Climbing in Colorado: Garden of the Gods

Over break, I went to Colorado to climb with my friend Doug. We didn't get out climbing as much as I would have liked, but we did hit a few good areas: Garden of the Gods, El Dorado, and the Flatirons, outside of Boulder.

Garden of the Gods is a collection of unique red sandstone formations a la Sedona, sheer rock walls rising out of the sand. It is just due west of Colorado Springs, on the way to Pike's Peak.















It looks absolutely lovely, and there is a Falcon guidebook that suggests that it is eminently climbable. Um.............. yeah. I should have checked rockclimbing.com first. Oops. Chossy rock, manky or nonexistent pro.

We did do one route, Window Route, a 5.2 labelled a three-star classic. It is situated on the face and ridge of a gorgeous rock formation called Three Graces. Now, for those of you not familiar with climbing vernacular, 5.2 is translated as "really easy." Most people would do it without a rope. Me, I like safety, so I prefer to rope up. And a three-star 5.2? Where else ya gonna find that? What a great warmup!





I've never before had a 5.2 kick my ass. I'm almost embarassed to say it. But, truth is truth - and the truth is, I backed off from finishing it. Something about the unprotectable 30 foot runout over a ridge followed by a few stout bouldering moves (again, unprotected) to bellyflop over two successive sandstone fins, to try to find the (hidden) anchors on the opposite face of the fin. And, oh, did I mention manky pro, and a likely groundfall from about 50 feet?

Hm. Yeah. I dunno, might have been off-route :) i'm a bit famous for that.


Directly after we crawled down the chimney between the fins of the Three Graces to retreat from the route (kinda fun, see pic), Doug tried to lead up a 5.7. Again, it was not, in fact, a 5.7. We growled at the rock, and decided to bail on the Garden in favor of ElDo - figured that it was still very early in the day, if we drove up there we would skip the heat of the day and still make good use of daylight to tick off a few routes on better rock.

Regardless, the Garden is stunningly beautiful, and we had crystalline weather.

More on ElDo, the Flatirons, and other colorado adventures later. Right now I have to be good and write an essay for a scholarship application :)