Rocky Mountain Gravity

It's hard to argue with the beauty of Rocky Mountain National Park. After heading up to boulder in the Park after work yesterday, I say the quality of the climbing matches the setting. Too bad, then, that my day ended so poorly.

Richard Lee and I raced up for a few hours of bouldering after work, and I was really looking forward to it. The only climbing I've previously done there has included ropes and hours of slogging to get to the wall. With just a crash pad on my back, shoes and chalk stuffed inside, I chased Richard up the trail and into Chaos Canyon. Chaos is a huge talus field on the valley floor, and the climbing is on perfectly sculpted rock shaded by looming rock walls above.

It seems like a playground for climbers, and as you boulder hop through the jagged stones, a new line to climb pops up around every corner. There's hardly enough time to grab all the holds that look so inviting, making our four hours of daylight seem all too short. Richard and I met another three friends in the talus, and decided on a blitzkrieg tour of the area classics.

After warming up, I tried a problem called Autobot. Essentially a miniature route, Autobot climbs out of a pit and up into the alpine breeze. From start to finish, it's perhaps 20 feet long....plenty for a bouldering problem. When you grab the last hold and heave yourself onto the top of the rock, Hallet Peak greets your gaze. The holds are ocassionally small but never brutal, and it's modestly graded V5.

From there, I went over to Tommy's Arete, perhaps one of the best problems I've ever tried. A touch harder than Autobot, "Tommy's" hugs an arete and calls for tough moves between good holds, heels pulling for added levitation. I worked on the moves but couldn't link them all together in one go, but was so excited to keep the tour going that we happily packed up to find more gems. The sun was starting to dip, and Erynn was hoping to head to a different area called Emerald Lake that held another good line. Three of us packed up and headed towards Emrald, leaving Richard and my buddy Blake back in Chaos.

The same grade as Autobot, The Kind sits above a beautiful alpine pond and starts out on good holds, but moves towards smaller and smaller grips before reaching the lip of the boulder at about 10 feet. Erynn had tried the moves on a previous trip, as had Bart, the other guy I was with at the time. Erynn and Bart each laced up their shoes and gave the holds a few pensive tugs, dropping down to the crash pads below with each attempt. I liked the looks of the problem, and studied the sequence they were using in hopes of doing it on my first attempt. Confident enough, I pulled my shoes on and threw some chalk on my fingers.

The first move is a reach up and right from a big starting hold, and from there, you tic tac your hands and left heel up a rib of rock. Quickly, I found myself at the section Bart described as the crux, but things felt good and I kept pulling through. I made one final thrutch up for the lip, and as I grabbed it, felt the rush of excitement that accompanies doing anything on the first try. I heard shouts of congratulations from below, and rocked my right foot up and onto the lip so that I could mantle over onto the top.

The next thing I knew, I was looking down at the top of Erynn's head, but without the typical sensation of boot rubber or fingertips on the rock. Shit. I was falling off.

In an instant, I gasped but was on the way back to Terra Very Firma. The crash pads were still under the crux, as no self respecting climber could fall off the top. Worse yet, Bart and Erynn had no reason to assume that I'd fall, so they were no longer looking up with ready hands to brace my fall. I flew past Erynn, narrowly missing driving her into the ground like cartoonish rebar. Landing feet first on a big, flat rock under The Kind, my momentum carried me out again and over another small ledge. Again, thankfully, onto a reasonably flat spot. So many of the landings at Chaos were precisely that, chaos, so I was lucky to be at Emrald when my fingertips decided to magically release from otherwise perfectly servicable crimps.

The fall happened so fast, and I scampered back up the ledge to take a seat on the pads. I assessed the damage and couldn't see any bones sticking through the skin, but I felt a pretty onerous pounding coming from my left foot. A good mile and a half from the car, my hike out was going to suck. That much I knew.

I eventually hobbled back to the parking lot, my gear divided between the other climbers. Once Richard and I made it into Estes Park, we found some ice to try to slow the swelling, and my foot has been in the same frozen state since.
It happened about 14 hours ago, and my appointment with the doctor is this afternoon.

Christ. I'm hoping he tells me it's just a bruise and I need a few weeks to heal. That's the best case. I don't want to even start to think about worst case.

I'll post again today with the results and prognosis. Wish me luck.