Sharks Tooth Trip Report
A couple of months ago, I decided to get (back) into rock climbing. It seems like a good way to get outside when there's no water, and I like the idea of practicing up on all those skills you need for big mountains. The weeknights at the crag have been going well, and Boomtown, Baxter, and I decided to gte after a more serious climb on Saturday, June 9th.
We left Denver at 3:45 and were hiking a bit before 6:00am. The first difficult part of this expedition was the nearly four hour approach. It involved lots of talus-scrambling and some snow climbing. I left the two ice axes I was supposed to bring in my basement, but Boom brought his so we were able to cut steps and make our way up without too much trouble.
Eventually, we reached the base of the monster climb, changed into climbing shoes, hung a pack off a high cam to avoid it getting eaten by marmots, and started climbing. Our intended route was the NE ridgewhich consists of about five pitches of exposed 5.6. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones with that idea, and there were several other groups in the area including one pair directly ahead of us. They were climbing pretty slowly, but had gotten a jump on us time-wise.
Unfortunately, that meant that we had to either climb beneath them or take another route. We cruised up the first (long) pitch a little to the left of the standard route and had a little State Of to discuss our plans.
While sitting on a great ledge and enjoying the view, we noticed a little plume of smoke on the horizon and wondered if it might be a fire. This is setting up to be a rugged year for fires in Colorado so we figured there was a pretty good change that there was some burning out near Loveland.
Our choices were to either climb underneath the jokers ahead of us or go off-route into a kind of gully and hope that we could avoid too much rockfall. The problem with gullies is that rocks tend to fall down them and the problem with climbing under other climbers is that they often knock down rocks. We decided to cut left into the gully to avoid the group above us. The climbing wasn't supposed to be too difficult (if memory from the guidebook proved correct) and we thought that we might be able to pass these others and get back on-route above them.
Several hours of fun climbing followed. It wasn't terribly difficult, but was definitely longer than any of the regular routes. The mental and physical aspects of this type of climbing are not to be underestimated. Up around 12,000 ft there is noticeably thinner air, and when you start to have several hundred feet of exposure beneath you, the various protection becomes your best friend.
That said, we did quite well for ourselves. Our goals for the day included trying to climb more efficiently, and as a team we were slicker than snot. Our rope management was huge, and we used a new anchor system that was both speedy and bomber. Boomerang and I both have a bunch of new gear and we were able to sew the whole climb up with cams. We also had decent rappel anchors made up of old pitons, chockstones, and nuts sunk deep enough that they are never coming out.
Crimp Strength did all the leading so Pamola and I had plenty of time to chill and look at the scenery. As we went higher, the smoke plume on the horizon also grew. We could see it rise up like a widening column and then blow off to the east. The plains started to look hazy. At one point, the bro (pictured in the top photo) looked over to us and said "hey guys, did you see that fire?" At that point the fire was pretty big, and we had been watching it for the last several hours. I guess tunnel vision in the mountains can be bad. It seems both counter intuitive and dangerous to be so focused on the rock that you don't look at anything around you. The scenery is pretty incredible and you need to keep at least one weather eye open.
It was interesting to climb in a new place on different rock. This climb had lots of moss and lichen, but the holds were solid - none of the polished slopers you run into at North Table Mesa.
The time flew by on this trip, and we didn't end up making the summit, but we did get to relax for a few minutes on a nice spot up near the top which included some of the hairiest exposure I've seen. Look forward to another TR when we go back and crush all the way to the top.
The rappel out was fun, long, and mostly uneventful. We then scrambled, glissaded, and hiked our way back to the car, arriving at about 10pm. As it turns out, there is only one place to get food in Estes Park that late. Baxter predicted that it would be weird, and he wasn't mistaken. We were too tired to talk, but it didn't matter to the Russians bowling or the weirdo in a suit in the VIP or the stoned teenager serving us while cranking dubstep. Very little mattered to us either and we ate up, drove home, and went directly to sleep.