A Comedy of Errors

It was supposed to be a great day.

Not only was it my birthday, but we also had a friend coming in to Denver to visit and climb with us, and our day started with the best gluten-free pancakes I’ve ever had.

But things never go exactly as you expect.

We started by heading to Lumpy Ridge in Estes Park. John and Andrew picked out a ‘link-up’ climb, and I have to admit that the idea of it made me a little nervous. It was five pitches of moving between a couple of climbs, utilizing the hardest portions of each one, and trying not to get lost in the process. Have I mentioned that multi-pitch trad climbing makes me a little squeamish?

John with a portion of Lumpy Ridge visible in the background

We made the trek out the wall, but just half a mile shy of a 3-mile approach, we realized that we each thought that someone else had brought the trad gear. There was no way we could climb without it. I offered to run back to the car, not realizing that a leisurely stroll in one direction is nothing compared to a hilly, 5 mile run in the midday sun. By the time I was stumbling back toward the wall, I was so deliriously exhausted that I got lost twice, forcing me to backtrack for half a mile and then bushwhack up a steep hill.

When I finally found my way to the wall, I thought it would be smooth sailing for the rest of the day. However, the first climb we hopped on had so much rope-drag that Andrew could barely even pull the rope up in order to clip any draws. Eventually, we rigged up a system where I took over the belay while John climbed up partway to ease the drag at the overhang. One crisis averted.

Andrew trying to climb despite the rope drag

We moved over to the originally intended link-up route and it was a giant mess right from the start. When climbing multi-pitch with two people, the first person leads the climbs, and then hooks into the anchors at the top of the pitch in order to belay the other person up (then repeat on each subsequent pitch). However, it’s a little more complicate with three people. We had one person lead, while also dragging up a second rope. Then the other two people climb simultaneously on separate ropes. This resulted in some inevitable issues with ropes tangling, overcrowding on belay ledges, and trouble dealing with directionals (draws hooked partway up a climb to direct the rope when the climb traverses sideways on its way up).

By the time we reached the top of the second pitch, dark clouds rolled in and thunder started booming across the valley. Valuing our lives, and coupled with the fact that one of the ropes had managed to become completely stuck about 50 feet below our belay station, we decided it was time to bail.

But bailing from multi-pitch trad isn’t easy. If you are too far off the ground, you can’t actually reach the ground by rappelling down. And since there are no bolts in the wall, you have leave your own personal gear jammed in a crack, keeping in mind that cams run from $50-110 each and it’s risky to trust your life to only one piece of gear. Fortunately, it seems that we weren’t the only people to have bailed from this spot, as there was already 5 cloth slings slung over a jutting rock (which, in their various levels of fray and sun-damage, we only partially trusted).

After reinforcing the set of slings with one of our own (one of them is bound to hold, right?) and untangling a mess of ropes, cams, and slings, we were finally ready to rappel down… but the rope didn’t quite reach the ground. Instead, it just barely reached a flat portion of the rock about 30 feet off the base of the climb. This required us to do a semi-sketchy down climb down the last portion in order to reach the ground.

Andrew on the slightly sketchy down climb we had to do to get back to the ground

Of course at this point, the rainclouds had completely disappeared and we were looking up at a clear blue sky. But we all agreed that there had been enough adventure for one day and we were just lucky to be unhurt and on the ground.

So the day involved a few challengess, a great workout, and an unforgettable adventure.

And you know what? It was a great day.