Telluride Rocks

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?