In addition to the Sprague's Pipit adventure (which can be read here), this was another very very fun weekend. On Monday, we decided to get me out and do my first multi-pitch climb, and we needed a little more gear. Slings, more locking carabiners, everything we'd need to belay and rappel for the 205' route we planned on sending. More on that later...
While at REI buying climbing gear, I realized that I was sick and tired of my cruddy plastic "practice pedals" my bike had. They're the reason I fractured my tailbone last November, and they're the main reason I had a huge lack of confidence in general and rolling over big stuff at high speeds while on trails. I needed wider pedals with metal studs that I could rely on. I walked over to the pedal rack, looked for the cheapest set I could find, looked at the reviews and was pleasantly surprised. These 20 dollar pedals I had in my hand had excellent reviews, and it is exactly what I needed. As soon as I got home I grabbed a wrench, took the old, studless, untextured, beat up pedals off as fast as I could and slapped the new ones on. Thursday was the first day I had time to get out and test them out on a trail, so after my 8am lab wrapped up at 10, I got home, threw my bike in my car, and headed up into the Poudre to hit a trail I'd never hit before.
Hewlett Gulch is a place I've birded twice, but never walked much more than a mile into. The first two miles were fun, fast, flowy, and a good little test to see if my feet would slip at the slightest bump. Once I reached the big climb, just about 1000 feet of elevation gain in another 2 miles covering a dozen switchbacks, big step-ups, and a lot of loose rock. Once at what I now like to call the "false summit", I looked left and saw nothing but downhill, which was exciting. Cruising this section of downhill I noticed it got *much* steeper going into a gully, with a deep rut to my left and a near-vertical drop to my right. Already at a speed of no return, I dropped the right line, and slingshotted up into the even steeper uphill, only to be stopped by a massive rock directly in the middle of the trail. A few minutes of uphill later, I made it to the real high point, and knew I was in for some very nice downhill. I didn't know that it would be a mile and a half of 20-30+ mile per hour flowy singletrack, and you know I enjoyed every second of it. I've never flown so fast on a bike across that kind of distance, hitting a top speed of 32mph. The speed came to a *very* abrupt stop when the downhill got steeper and turned into a rock garden with consecutively bigger drops than I've ever taken in a row... As I made it down, I did think to myself "this would be awesome if I had a full-suspension bike", but carried on through the next few miles of more speedy singletrack through the gulch full of beautiful yellowing willows and cottonwoods. Super fun, and gave me much more confidence to know I can now rely on my feet much more than every before.
Friday was the big day for the multi-pitch climb. As soon as Finn and I got out of our last class of the day at noon, we started driving down to Golden, CO where our desired crag sits. High over the mouth of Clear Creek Canyon lies the Tiers of Zion, a slabby crag Finn and I explored briefly on our way home from Crested Butte a few weeks prior. "Don't Rock my Boat", a 5.7+, 205' 2-pitch route cuts higher than any other route on Mt. Zion. Finn led the first pitch, 95 consisting of a nice granite rib meeting up with a wide ledge, and a fun, balancy vertical section to top it out onto the "Promised Land Ledge". I followed, and led the second pitch, 110' starting with easy slab, meeting up with a large overhanging blocky boulder problem to get up and over. Up and over the boulder, I noticed how the entire block is sort of detached from the rest of the face, but not in a dangerous way; just detached enough for it to fall off in like 700 years. After that it was a little ways of easy steep climbing up to the anchors, and a fantastic view of the canyon. I set up my belay for Finn, he climbed up to the anchors, and we enjoyed a delicious piece of pumpkin bread he made the day before. Looking down, it was really cool to see just how high off the base of the cliff we were, I'd never climbed anything this big before, so it was just pretty cool to experience that. That being said, 200 feet isn't much in the grand scheme of multi-pitch climbing, we're looking into 500', 600', and 1,500' routes across the front range to eventually do.
Rappelling down was really fun too as I'm used to being lowered to the base of a climb by whoever I'm being belayed by. Now it was all in my own hands; all three of them... Funny... Back at the bottom, we climbed one more route, an easy 5.8 with a cool crux move, just in time for the rain to roll in. After that, we just headed home. Super fun way to start the weekend.
Glossing over Saturday as I did a whole other post for that, Sunday was pretty chill. I liked Hewlett Gulch so much I had to do it again and drag Finn with me. Sadly my watch died, so I couldn't track the exact speeds I hit and how long it took us to complete the whole trail, but I know for a fact I hit higher speeds than Thursday. I got some GoPro footage of the ride that I can upload to Youtube and link here later. Very fun, and a nice trail I can come back to if I have a couple of hours to kill, at least before the snow ruins everything...
Water break at the "false summit"
