30 aught six

Chris Kalous, indisputable hardman and an under the radar legend, got so motivated by Indian Creek's perfect splitter cracks (see photo above) that he did 40 pitches there on his 40th birthday.  Jesus.  Chris sits on the board of a great local climbing organization, Friends of Indian Creek. They help steward the area I hold so dear to my heart.  Maybe their bylaws require him to check out every route on Donnelly Canyon, Battle of the Bulge, and Supercrack Buttress, but when he told me about his exploits while he was jumping my car's dead battery in the parking lot, I was blown away.  This guy's a freaking Ninja.

I toyed with the idea of doing something similarly themed.  It was nice to be younger on this occasion, as even thirty pitches sounded improbable.  How the hell did Chris do 40?  Fortunately for me, my buddy Andrew was having his 30th a few weeks before mine, and he was planning on 30 routes in Rifle.  Problem solved.  But then I realized I had a new problem.  What was I gonna do?

If I'm totally honest, six was probably a more realistic number for me.  Six was going to allow me to hang out, enjoy some lazy time with friends cooking breakfast, tag some pitches, and get back for a family dinner at some cabins we'd rented.  Perfect.  I've been trying to find balance in my life recently, and this weekend I might have nailed it.

Two incredible gifts that I got this weekend, and I've got to share.

My mom hooked it up with a much more advanced camera than I'd previously had, and I'm really excited to share some better photos/videos in the future.

Julia made a book with essentially 30 years worth of pictures, stories and input from the people closest to me in my life.  Thank you.  That shows perfectly why I had to have a 30.06 birthday.

By the way, I have no idea who the woman is in the bottom right.  She was friendly, dinner was family style, and I'd been drinking.  I demanded her presence in the photo.