A big thanks to everyone who came out for the film on Wednesday night. We were able to raise over $1000 for the new Glenwood Climbing program!

Today we’ve got a guest blog from Mike Schneiter on the highs and lows of finding and developing a new crag. Enjoy.

Finding new crags in Glenwood Canyon is a bit like playing the slot machines in Las Vegas. There’s a lot of rock, but it’s a big gamble if you’re going to find good, quality stone and come away a winner. The quartzite in Glenwood Canyon is particularly this way, with pockets of great rock and many stretches of horrible choss.

After developing the Dead Horse Crag last year, my eyes were opened to other potential crags on the canyon’s quartzite. A section of orangeish-red, compact stone above the popular Glenwood Canyon bike path caught my attention. Geologically, it appeared to be part of the same band that Dead Horse was comprised of but with greater height and no steep overhangs. One snowy winter day I showed BJ my objective but he sounded skeptical because other rock downstream in that same band looked super ugly.

While my friends chuckled and offered polite ridicule of my intentions to explore more of the canyon’s quartzite, I had great faith that a gem was waiting to be found. One afternoon after work, I loaded my pack and made my way to a gully that appeared to provide easy access to the top. Instead, nasty scree slogging was broken by a couple of steep, awkward boulder problems through steep sections, made more difficult by my heavy pack.

On top of my objective I tip-toed around, over, and in between the stacked blocks of quartzite and carefully made my way to the cliff’s edge. A nice horizontal crack ate up a couple of large cams and provided security as I peered over the edge. The rock was better than I could believe, looking hard, compact and featured with ample holds.

My plan was to establish an anchor and rappel the face to take a closer look and begin the cleaning and climbing process, leaving a fixed rope for another day. My hope to use a tree for an anchor proved unreasonable due to the distance from the cliff’s edge and the amount of loose choss my webbing and rope would surely displace. Unable to find adequate cracks for nuts or pins, I reached into my pack for the power drill. I pulled out drill, bolts, anchor material, and wrench but I reached the bottom of my pack without finding any drill bits. Doh!

I really wanted to leave a rope fixed so that I could make the easy hike from the bottom and start climbing the face, but I was uncomfortable leaving my rope fixed to a couple of nice cams. Hence, I cleaned my stuff and hiked down with nothing gained but a close-up look and a few pictures to share with skeptical friends. Determined to avoid the heinous gully I chose another path and picked my way through scrub oak and a plethora of bushes to return to the bike path.

A couple days later I returned, this time double checking the contents of my pack and taking a better path that closely followed my prior descent path. Over the course of several visits I meticulously cleaned, brushed, climbed and bolted a number of lines.

Always working by myself, I had yet to lead any of the new climbs until I lured my wife out to the cliff one afternoon. Highly skeptical of the crag that I was jokingly calling the “Crag of the Century” or “Quartzite Wasteland,” she happily belayed me on four first ascents in one afternoon. Climbing the routes herself, she surprised even me by declaring a couple of the long routes as true classics.

Afterwards, we celebrated with delicious burgers at Glenwood’s old school drive-in, the Charcoal Burger, the inspiration for the name of my favorite route. It was there under the fluorescent lights that the crag developing process had come full circle. It all started with the idea of finding good quartzite in Glenwood Canyon, continued with careful looking up at the many walls, entailed many hours of hiking, cleaning, brushing, bolting and climbing on the new routes, and culminated in one afternoon of first leads and big smiles with burgers in hand around a picnic table. And it was there that another cycle started when I said, “so the other day I saw this section of quartzite cliff…”

So a couple days ago I got the developing itch and headed out to investigate a cliff I had wondered about for some time now. The setting is superb, and the rock appeared to be rather featured and climbable. It actually looked quite good and unique. So I set an anchor on top and rappelled down to investigate. I looked for a place to sink the first anchor, but every swing of my hammer brought a sickening, hollow thud. The rock sounded horrible! I decided to investigate further down the cliff, maybe it was just funky at the top. No dice, the whole thing was a hollow, flakey mess. I moved my anchor and rapped down another line. Same story here. At this point, it became apparent that I had been a victim of the sucker choss. What’s that you say, never heard of sucker choss? Then perhaps its time to clarify the different kinds of choss you can find out there in new-routing land.

Super Choss
This is the worst of the worst. Unfortunately, these cliffs often lie in obscure locations, so it’s not easy to tell the quality without some kind of uphill struggle, usually up a nasty gully. Only when you arrive at the base, sweaty and exhausted, is it apparent that this rock is crap. No way any climbing is taking place here.

Sucker Choss
Unlike Super Choss, this stuff looks AND feels good. It can be oh so devious. It gets your hopes up, you start envisioning lines, where anchors should go. You come back with all your gear in a really heavy pack, and you rappel down to set the first anchor on what will undoubtedly be the hot new area crag. Then you discover the “rock” isn’t much more than a thin candy shell over the harder stuff underneath, which you would need 16″ bolts to hold it all together. This can be a tough emotional blow to recover from, and may make you want to give up on this whole exploration gig all together.

Chunky Choss
Now we’re getting somewhere. Chunky choss is the stuff that at first glance looks a little questionable, but with the right amount of TLC produces some fun climbing. Think the blocky walls at Rifle, or some of the stuff at the Narrows. There’s undoubtedly loose rock to clean from these climbs, but once you speed it on its way towards the ocean, the routes make for enjoyable climbing. Sometimes Chunky Choss requires some vision to see what the end product will be once the dust clears, and many of the uneducated may dismiss such walls upon first glance without further thought.

Splitter Choss
Ah the Splitter Choss. The stuff of dreams and legend. This is the rock that looks good and climbs well, once it’s been cleaned up, of course. Prime example of this? Maple Canyon. The walls at Maple are a mess of loose cobbles before they get manicured into the sport climbs we all love and enjoy. After the proper love and care, most of the cobbles stay in the wall (most of the time). The climbing is enjoyable, and while still technically choss, the climbs definitely have that quality that some would call splitter. Thomspon Creek would also fit into this category.

Any questions?

What can I say, the skiing has been damn good recently. Unfortunately, I took a high speed fall about a week and half ago that tweaked my knee/lower leg pretty good. I’ve skied on it twice since then, but decided I should just rest it and not do anything stupid. Rock climbing seems to fall into this category.

Yesterday I headed out with my friend Mike to a low key zone he has been quietly working on for a couple years. Its in a beautiful setting and the rock is superb. At some point we’ll let the cat out of the bag, but for now it’s better to keep it unknown. We got out to the cliff early and had a super productive day. After warming up on a couple of the established routes, we dropped some ropes down potential lines. One turned out to be a really cool trad route up a corner with some thin but good gear in places. The other turned out to be one of the finer lines on the cliff. A hard start leads to steep climbing up an arete, followed by techy moves at the top. Two more new routes went down, a short but in your face steep route, and a nice face with a couple of interesting cruxes.

It was fun to get out and do some climbing. I am probably in the best shape of my life aerobically speaking, but the climbing fitness is no where to be seen. It can only get better, right?

Ah the Frying Pan. This is one of my favorite crags, and it’s discovery was truly a privilege. After our success with the Narrows and Coal Creek, we were on a roll. It seemed as if the entire area was a blank canvas of undiscovered cliffs just waiting for us to poke our heads around the corner. It was with this optimism that Luke Laeser and I parked near the Reudi Dam one spring day in 2005 and started walking up hill.

The crag is obvious when you are coming down the road from the reservoir, and we figured others had surely gone before. Asking around, however, no one knew anything about it. We checked out the upper cliffs through binoculars, and could see what looked like good stone and even some splitter cracks. Alright!

We left the car and just started going straight up the steep hill, passing a lower chossy crag along the way. We soon came to a boulder, and found that the rock was quite good! There wasn’t an abundance of holds, but it was solid. With this promising piece of info, we continued higher up the hill and soon came to the streaked walls of the Skillet. We could barely believe our eyes. Here was a crag that looked like a cross between Eldo and Mill Creek, and it was in our backyard! We walked along the walls, envisioning the lines. “That looks like a good warm up. That looks hard!” We moved up along the cliff, and were even more amazed as the walls continued to rise.

As we drove back to Carbondale that day we knew we had seen the future, and it was good. With the help of others, most notably Jeff Jackson and Josh Gross, it’s quickly become one of the top crags in the region. Look for full beta in the new Western Sloper guidebook, coming out in June.

Guest blog by Mike Schneiter.

“Quartzite climbing in Glenwood Canyon?” The question is usually accompanied by a quizzical stare of disbelief. For the vast majority of climbers in the Roaring Fork Valley, climbing in Glenwood Canyon consists of clipping bolts on the limestone of the Puoux and trad climbing on granite at No Name. The towering limestone/quartzite walls of Glenwood Canyon are a beautiful site for those passing by on Interstate 70 but are mostly looked upon with horror by climbers as a towering jumble of ugliness.

I had always wondered that in all that vertical real estate and over 10 miles of canyon, surely there must be some redeeming rock. If you do your homework, you’ll find stories of climbing in Glenwood Canyon from the likes of Layton Kor and Michael Kennedy in the 70s and 80s. Their stories don’t draw you out to the canyon in search of lines. With route names like Death Wish and descriptions of rock so bad that it wouldn’t hold gear, pin, or bolt, it makes you think that their hard-earned lessons should save you the trouble.

A few years ago, I was out on a long trail run, exploring parts of the canyon I had yet to visit. The most popular trail in the White River National Forest is the Hanging Lake Trail, with over 100,000 visitors a year. Veering off that trail is the Dead Horse Trail, featuring tight undergrowth and loose rocks, but with a nice climb to the top of the canyon and on to the Flat Tops.

Minutes off the Hanging Lake Trail I was struck by a short, nice looking wall of quartzite. The quartzite appeared to be compact and solid, with horizontal bands running along it. One of the many walls met the trail and it was there that I laid hands on some nice stone and started wondering.

Now, flash forward to the spring of 2007. Our climbing plans are falling apart as light rain, cloud cover, and cool temperatures threaten. Talk turns to doing some exploration or trail work at new crags to make the best of a gloomy day. Although my memory is hazy, I suggest that we investigate the wall at Dead Horse Canyon that I glimpsed years previously and have never been able to get out of my mind. Until you actually take a rope and a rack to a wall, you never know if it’s good or not.

Of course, it’s not as tall as I remember, but the rock is better than I remember and the slight overhang of the wall has kept the rock dry. I reject a proposal to hike to the top and throw a toprope down on what appears to be an easier offering. “Let’s do it the way Kor and the boys would have done it.” Once on the rock, I realize that we’ve found a true gem. The rock is hard with perfect incut edges and the movement is delightful. And, with that, the climb Homage was born and a mini-revolution of Glenwood Canyon quartzite climbing was started with the Dead Horse Crag.

Now, about exploring the rest of that quartzite in Glenwood Canyon…

You can stay on top of all Mike’s explorations in choss land over at Chossmonkey.com