We left for Colorado on the 24th May from London and arrived that evening in Boulder, tired (our body clocks were 7hrs forward) but glad to be off  planes! We spent our first day sorting out the van we bought out here, a 1992 GMC van, a beautifully brutish thing. It was surprisingly easy to do actually, you need insurance, a smog test and then new plates – all do-able in half a day. We were too tired to head out so we rested up and headed to Rocky Mountain National Park the next day.

Our Van!

We headed up to an area called Emerald Lake which sits at about 10,000ft. The walk in was beautiful, about 40 mins fairly uphill and we took it steady to get used to the altitude. The area seemed pretty small but with some good climbs. We warmed up on a nice V5 called The Kind before going to try Wispers of Wisdom, a really cool looking V10. I won’t go into moves but this is a great problem, it looks good and the climbing is fun and powerful. Neither of us managed to do it but I am psyched to go back and finish it. After trying that for a while, we went over to the Large Boulder and tried a V9 called Tommy’s Arete. This was a nice surprise, fun climbing followed by a slightly nerve racking top out! We both managed to do it, with some serious huffing and puffing (the altitude really gets you when you put more than 3 moves together!).

  Dream Lake, on the walk up to Emerald Lake (RMNP)

Tommy’s Arete

The next day we went with Jackie and Chris (who we are staying with) to an area called Wild Basin. This has a relatively flat walk in but we did some boulder searching on the hill so a fair bit of walking! When we settled at the main area it looked pretty disappointing to begin with but ended up being pretty fun. I don’t think it’s the best rock around but it made for a good day out. David and Chris tried a hard looking V12 called Mini Compressor while I spent some time working a steep V10  called Macho Man which is long, with some big moves. Really fun to try, I would like to go back to that one too! At the end of the day we both did a nice V9 called The Hamburglarer which was pretty fun. I would post a picture but we forgot to put the battery in the camera…….

So rest day today and then I think we will head to Mount Evans tomorrow……