Telluride has long been one of my favorite places in Colorado. A beautiful historic mining town surrounded by towering peaks on three sides, with incredible access to just about any kind of mountain pursuit you may be into. Home to cobble sport climbing, long trad routes, sandstone boulders and two of the most classic ice pitches in Colorado, it’s a climber’s paradise. Throw in quick access to the desert and Indian Creek, and this is about as good as it gets. For whatever reason I hadn’t visited in a few years, and Tracy had never been, so we decided to head down for a beautiful fall weekend in the San Juans.

Town Park sits on the east side of the village and offers camping with a 5 minute walk to main street. It’s also a good spot if you want to check out all the cobble sport climbing at the east end of the valley. Saturday found us getting a late start as we headed up the rough road leading to the Pipeline Wall, a sunny spot on the north side of the valley, across from Bridalveil Falls. We climbed a mellow warmup to get used to the stone, which resembled Maple Canyon, but with smaller cobbles and a more solid matrix holding everything together. Soon we heard thunder in the distance, and some locals mentioned they were leaving, as the wall apparently is not a good place to be in the rain, as lots of stuff can come pouring off the top due to the rotten rock that sits above the good layer. Despite our short time there, we took the local advice and went back to the car.

By the time we got back into town, it was obvious it wasn’t going to rain, but we still had the afternoon ahead of us, so we pointed it south for the Ophir Wall. This massive cliff boasts routes up to 900′ long, with some fun single pitch cragging along the base. It was an easy walk from the car, and we enjoyed several fine pitches before heading back to town for the night.

Sunday we woke to a light sprinkle which soon gave way to a perfect fall day. An earlier start had us back at the Pipeline, and we got to sample a bunch of the routes. They were a lot of fun, though the warmups seemed very old school, with bolts protecting the cruxes and some longer runouts on easy ground. One 5.9 had a twenty foot runout on some 5.7 climbing, hmm, isn’t this supposed to be sport climbing? Despite the somewhat heady nature of the climbing, we had a blast and the afternoon came to an end too soon.

The drive back was highlighted by the changing leaves and snowy peaks of the Sneffels Range. Fall in Colorado, does it get much better than this?

Alrighty folks, get ready to be blown away. The Roaring Fork Climbers’ Coalition is bringing the Reel Rock Tour to Glenwood Springs on Wednesday October 22nd. It’s been getting rave reviews out there, and we’re super excited to be hosting this event. Here’s what you’ll see:

Grand Canyon Walls - Tommy Caldwell & Beth Rodden explore the Grand Canyon for first ascent potential.

The Aerialist - An excerpt about climber/Base jumper/slackliner Dean Potter.

Dosage: South Africa - Daniel Woods & Paul Robinson give a tour of some of the best bouldering in the world in the Rocklands.

Onsight - An exploration of the purity of onsight climbing.

The Sharp End - The newest offering from Sender Films, “showcasing the climber’s who risk everything to do the world’s most dangerous and committing climbs.”

Stay tuned for more details, including where you can buy tickets. Here’s the trailer to fire things up a bit!

Looks our local choss heroes have been featured on Climbing.com with their ascent of the International in Glenwood Canyon. You can read the quick blurb on this site, or head over to Climbing.com for a more extensive article and some great pics.

On the heels of Alex Honnold free soloing Half Dome, Dougald MacDonald thinks that a free solo ascent of El Cap is only a matter of time.

Some helpful tips on how to pose for photos while on a summit.

Have a great weekend everybody!

This is the latest info I’ve been given by someone who is in the know.

The boulders are not for sale, but the parking area is. Fortunately, the parcel of land is in a rockfall zone with most of it also in a flood plane. So it is unbuildable. What the seller is hoping to do is sell the parcel to a rich sucker in Aspen who will buy it and apply the “credits” to increase his/her allowable square footage to a planned monster house near Aspen. That’s how folks get around the Pitkin County square footage limit.

So, in a nutshell, the Redstone boulders are status quo until someone pays 1.5 million for unbuildable land. If the land sells, and the new owner shuts the present access, then we can continue to access the boulders via National Forest, on the dirt road a little closer to Redstone. The boulders are on National Forest land and wont be sold. End of story.

So during my morning reading today I came across a company that is offering guidebooks for climbing areas on your iPod. Just the other day a friend was talking about how he thought this was the future of guidebooks, and now it seems he may have been right. They have a very limited offering for now, it appears to be a local area close to where this company is located, but future plans include guides to:

Castle Hill, New Zealand
Joe’s Valley, Utah
Hueco Tanks, Texas
Squamish, British Columbia
Red Rocks, Nevada
Skaha, British Columbia
Stonehenge, NSW
Mt Yarrowyck, NSW

Basically you download this thing onto your iPod, and then you can scroll through chapters, viewing photos and info for all the routes. It seems like a cool idea, although I have to admit I like the simplicity of a book, that wont break if I drop it or get it wet. Still, I could see this catching on, as more and more people adopt phones like the iPhone, which they might take out climbing anyway, so why not have the guide on there?

Right now they seem to be focused on bouldering, and for each guide, you get:

-Directions
-Detailed overview maps showing the areas
-How to get to each area and all the boulders in each area
-A picture of every boulder, and problems
-Small area maps for quick orientation
-A list of every boulder and its GPS location.

Maybe once they come out with a guide for an area we climb at we can pick up a copy and check it out. Seems like they might be on to something here…