Rewritten

While adventuring in Colorado, Nikki and I took a break from sliding on snow and sucking thin air on 14ers to rock climb in Eldorado Canyon, a legendary crag infamous for its scary trad routes, runout gear placements, and old school grading.

We climbed Rewritten (5.7), an Eldo classic that was first climbed in 1967. The six-pitch route ascends the 500-foot Middle Buttress with a spectacular, airy finish on Rebuffat’s Arête. Nikki and I were led by our partner-in-climb Goran Suleta, a certified Bosnian badass who wakes up at the buttcrack of 4 a.m. to backcountry ski in the Rockies and dine on 45-degree couloirs for breakfast before heading to his day job as a specialized medical equipment technician.

Goran is a technician on the rock as well—he hadn’t climbed outdoors in months and was gung-ho to lead the route off the couch because he “wanted to get scared a little.” Don’t let the 5.7 grade fool you—Eldo trad climbing is just as old school and sandbagged as our home fright fest of Seneca Rocks. The initial 5.6 pitch involved small nut placements and delicate climbing in a shallow dihedral, and kept Goran on his toes in more ways than one.

Nikki cleaning up the first 5.6 pitch of Rewritten.

The top of the second pitch pulled over a blunt bulge that had Nikki cursing her small stature. While at the belay, we enjoyed watching a brave soul struggle up a steep 5.10d corner while his partner shouted encouragement from a hanging belay. Nikki and I shuddered at the thought of being in their climbing shoes.

A lead climber fights his way up some steep rock on a 5.10d pitch as his belayer shouts encouragement from below.

The crux traverse to open the fourth pitch is an airy, heart pounding affair that leads to a superb, vertical hand crack, and the belay provides the best on-route photo op.

Nikki looks on as Goran sets off on the pitch four traverse.

The Rewritten money shot.

 

Goran working his way up the impeccable crack and face of the fourth pitch.

 

Nikki followed the pitch with style and grace while I huddled in the cold, windy corner and shot photos. The contrast of neon lichen on red rock against the backdrop of classic Colorado mountain scenery had me thinking about starting to save for a wide-angle lens.

Nikki Forrester: Official Rewritten belay champ.

 

Nikki heading out on the crux traverse.

 

Nikki working the hand crack.

 

Looking west toward the Rockies.

Those thoughts ceased as I began dancing my feet across the delicate traverse and slotting my hands in the impeccable crack above. Goran combined the last two pitches, the first of which ascends the runout knife edge of Rebuffat’s Arête, to present us followers with the headpoint crux: downclimbing the detached top of the arête and stepping over a madly exposed gap to the final headwall.

Nikki dancing her way up the exciting knife edge of Rebuffats Arete.

Normally, the arête is done as the fifth pitch, leaving the short headwall as the sixth and final pitch, thus eliminating the need for the poorly protected step-over move. But that would have been boring, and we all howled like wild wolves as we precariously picked our way up the arête, cleaned the gear, and tiptoed over to the perceived safety of the 5.6 headwall. My tail is still between my legs a little for not tying in to the sharp end for at least one pitch, but while experiencing an Eldo sandbag firsthand, I found myself repeatedly muttering, “Thank God I’m not leading this pitch.”

Looking down from the heady exposure of Rebuffats Arete.

The route tops out on the small spire of the Middle Buttress and offers breathtaking views of the southern portion of the Flatirons to the north, Boulder and the high plains to the east, the towering southern side of Eldorado Canyon, and snowcapped 14ers of the Rockies to the west. Although the summit is quite exposed, an easy scramble down some boulders leads to a walk-off descent that meanders through the pine forests clinging to the brilliant red and green Eldo rock.

Looking north toward the southern portion of the Flatirons.

Colorado coiler makers.

On our descent, Goran shared his Eldo climbing stories, and pointed out a striking 5.11c arête that he said probably gets free-soloed ten times a year. The speed record (car-to-car) is held by two madmen who ran, climbed the route, descended, and ran back to the parking lot in… 25 minutes. Which is about the time it took me to write this blog post. I’ll leave it at that.

/by

Faces of White Grass

Welcome to the Nordic skiing wunderland of White Grass, where the snow is farmed and the smiles are infectious. While the icy wind may whip throughout Canaan Valley, it’s impossible to strike a scowl in this magical realm.

4,400 feet up on top of Bald Knob, a prominent feature of Cabin Mountain, a hidden oasis in a thick grove of red spruce beckons the tired and weary. The Bald Knob shelter is perhaps one of the happiest microcosms in the Canaan Universe—it’s a place where the snacks are tasty, the drinks are hardy, and the birds eat right out of your hand.

 

In the lodge, the soup is steaming and the light is warm. Although the skiers are some 1,100 feet below the oasis of the Bald Knob shelter, their spirits remain as high as they were on the top of the mountain.

/by

Rime & Reason

A few weeks ago, one of the seemingly continuous freeze-thaw cycles that have plagued yet another Mid-Atlantic winter passed through my home in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. The skiing here has become as fleeting as the change of seasons, and blades of grass poking through the diminishing snow cover relayed the message that I would not be lacing up the cross-country skiing boots this day nor the next.

But a low-hanging fog shrouded the tree tops above our A-frame cabin in Davis, and temperatures in the mid-teens inspired me to head into Canaan Valley in search of rime ice. When higher elevations become enveloped by stratus clouds—heavy fogs below 6,000 feet—conditions are prime for rime. This ephemeral phenomenon occurs when water droplets suspended in fog freeze on objects. While snow tends to accumulate on the tops and sides of trees, a rime-bearing fog will ensconce every conceivable surface, crafting an icy rendering of the landscape through which it passes.

As I drove up and over Canaan Mountain, I saw and then entered the frost line—the precise elevation demarking the boundary between the ordinary and the extraordinary—and was energized by the high-speed tour through an otherworldly landscape. I stopped to pick up my good friend Frank Slider at his home in Canaan Heights. Every blade of grass, every shrub, every spruce needle was encrusted in a silvery coating. After cresting the peak and heading down into Canaan  Valley, the frost line on Cabin Mountain came into view. On cue, our jaws dropped—Frank’s jaw twice the age of mine—at the striking sight of the landscape before us. It never gets old.

We pulled in to White Grass and layered up, ready to head to Bald Knob on foot. The nearly 1,000-foot ascent from the 3,335-foot lodge to 4,308-foot summit winds its way through oak and maple forest and transitions through beech and striped maple into the yellow birch and native red spruce forests that characterize the West Virginia highlands. The frost line became visible in the crowns of the beech trees about half-way up Cabin Mountain; it crept its way down the trees and was at eye level as we approached the Round Top shelter at 3,960 feet.

We took a breather at Round Top; I poured some bird seed in my palm and patiently waited as the delightfully domesticated black capped chickadees of the White Grass Realm perched on my fingers and politely pecked seeds one by one. As we continued up Bald Knob Trail, the forest became dominated by rime. While the hardy flora atop Appalachia’s bosom can resist many things—weather, disease, time—they appeared peacefully submissive to the rolling tide of the icy fog. Encased in fine ice, the air completely still below the summit, the forest appeared to be cryogenically frozen; a landscape in collective homeostasis until the energy of rapidly vibrating molecules calls upon it to breathe once again.

At the top of Bald Knob where the bones of the mountain lie exposed, the rime ice seemed to be alive. In open areas where the fog is densest and winds carry the most force, staggering ice formations resembling subterranean crystals protrude from branches, growing toward the winds that create them as if resisting the force of the storm. When the bone-chilling cold permeated our layers and overpowered our awe, we descended the mountain, passing through the frost line. Now hundreds of feet below the frozen wunderland atop Cabin Mountain, the warmth returned to our bodies—the fog would not claim us as it had the forest. But the forest is far more resilient than a human. I thought of how many rime icings have frozen the realm atop Bald Knob; I thought of how many more were to come.

I also thought about the atmospheric conditions which paint the picture. The beauty of rime ice can be as fleeting as the weather systems that create it—a rise of one degree or the opening of the clouds but for a moment can erase nature’s painting, returning the medium to its more common forms of liquid, vapor, and gas. When the next heavy fog rolls atop a cold mountaintop, drop what you must and venture into the rime-covered forests and meadows. The magic that awaits is all the reason you need.

/by