Life on the Road

The last few weeks moved just as quickly as I supposed that they would. Some of highlights of what’s gone on since then include: a surprise meeting with Namgel Sherpa and Thundu Sherpa (Namgel came to the summit of Everest with me and Thundu went with my teammate Wim), Stanford graduation and moving out of my co-op, a train ride with my family from San Francisco to Colorado, my brother’s wedding in Telluride, and reaching the summit of a fourteener with my dad (Mt. Sneffels in the San Juan mountains). Whoa.

            Now onto summer, and the previously mentioned sweet climbing plans. I’m going to spend the whole summer with some friends in a Honda CRV, visiting some of the best rock-climbing spots in the western US and Canada. Trad, sport, or bouldering—we’re going to dig into it all, and experience life on the road.

Matt, Matt, Kevin, and Nathan—the initial crew—met up with me in Telluride after they had road-trip across Nevada and Utah. They were intent on climbing along the way but were somewhat held back by the heat. More from them later.

 On Tuesday the five of us started to drive towards Boulder . . . but once we realized that we were going to drive right past Rifle, one of America’s best sport-climbing destinations, we had to stop. We climbed some of Rifle’s easier routes while we gawked at the number of people there climbing 5.13’s. Even if most of the routes were too hard for me, it felt so good to be climbing again! Maybe we’ll have to return at the end of the trip . . .

We made it into Boulder on Wednesday (yesterday) morning and met up with a friend who showed us some really nice boulder problems near the Flatirons in Chautauqua. 

Today Nathan had to go back home—after dropping him off at the bus station the rest of us headed into the grand Eldorado canyon. Kevin and I warmed up our trad skills by climbing “The Wind Ridge”, a really fun three-pitch 5.6 on the Wind Tower, while the Matts climbed Blind Faith (5.10) across the way. An amazing place . . . there’s so much more here I want to climb!

Tomorrow we’re heading to Rocky Mountain National Park.