10/5/2003

One thing I have to say about Colorado, the oranges sure do have plenty of seeds. Ok, my experience is limited to a single bag of oranges which probably were not grown in Colorado, but I think that is enough evidence to draw a conclusion. Honestly, each and every slice of each and every orange in that bag had about five seeds. Not five seeds per orange, but five seeds per slice. Maybe fifty seeds per orange! You may pity me or not -- your choice. However, you must pity poor Lauren. She was often in spitting range while I ate those oranges. It wasn’t pretty.

Sorry, getting a bit ahead of myself here... back to the beginning... On Saturday, 10/4, I spent the day traveling to Colorado. Arrived in Denver late in the day and drove to Amy and Charles’ home in Denver. Amy, Charles and I used to climb together regularly back when I lived in Alexandria and they lived in Baltimore. They have just moved to the Boulder area and have a beautiful condo (with guest room!) on the west edge of town. Stunning views of the early morning sun hitting the flatirons.

Early Sunday morning we drove to pick up Lauren at the Denver airport. Lauren and I started climbing together way back when she was but a waif of a freshman at Cornell. She graduated and left Ithaca in ’01, but we have been able to get together at least once a year to climb. Lauren lives Miami -- not exactly a Mecca of climbing -- and so she has been eagerly anticipating this trip (in a waif-like, anticipatory way).

So Lauren arrives right on time. We are only slightly delayed leaving the airport as we attempt to explain to the parking lot attendant that the little ticket we received when entering the lot was now permanently a part of the rental car since it made a trip down the tiny little gap between the dashboard and windshield. Quite surprisingly, he was unimpressed with our obviously honest explanation. Next time I do it Grand Theft Auto style -- drive right through the gate with my Uzi blazing.

Finally getting away from the airport, we head south to Colorado Springs. There we find our first climbing destination: Garden of the Gods. GoG is a small park filled with wild sandstone formations. Most of the park visitors are tourists, though there is a fair minority of climbers. Climbs are approached with a grueling 60 or 90 second walk along a paved sidewalk. Our first climb of the day is Montezuma’s Tower. One of the park’s classic climbs, this tower is 120’ tall, 80’ wide and about 4’ thick. “Climb it before it falls over” is the motto for this climb. We did the standard route up the north fin of the tower (5.7) which is two pitches to the top. Could do it in one pitch, but rope drag might be an issue.

An interesting sidebar to this climb... shortly after I started up the climb people began to gather around the base. Now you are probably thinking, “they just wanted to watch your studly climb, Jeff.” As logical as that might seem, that wasn’t the whole story. It turns out that a young woman had survived a disease which was expected to be fatal. So all of her friends and family were gathering for a celebration of her life. There was food, music, and a generally happy atmosphere. After we completed the climb she went up to the summit. Her way of giving Mr. Death the finger. All things considered, it was a very nice way to start the trip. And they gave us cookies. Cookies with M&Ms baked inside.

Between the airport and driving and everything else, it was already starting to get late. We had time for one more climb. Our first choice, Potholes, was occupied as were all the climbs on Red and White Spire. We ended up on Sliver Spoon (5.6) a fun single pitch slab climb on the east side of the park.

Once the four of us had finished the climb it was time to head back to Boulder. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner. I don’t really remember what we ate, but I’m sure it was coated with Charles’ special “hunger sauce.” Seemed like we dumped a jug of that over every meal we ate on this trip.

Next Day