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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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Jul 11, 2013 - 04:15pm PT
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I'm pretty sure it was the Bastille Crack with Kevin Bein and Bob Harding in June, '70, though it is possible that we top-roped Supremacy Slab the evening before right after we arrived in Eldorado. Back then you could actually camp in the canyon and did so---and I don't recall that we molested any of the locals.
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hamersorethumb
Trad climber
Menlo Park, CA
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Jul 11, 2013 - 04:40pm PT
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Bastille crack Spring break of 92'? We drove out from UNH. Started too late, 3 in party. Finished in the dark, couldn't find the trail back down and so scrambled down through spring snow. Made it back to rental car and discovered that we had dropped the keys somewhere along the way. Loved it!
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tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
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Jul 11, 2013 - 05:58pm PT
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Yellow Spur April 1986 with Charlie Gray. Must have been a tricky move at the start of P1 protected by a red tricam because i remember that. me on top. photo by Charlie Gray.
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hossjulia
climber
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Jul 11, 2013 - 08:07pm PT
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My first route in Eldo was my first time on a rope. Whale's Tail. (I've told this one here at least a few times before)
Did the 2 5.easies, pulling a hold off the 2nd one and making it harder. (Verified)From 5.2 or 3 to a *solid* 5.4. snicker
Next up, the easiest route by Calypso, then Calypso itself. Nice day out for the first day climbing roped up.
I went on to climb Calypso about 20 times, eventually soloing it. (Not that day)
I say "climbing roped up" because I grew up by the Santee boulders and climbed all over them as a kid.
How I got from Santee to Eldo is a whole nuther story
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SicMic
climber
two miles from Eldorado
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Jul 11, 2013 - 11:27pm PT
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I climbed The Hot Spur on the Redgard with Hajny-baba in the '70s. Hard to believe it was the beginning that has seen no ending. Many miles have followed.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jul 12, 2013 - 01:18am PT
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Ruper, around 1964 or so. The crack was an epic slippery struggle. When we got down, we heard that someone had gotten their knee stuck several days (and maybe a thunderstorm or two) before and the RMRG had to pour motor oil down the crack to extricate the jammed limb.
Been back a few times since, including an entire month, but now not for thirty years or so. I loved the place. The rock with its weird sloping strata, the fluorescent lichens, the river roaring in the bottom, the poison ivy...well, not so much that part. I thought poison ivy was an Eastern plant. Who knew they had it in Colorado?
One year Bragg and I drove out to Eldorado non-stop from New York, day and night. We rolled into Eldorado, stumbled out of the van, and did T2. The combination of something like 24 hours sitting in the van driving, followed by the severely overhanging initial moves and then the rest of the route, caused my back to lock up like a vice, and I spent the next day or two more or less continually in a bathtub full of hot water feeling extremely sorry for myself.
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Curt
climber
Gold Canyon, AZ
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Jul 12, 2013 - 02:28am PT
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The Northcutt Variation in the mid 80's, unwittingly believing it was the usual Bastille Crack start and thinking it was awfully hard for 5.7 after getting to the first belay.
Curt
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jul 12, 2013 - 02:21pm PT
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There was some fun bouldering and two hand dynamo (rare back then) stuff over by the Cinch Crack. Bachar was like a wizard looking around for stuff to do. Wish I would have gotten on Wisdom but we went to Horsetooth insead. Then onto the bouldering at Split Rocks. Great times.
JL
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Jul 12, 2013 - 02:32pm PT
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Summer 72, 1st Wind Ridge, 2nd Calypso, 3rd Bastille. Those were all pretty straight forward, until I got on The Bulge, that scared the bejeezus out of me.
Crunch: not the Dakota formation, it is the Fountain Formation, shed off of the East side of the ancestral rockies, the equivalent formation on the West side is the Maroon Formation. The Fountain is substantially more solid than the Dakota, whis is lighter in color and makes up the spine of the hogback at Morrison Co.
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jaaan
Trad climber
Chamonix, France
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Jul 12, 2013 - 02:37pm PT
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Bastille Crack for me on 8 August 1978. First route in the States, too. I'd driven an old VW beetle from Philadelphia to get there. Must get a prize for that...
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Crackslayer
Trad climber
Eldo
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Jul 12, 2013 - 02:45pm PT
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ydp8s that is a sweet graph! where else does fountain sandstone exist in the world?
Seems like nothing else comes even close to the uniqueness of fountain sandstone.
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Jul 12, 2013 - 03:09pm PT
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The front range of Colorado and Wyoming are the only place that that particular formation name exists, flatirons, Red Rocks (where the amphitheatre is) to name a few.
As with many formations, it is more solid in some places than others. That type of rock is formed from and ancient alluvial fan that has been buried and then indurated (squeezed) by overburden pressure. There are many such formations in the world, with varying degrees of solidity and color. The Fountain formation is late Pennsylvanian in age, just under 300 million years old. It is a specific type of sandstone known as an arkose, which generally means it has a higher feldspar content than normal sandstone.
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Don Paul
Big Wall climber
Colombia, South America
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Jul 12, 2013 - 03:55pm PT
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There was a radio interview with Bachar, online somewhere, where he talked about his trip to Eldo. I guess then you could drive on the road through the park, and they drove right by wind tower, etc. looking for the climbing area. "Dude, that WAS the climbing area." I guess coming from Yosemite it would be kind of small. But it's actually bigger than it looks, the Naked Edge must be over 500' which to most people is big.
I think Derek Hersey's first route in Eldo was a solo of the diving board. Crusher or Mic probably knows if that's true.
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SicMic
climber
two miles from Eldorado
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Jul 12, 2013 - 07:52pm PT
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Yeah, Don I think that Derek story is true. Thanks Scott... subduction causes orogeny.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Jul 13, 2013 - 07:59pm PT
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Rodger,
Actually Fowler started by charging a quarter. It later went up
to 50 cents. I remember his truck being blue. He would chase after
you early in the morning, if you managed to get in and up toward
the rock without paying your quarter. Once he saw Layton and me,
and he just smiled and turned around and drove back home.
We treated him with respect, and he liked us, for some reason.
Another time, he was having a chest-butting contest with Breashears,
because David would go to any extreme to avoid that quarter,
even climb way up around the top of the Bastille to get in, and
Fowler's nose hairs were about an inch long (outside the nostrils).
It was intimidating....
As for my post above, I don't think I made it clear what my first
climb was. I honestly don't remember. I think Pseudo-Sidetrack was
certainly one of the first. It's a great easy route, with huge
holds everywhere, but it leads you up and left up over lots of
exposure right away, so it's fun. At one point, if you peer around a
corner to the left, you get the most incredible view of the Naked
Edge. I happened to take that look, around that corner, one day,
maybe the day I first did Pseudo-Sidetrack, and saw Stan Shepard
Bob Boucher on the Naked Edge. No one had climbed the Naked Edge yet,
and there was quite a mystique about it. Boucher was dressed entirely
in green, and Shepard in virtually all red, against the bright
yellow rock.... I had no idea Boucher would be my partner for the
Diamond, a few years later,in 1964.... Those are such fond
memories.... the early days of Eldordo. There was so
much excitement for us in Eldorado back then, everything new, and
everything unclimbed.... To lose Layton recently, well, it's the
end of an era, the end truly of the golden age. Damn, it's painful
just to think about.
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MisterE
Social climber
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Jul 14, 2013 - 12:12am PT
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Psyched to be the next post after Mr. Pat Ament.
It was Anthill Direct in 1993, and I was terrified following. The position was the stunner.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Jul 15, 2013 - 04:13pm PT
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If you were to come to Eldorado and focus only on the hard climbs,
you would miss some of the best climbing on the planet. Eldorado
has perhaps the best moderate climbing anywhere, routes such as
Ruper, where you traverse out over a wild vertical drop, and that
route is 6 pitches. The top three have wonderful vertical
climbing where nice little finger buckets keep turning up.... One
of the best 5.10 routes in the world, in my opinion, is Super Slab,
a gorgeous place to be on any afternoon. It's a strenuous 5.10,
though, and might be bottom level 5.11 in some other climbing
area. And of course the Yellow Spur... it doesn't get any better
than that. I made the first free ascent of the Yellow Spur,
with Royal Robbins, in 1964. It was not too hard
and did not tax us, really, but that didn't
matter. To move up those gorgeous pitches and then the final
near-vertical headwall, with about five hundred vertical feet
below, and the rest of the canyon opening below that, to the river....
I've done that route probably fifty or more times, and it's always
fun in a good wind..., which happens a lot in Eldorado... The
Grand Giraffe is another wonderful classic, with a crux crack
close to 5.10, but the rest just lots of very steep enjoyable
rock. The second pitch is a lovely almost vertical wall..., but
the upper pitches, above the big Upper Ramp, are really superb
vertical climbing with finger pockets and buckets everywhere....
T-2, another hard 5.10 (the overhanging start) is a fantastic
route. Maybe it's best pitch is that first pitch above the Meadow,
and the traverse left, across a vertical wall, to the left-angling
finger crack. I have so many good memories of all those climbs.
Rincon and Over the Hill, also, two of my favorite routes....
gorgeous sandstone almost as clean and good as Yosemite granite....
Rincon has one little 5.11- section at the top, but most of it is
moderate and beautiful. Over the Hill is just like your first
love, something so infatuating and wondrous, well, maybe I'm
getting carried away.
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Patrick Oliver
Boulder climber
Fruita, Colorado
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Jul 15, 2013 - 04:24pm PT
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Jul 16, 2013 - 11:39am PT
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^^^^^^^
Now that's what I'm talkin about! It doesn't get any more iconic Eldorado than that, Pat on T2, in 1972, with the Bastille in the background, almost makes me want to move back there.
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Whitehorse Jeff
Trad climber
Fairfield, CT
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Jul 16, 2013 - 01:31pm PT
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Like a number of others, Wind Ridge on the Wind Tower, on my first trip west of the Gunks, summer of 1971. I had found a partner thru the bulletin board at Culp's Boulder Mountaineer and after getting to know him on a couple of routes on the west face of Castle rock, I led Wind Ridge, then Calypso. Like another earlier poster, I remember belaying near the anchors to Ivy Baldwin's wire across the canyon-- just looking across that wire gave me vertigo. When I returned to Eldorado the next time in 1980 with some French friends (and equipped with Wild Country friends) I was sorry the wire was no longer there, as I had been telling them (the French friends) about it as we drove across country from the east coast.
Climbing last July on a small crag in NH with George Hurley, I raved about Rewritten, which I had just climbed in June three weeks earlier. George said " I think that's one of my routes" to which I replied: "that's one of the main reasons we did it!" Its reputation had preceded it and it lived up to the hype many times over-- like many others here, on the recommendation of local friends, we also used P1 of The Zot to start, and found the whole route superb!
Since my first visit in '71, I've made 6 or 7 climbing trips to Boulder, and continually want to rinse and repeat! So many climbs, in so many places, and so little time to do them!
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