End of Days: Part 2

Some years the ice-climbing season just vanishes a pile of cash left on a table the POOF gone. I noticed kestrels looking to roost in a flicker nest box I nailed to our utility pole surely raptors fornicating and eating every vole on the property is incompatible with mixed? Better to set said skunk up on the bar the season is toast unless the alpine bug bites, its just no good anymore...

This is good. Seasons have a way of hanging around too long. Already there are unbelievably bright orange Italians slippers in a brown box on the front porch when I get home from Neurology. They are bright, sleek and European (like my car) and hint at long airy boulder poblems on a perfect Colorado day.

After all, there must always be a few of those...

End Of Days

I always prefer to end the season with a project something that lends closure to the winter by giving some inkling as to how and if I have progressed at all. This past winter some guys I know hand-placed a line of bolts right of Hidden Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park an odd boulder-problem type line engineered to surmount a prow so unusual for a mixed climb. The lads worked it a bit then didn't word reached me interlopers via top-rope had laid siege time to take matters into one's own hands.

My first day out I try to on-sight but forgot my glove bag due to last minute gear-carrying reassignments. A cold day to go bare knuckled not so much the cold as my fear of getting cut. I had my tools stacked up on the crux pretty tight but had trouble getting my body position correct to go up for the sloping key hold I tried repeatedly but to no avail.

Back in the gym the lab as it were I practiced the dead-arm crank that seemed requisite for the move so a week later Simone's beau Vito, Cormac and I drove back up loaded for bear. This time I had had two days off from work felt rested the sky azure blue beyond comprehension three lads wandering in the mountains got lost (thought we did anyway) found the climbing did HF Vito giddy with his climbing.

Last year I had Cormac with me for the Svengali send and as before I went right up making all the clips dead-armed the crux lip to set up the move which now seemed rather forthright. Just as quickly it was over stuck the ice stemmed over happy to have the screws there then we pack hurriedly haul ass back to town as Cormac has lacrosse practice.

Cormac has Vito's camera shoots B&W stills which Vito tweaks so the image above was born a man his son his daughter's beau all out in a Mini Cooper ripping around the Rocky Mountains with sacks of kit all on the last of a winter's day not the hardest day but my day, finally...