New Years

We headed up to Red Rocks a few days ahead of our planned meeting date, to ensure that we got a campsite. This may not have been required, but was good for peace of mind. After a few months of mostly our own company, we were really looking forward to spending a week with friends.

Brock, Chris, Damien and Jeanette arrived on the 30th. Damien and Jeanette had had a rather epic drive down, and on hearing that water was freezing in our tent most nights they opted to spend the first night in a hotel. The joy of a flexible budget!


Dirty dishes, or ice sculpture?

Chris and Brock showed up well after we went to bed (8:30 or so) and were so quiet setting up that we were surprised to see their tent in the morning.

On the 31st we all headed to Moderate Mecca at Calico Springs. This was a lovely location for midwinter climbing – we even climbed a few routes without wearing longjohns! Yes, we did still have pants on ;)

We had a really late night around the campfire on New Years Eve – I think the stragglers were still up after 10:00! We celebrated New Year’s in some other time zone we figure. It was nice to hang out with a group of friends who share our sleeping habits! During the trip so far, we have easily been sleeping 10 hours a night, sometimes even 12 hours! Such is life when you have no electricity and it’s the middle of winter. It feels like we’re catching up on a few years worth of sleep…

Even with all this napping, we did get a little more climbing in. We did attempted a route called Geronimo, but bailed on account of cold weather (the route doesn’t get sun in the month surrounding the winter solstice). Dave and Brock returned the next day, which was warmer, climbing both Geronimo and Olive Oil. Meanwhile Megan and Chris climbed up Turtlehead Peak – another “rest day” that was more exercise than most of our climbing days!

We did a little more climbing the next day, before the impending storms broke up our party. We headed south again, and our friends headed north.