Weather...

I got back from my trip to Lake Como with Michael's family, where I successfully climbed Little Bear with Gabe. I was really glad to get this one out of the way, since Little Bear is usually considered one of the hardest and most dangerous 14ers. It was also a lot of fun, especially since we were able to rappel down "The Hourglass," which is probably the most challenging part of the mountain.

After that, I headed to the Crestones (part of the Sangre de Cristo range) where some epic fail started to happen. I met up with a girl named Jamie and we climbed Humboldt Peak on Wednesday, 1 of 5 mountains we intended to attack from a single base camp at the South Colony Lakes.


Scott came up Wednesday afternoon to climb with us Thursday and Friday. Thursday we had planned to climb Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle, but it rained continuously from about 4 PM the afternoon before until 4 AM that morning, when we needed to start climbing. We figured we shouldn't try to climb, as the ridge traverse between them is a bit technical and the rock would be wet and slick. As it turned out, nobody we saw going up the trail all day was able to climb the Crestones because of the weather. While we were sitting in camp, I introduced Jamie and Scott to the fantastic game of Scrabble and they both hated it.

It rained again all Thursday night and into Friday morning, with fog covering the mountains all morning. Again, the rock would be too slick and we wouldn't be able to see far enough to do any route finding. That makes 2 frustrating days of no climbing. To console myself, I came back up to the Sawatch range where the climbing is easier (basically just hiking) and I'm more confident I can climb in less than perfect conditions.