12/5/2010
I finally got on some Colorado ice this weekend, and boy is it a change from Washington! I found a partner through Mountain Project (Brice), and we headed out to Black Lake in RMNP to see what we could find.
We met at the Safeway in Estes Park at 07:00, and headed up to the Glacier Gorge trail-head. Probably started hiking around 08:20. A quick four miles on mostly packed trails got us within sight of the lake. We started on "Reflections", supposedly WI3-4, but it turned out to be very easy, and we made short work of it. I think the variation that actually goes at that difficulty was too thin to be inviting, and we passed it by without realizing it.
Across the lake we could see the West Gully. A classic 2-3 pitch line that goes at WI3+/4. It was only about 13:00 by this point, so we decided to see if we could get on it. The flow looked both huge and far away, but turned out to be merely large, and quite close! We were both having real problems with perspective. Everything looked larger and further away than it actually was.
We arrived at the base of the West Gully at 14:00, and I lead up. Unfortunately I've not been training my calves as I should, and just as I began the final 30' crux section they were threatening to explode. So I backed off a bit; built a belay; brought Brice up to finish the pitch, which he did in fine style. Lesson: biking isn't sufficient training for this kind of thing. I'll have to start doing some standing calf-raises or maybe some running.
The next pitch above was a low angle slab of ice. It looked kind of boring, and it was getting late, so we began our descent. We made it back to Safeway where we'd left my car right at 19:00 for a solid 12-hour day. All in all a great day out with a great new partner!
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