hands and feet. I understood that “good movement” didn’t just mean fun moves on interesting holds, but a flow the problem forces your body into.

My next step was obvious. Anyone who becomes infatuated with an art eventually finds themselves daydreaming of becoming the creator. So, considering that my strung out-of-tune vocal chords and my physical inability to picture an apple if requested (much less draw one) mostly took me out of the running for the classical arts, my immense propensity for suffering and tendency towards solitude and manual labor made route development an excellent candidate.

This activity took me; wholly, and undeniably. The sense of discovery and creation mixed with the duty to contribute to the local climbing ecosystem was then topped with the satisfaction that only comes from a hard day’s work. Each adventure left me completely tapped out and bursting at the seams. 

Days at the crag ceased to merely blend together, instead etching their place in the catalog behind my eyelids to parse through each night. Growing up, I had always fallen asleep to music, and when I closed my eyes, nothing seemed to have changed. I’d spend hours at night replaying sequences in my head. I’d imagine protection opportunities and how an entire pitch would climb before I’d gotten on it for the first time. I’d wake up in the middle of the night to jot down a name for a route that didn’t exist. There was no option to turn it off; instead, it became a lens through which I viewed everything else.

Stumbling into a five-square-mile serving of almost entirely untouched granite was decidedly not the glass of warm milk I needed to help me sleep at night. “Wonderland” as it was coined by Jay Vonesh - essentially the area’s lone suitor back in the early aughts. A veritable playground of rock, with dozens of formations stretching 100 feet or higher in the air and a general lack of the kitty litter choss that plagues much of the South Platte region of Colorado - the name was well-earned.

“If you need to, once the bit is in far enough, you can hang on your drill to rest,” came the knowing advice from long-time developer and my mentor, Nathan Brown. While I had set out to do my first ground-up FA in the best possible style - onsight, from stances, and bold - I had found my feet trying to drill their own holes into the rock before I ever unholstered my bolt gun. An internal, slab-inspired, full-blown meltdown and subsequent uninterrupted 35-foot runout to the eventual anchor later and I was back down on the ground. Not necessarily a better person for the experience, but certainly a different one.

Nathan is no stranger to bold, ground-up, onsight first ascents. Having logged hundreds of such undertakings in his time across the southeast and mountain west - often solo. His laughter at my obvious anguish, interspersed with the occasional word of encouragement served as our backing track for the day. Not wanting the route to fall into expected obscurity due to the lack of hardware, he quickly floated up behind me and added a bolt to temper the spice - originally born not out of boldness, but lack of courage to stop and drill again. We titled our new B-side installment “Earn Your Stripes” and moved on to the next objective.

Development started slow, and then all at once as this world around me burst forward with sound. It became obvious early that any of the time and energy given to Wonderland was repaid tenfold. The approach was full of excited conversations about the day’s objectives, while the hike out was best characterized by satisfied smiles and conversations about inevitable orders from Domino’s pizza. 

That season set the stage for things to come. I continued to hone the craft - future additions wouldn’t turn out to be the cacophony that the first one was. More people began to join me, all of us inspired by something different and learning from each other. Collaborations, if you will. You began to know who had done which route just by the way it climbed. “Bloody Crack”, a Nathan Brown original, with 150ft of climbing that feels like singing along to the chorus of a song you just heard for the first time. “Man-Eater”, a 150ft traversing bombay chimney that climbs like a movie score. Each new stretch of rock became an addition to the ever-growing soundtrack.

(1/2)

Late fall is peak season for much of Wonderland, consisting of largely southwest facing rock. Or, I imagined it was at least - I ended up tearing my labrum and requiring surgery right as the getting got good. Just like that, the music left. I was landlocked. 22 routes in 2 months by the cyborg Nathan Brown meant even he had to back north to recharge. Snow bedded down with the elk for winter. 

Two weeks. That’s how long I gave myself to grieve the lost season. To question my worth - as an athlete, a partner, a human. To suffer the silence. I desperately wanted to return to this area that had captivated me, but feared that when I’d return the magic would be lost. I knew I couldn’t stay inside forever though, and hell - Google Earth seemed to suggest that there was still a bit of rock to explore. So off I went, praying I wouldn’t need to solve the puzzle of putting snow chains onto my RWD SUV that we affectionately called my “2Runner” with my arm bound by a sling.

In her book “This Contested Land”, McKenzie Long mentions an interview she had with a Paiute elder that discusses the concept of land ownership. The question was not “where are you from”, but rather, “Which song do you sing?”. This idea that belonging to the land meant knowing it well enough to know its melodies, its crescendos and breaks, tracking the metronome of its heartbeat. If you only get to know it in its peak season, you’ll never know all of the words.

Stumbling around the woods that winter was transformative for me. Its white blanket did little to muffle the chorus found everywhere I looked. Not just in the lifetime’s supply of rock that I came across, either. I could hear the echoed purrs of former mountain lions from their maybe-not-so-abandoned dens. Synchronized laughs from gold-finding miners and the unruly teenagers who visited a century later poured from the walls of the ghost town nestled on the river. Murmurs from recently roused flora, stretching up for sun, poured out of every remaining slice of green, or gray, or red, or whichever color dress Mother Nature put on that day.

Winter continued as I bundled up in the warmth of all this place was showing me. I continued to show up, a dedicated acolyte, learning exactly where to place my fingers and how to use my diaphragm. Lessons slowly gave way to band practice as the land gave way to spring. Another season, another verse.

Spring also meant that the necessity of staying on terra firma was rapidly coming to a close, and I found myself more anxious to revisit Wonderland with rope in hand than I was to visit it with open arm. Would a return to the craft be a mistake? More climbing opportunities would drive more traffic. Would they come and contribute only footsteps and chalk, or would they hear the notes and want to listen for what comes next? What’s the balance between accessibility and opportunity? Between knowledge and adventure?

And so, I set out. My mind buzzed with dreams of finding some innocuously overlooked neo-classic and giving it a clever name like “Labrum of Love”. It took a fraction of the 20-minute hike to the walls for me to forget all of that, to ignore my predispositions, and let my eyes wander. It didn’t take long for me to settle in on a stretch of rock on the formation in which it all started. The day was spent with the clinking of tools, whirring of the drill, and scratching of my rapidly dwindling steel brush. Those familiar tunes were back. 

Different climbs have the ability to take you back to memories you weren’t even sure you still had, just like a song. Bumping from one crimp to another before making a long reach to a jug reminds you of your indecision before leaving behind your hometown for your favorite city. A long rest makes you aware of how long it’s been since you’ve seen an old friend. You may even find yourself smiling while jamming a splitter crack, thinking about how, despite the scars and varnish left on you from life’s many freezes and thaws, time has continued on all the same.

Over three years after first contact, Wonderland still holds me firmly in its clutches. There is no place on Earth more important to me, no place with such a clear, loud voice in my head. The symphony is ever-changing, the compositions are still being arranged. This playlist is far from over. So, as long as I’m able, I’ll continue listening to the rhythms in nature—the babble of a brook, the concert of the crags, the music of the mountains.

(2/2)

Tal M wrote:

dreams of finding some innocuously overlooked neo-classic and giving it a clever name like “Labrum of Love”. 

I'm here for this. 

Different climbs have the ability to take you back to memories you weren’t even sure you still had, just like a song. [...] despite the scars and varnish left on you from life’s many freezes and thaws, time has continued on all the same.

This is stirring. Do you have a blog outside of MP?

F r i t z wrote:

I'm here for this. 

This is stirring. Do you have a blog outside of MP?

No sir, I talk so much in real life I seem to run out of words to write sometimes - I’ll try and reverse that and put more thoughts down here

Big fan. Waiting patiently for the blog

Love In The South Platte

Fractured Fairytales 

I had lost the things that I held closely; my curated vision of the future moved swiftly to a 

Vanishing Point.

That’s when I found you. I thought I needed more -- time, space, clarity.

Whimsical Dreams

started to mix with the punishing nightmares, and then with my conscious living.

Lost In Space,

or in the jungle, or the wilderness; anywhere I thought I could get lost in you.

Knossos

You were my labyrinth. Navigating your mazes, guided by a map of your

Topographical Oceans.

I had come to know the peaks and valleys, longing to fill the space between.

Childhood’s End

had come, yet still I craved you - always

The Opportunist.

With you

Time Stands Still

or maybe I’m in a 

Time Warp

and I think

Is This For Real?

No Pressure.

New Beginnings.

No Opportunity Missed.

----

I wrote this years ago, after meeting my now-partner (M) at a Plattesgiving (like Creeksgiving, but in the Platte) that our mutual friends hosted. A few months prior I had gotten out of a 7 year relationship that left me in a pretty bad state for a number of reasons. M was (and continues to be) like nobody I had ever met before, and I can say sincerely that she has absolutely changed my life. The single thing I love most about her is the way she sees and interacts with the world - it's infectious, and as a result, I see her in everything as well. Nothing has occupied my mind more in the three years since more than her, and the South Platte. 

For those unfamiliar with the area, each italicized phrase is a route name in the Platte - most of them being the area mega classics. While I haven't climbed all of the routes here yet, I am slowly chipping away at this list - hopefully one day I will get the requisite mental head game to do the last pitches of Childhood's End, and I'm sure I will have a trip report to concoct whenever that day comes.