The Outlaw and the ethics of route evolution .....

Ethics, they even haunt climbers....

Recently.... i placed a bolt in Castlewood Canyon. OOOh, i know I'm such an outlaw. 

Lets face some facts, hard climbing is nearly absent from castle wood canyon, there are one or two great bolted lines and a few Trad moderates,  due to the lack of attention the area receives the standards that are present in other area are not present in CWC. I have found a few wild new age lines just waiting to be climbed.... one of which is  Stratego

put up as a tope rope by Tom Hanson in 1990 it appears to never have received a true lead ascent.

Until a couple days ago, i dubbed the climb the "outlaw" being that it was never truly climbed i feel that a new name should be in order and i also cleared so much rock that it might in fact be a slightly different climb anyway. 

In the next couple months i intend on focusing in CWC to put up hard, committing lines with and with out bolts. 

The upper Crux... very reach

Thanks to Jose, Keith, and Danny for coming with me to all my random projects... 

new routes in the south platte

My friend and accomplice Josh ganged up for a quick mission into Cowboy Creek the home of our 2 year effort to establish some of the south platte's finer climbing. We got shot down on our main objective a tall free standing tower accessed by a 200 3-4-5 camalot splitter, so who just put up two perfect cracks near by... what a shame.. check out the photos...

this was pre climbing routine which ended up going way way to far... that bottle of whisky josh is clutching was emptied, to the last drop.

the tools of the trade, you know the route is going to be a bitch if you need at least 5 number 4 camalots

this is looking up at the second pitch of our intended tower route, it look short in the photo but that is a single 175 foot splitter. BOOM.

our newest addition, a perfect 5.10a finger crack, the seam closes at the top leading to a adventurous runout to the top. so sweet. As for a name...  how about "the green beam" 5.10a

the route below is a perfect but short fist crack to offwidth to pain and suffering death crack... we were pansy's and just TR'ed this one till next time.