Lizard Lake

             

              Lizard Lake just outside of Marble Colorado is one of my favorite places to rock climb on the Western slope. The rock quality is not perfect but the zone draws me back over and over. I have had more great days climbing there then I can count. Something about the quirky population of Mable, bigger than life folk tails, my tiny house just a few miles away and Slow Groovin Barbeque at the end of the day keeps me excited on the zone.

                Last week I was joined by a great crew at Lizard Lake including Will Brock, John Nugent, Mario and Audra Stanley. I was a little nervous bringing outsiders to such a remote zone. I feared they would hate on one my favorite places to climb. I’ve see the chossyness make front rangers piddle like pups in their pants. Instead we had a great time climbing all morning at Lizard Lake and then venturing over and up the overgrown trail to the Low Hanging Fruit Wall. The day ended at Slow Groovin BBQ where my new Texan friends confirmed the place has top quality Q. 

Below are a bunch of Pictures the Fort Collin based boulderer, geologist and photographer Josh Nugent took.

Denali 2014

Cloaked Interpretation

Lots of trips to The Black down the hatch and the excitement, fear, and friendship the supernatural canyon stirs up fails to disappoint. With summer temperatures creeping up Jim Gilchrist and I raced over to The Black for one more adventure before high temps shut us down until fall. We decided to try and stay in the shade as much as possible and hoped on Cloaked Interpretation. This route is a link up of two great routes; Cloak and Dagger and Mig's Arete. You climb Cloak and Dagger for the first four pitches before moving right onto a ledge system and climbing a pitch that links the two climbs. This climb is brilliant in that you get to climb the second pitch of Cloaked Dagger, one of the greatest pitches on the face of the earth, as well as the upper stellar pitches of Mig's. As always there is plenty of "adult climbing" as Jim like to say with the linkage pitch being a little adventurous.

Jim on the third pitch of Cloak and Dagger

From just about every belay this is the back drop!

Jim approaching the belay at the top of the pitch that links Cloak and Dagger and Mig's.

Belay Selfie. Who says you can't be in Grad School, work and not get out?

Jim about to tunnel into the Bombay Chimney of the upper pitches of Mig's.

Spring Break 2016- a working vacation

With only roughly 25 days between semesters my spring breaks before the starts of my summer Pediatric course was a little crunched for time but jammed packed with fun, learning and excitement.

After a couple days of sucking up emergency medicine wisdom at the Essential conference Gabe and I rendezvoused at a very unlikely spot, The Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino. Within minutes we were making our getaway from the Vegas Strip in refuge of nylon walls, blowing wind and cactus laden desert. Augmented by the perfectly sculpted cliffs of Red Rocks and its glorious multi pitch climbing paradise.

Although our time in red rocks was brief as usual we got in a ton of climbing. Y2K, The Next Century, Prince of Darkness, and Sour Mash, to name just a few. Gabe has harbored a fleet of shiny BD cams for years and quickly put them to use on his first ever pure trad lead. He was like a gecko on the brown patinaed walls. 

From Vegas I flew to Seattle to co guide a 10 day Alpine Ascents International Mountaineering Course with Devin Bishop guide extraordinaire.  The first 6 days were spent on Mt. Baker is what Devin carefully explained to me was “liquid sunshine.” The final four days the team attempted to climb the Kautz Couloir on Mt. Rainier.