Monday, January 19

Eye Spy

I checked out the Spy on the last super weather day as another nice couple pitches of Flatirons rock for Marni and I. Since it was supposed to be 60 degrees again and Marni had the day off for MLK day we got up late and headed up to Boulder to climb.
We started out on the First Flatironette, further North than last time and just angled right towards where the Spy becomes a separate, much more interesting rock.
In case you're wondering how Marni got the pictures, well, I'm just putting in my first piece so a lot of good a belay does until I do that. That's the Flatirons for ya.
The climbing was reasonably easy but nothing special for the first pitch. I ran it out all 60m plus stretch with a few good pieces in here and there and belayed off a BFT and a bomber nut. When Marni got there we moved the belay up to a nicer ledge that was unfortunately just out of reach for me.
The second pitch was money though. Twenty feet off the belay we had a fun rock wall/step to get over and then the Spy becomes a narrowing arete for the rest of the pitch. In the middle it's not more than 5 feet or so wide before falling off on both edges but the holds are always there and most of the pitch even has pro. Aside from one long run out I was able to sink bomber nuts the whole way up. Marni followed and even bootied a stuck #3 WC rock for my rack, sweet :)
We got to the top and had to do the "Jump" which I'd already scouted. It went smoothly for me but I don't think it was Marni's favorite thing. After that it was all downhill to the car and some Ben and Jerry's on Pearl Street mall.

Tomorrow a nice ride and keeping my fingers crossed for Camp Lynda weather...

2 comments:

Stefan said...

Fun stuff. I love the spy - it is such a cool piece of rock!

Marni said...

Thanks for the fun climb. Jumping = not awesome... but thanks for catching me :)