Over the past few weekends I’ve been able to hike a few 14ers here in Colorado. Last week I hiked Torreys and Greys via the Kelso Ridge route on Torreys. My brother-in-law Fred went with me, along with two of his friends that live in Ft. Collins. Kelso Ridge has some 3rd class scrambling and some great views, and I was able to take some decent pictures. This weekend I drove up to hike Bierstadt and Evans, linking the two together with the Sawtooth ridge route. Descending Evans down to Guanella pass was interesting because it was a bushwack, but I had the opportunity to take some pictures of the wildflowers and even saw some Rocky Mountain Columbine on the descent.

Jason Deugan and I climbed a snow route on Longs Peak yesterday, it’s called The Flying Dutchman and it is a 1,600 foot couloir that begins at Chasm Lake and ends at the Loft, a football-field sized saddle between Longs and Mount Meeker. We started around 2am from the trailhead and hiked about 4 miles to Chasm Lake, in the Longs/Meeker cirque. We climbed the snow sections unroped, opting to rope up for the crux of the climb: a 40 foot section of ice. A short way after the ice crux we were able to remove our crampons and climb up to the Loft on loose rock. From the Loft we hiked around to the back side of Longs and took the Clark’s Arrow route up and around to the Homestretch on the Keyhole route. A short distance and we were on the summit of Longs. We met the three RMNP climbing rangers at the summit who had just climbed Kiener’s Route and then began our descent via the Keyhole. The Keyhole route descends 4,845 feet over a distance of about 8 miles, so we were pretty busted by the time we got back to the car at 7pm. This was my first fourteener and I was pumped to be able to do it via a technical route.

Update: Jason Deugan sent me a few pictures he took of our climb.

One of the great things about the web is it’s ability to bring together people of similar interests. You can find forums on any hobby or topic that you wish, especially if information is critical to the hobby. Climbing is one of my favorite diversions, and one of the reasons that led me to move to Colorado. Luckily, there is a great web resource on climbing in Colorado and around the country, Mountain Project. It is an online database of climbing routes, photos and comments that are user-submitted and maintained. Each user has a page where they can list the climbs they have done, rate them and keep track of their submissions to the site. Something that makes Mountain Project stand out from other online climbing sites is the active development on the site, new features and content are constantly being added and improvements made. You can view my page on Mountain Project here.

What follows after the break is a story that I wrote for my climbing partners to read via e-mail after I had an encounter with a new climbing partner I met online here in Colorado. The events took place in November 2006, and I sat down that night and wrote this story. After I e-mailed this off to my buddies, it got forwarded around to THEIR friends and eventually posted on a couple of climbing message boards. I was out in Eldorado Canyon climbing last weekend and shared a belay with another climbing party who had read this story online - I couldn’t believe it had gotten around so fast. Anyway, here is the story… more…

Monika and I got up early a few weekends ago and took the kids to the hot air balloon launch in Erie. The launch was scheduled for 6am, but everything was running a bit behind and most of the balloons didn’t take off until around 6:30am. Samuel and Benjamin had a good time watching the balloons inflate and take off against the backdrop of the front range, and Monika and I were able to snap a few good pictures. Afterwards, we had a good pancake breakfast in Boulder and went back to our house for a nap.