Day 6 -  Rock Climbing !!

Why Oh Why?

On Day 6, I had scheduled a little bit more adventurous activity.  Since I have hiked 14'ers for several years, one begins to run out of the Easy and Moderate 14'ers and you are left with the Difficult and Very Difficult ones.  Those peaks may call for some technical climbing (class 3 scrambling and more)  instead of just hiking.  Thus, I have been wanting to get some initial experience with rock climbing to better understand and improve my abilities for those future 14'ers.

Oh yea, one little note.  I did not tell Penny about this planned activity, figuring it would be better to tell her about it afterwards.

So, I thought this trip would be a great opportunity to do a full day introductory session in rock climbing.  I found a guide company "Paragon Guides" near Vail that does this type of session.  The Vail location worked great for me since our itinerary already had us out in the Frisco area which is about 30 miles east of Vail.  The guide (Donny) indicated that Paragon Guides  provided everything from ropes, helmets, shoes (if necessary), appropriate instruction, and lunch.  For Cole and myself, we decided to just use our hiking boots which had good soles and good traction

Our Day

We met Donny (guide) at 8:30am out by the Minturn/Leadville (Hwy24) exit and drove about 45 mins to a spot in a valley.  I found out later that the valley was actually the former site of an old Army Mountain and Winter Warfare training base from WWII (Camp Hale).  The famous 10th Mountain Division actually trained in this valley from 1941-45.  The monument that honors the fallen is about 4 miles south on Hwy24 up at the pass.

On the side of the valley was a good rock wall ("Camp Hale Cliffs") for our day's session.  Donny explained that many guides use that wall for their participants.  Don and another guide took us to the top to show us how the routes were roped off and secured to either large trees or rocks.

We then went back down to our gear and sorted out helmets and harnesses.  Donny explained the basic knot (figure 8) tying and "follow through" process for securing the rope to the harness.  After everyone was checked out in their knot tying capability and their harness fit, we headed for the rock wall and routes.

Cole and I, being beginners, started out by learning about hand holds and foot holds.  Then we did 'practice' climbs up 4 feet, then over and across 4-6 feet, and then back down while being spotted.  Next, we roped up and practiced the same thing learning the various commands that would be necessary for us to go up and come down the wall.  Finally, we started our actual climbing up the wall along the established routes.

Here are some pics from our rock climbing session.

It was an absolute blast.  Cole and I had a great time learning rock climbing on the "real thing" and were able to successfully climb 4 of the 4 routes we were able to do.  Looking forward to doing it againi!!!