Top Ten in a Day

October 10th, 1999

Yesterday Hardly and I climbed the Matron in 10:26:33 car-to-car. Oh, we took a rather unconventional approach.

This adventure was inspired by two individuals: Gerry Roach and Buzz. Burrell. Gerry Roach, Seven Summitteer and Peak Bagger Extraordinarie, wrote the definite guidebook to Boulder's Flatirons. In his book he lists his Top Ten routes which are sprinkled from one end of the Mesa Trail to the other. The routes are mostly long (7-12 pitches) and fairly moderate. The hardest route is rated 5.7 and that route is only one pitch long. I had never heard of Buzz Burrell before this summer when he got some publicity for running the Colorado Trail (480 miles) in record time. That type of adventure was only modestly interesting to a climber such as myself. But then I checked out his adventure resume and was blown away. Buzz is also a fast and bold climber and has done the Grand Traverse in the Tetons and some amazingly fast car-to-car times for the three Tetons. He also was the first person to conceive of doing Roach's Top Ten routes in a day. He did them solo in 15 hours and 15 minutes. Hardly and I wanted to test ourselves against this record.

Nine weeks ago I fell 75 feet onto my back which, not surprisingly, broke along with a rib. I was lucky to survive the fall and out of commission for too long. When first able to hike and climb, three weeks ago, I was restricted to easier routes and used this time to explore the Top Ten link-up. At the time of the accident I had only climbed five of the ten. I completed the ten routes last weekend and now were going for the record.Hardly has only done eight of the ten at the time of our attempt. Buzz Burrell told me that the Flatiron Top Ten Link-up requires months of preparation to learn the routes and the best way to link them. Heck, we didn't have time for such frivolous preparation. We were just going to go for it.

We hadn't done much planning on how we'd linked the routes and would probably do a less than optimal job, but didn't want to invest much time in such matters. I wasn't in very good shape given that I've only been able to exercise for three weeks, but I wanted badly to make up for lost time. I wanted to make a statement about my recovery. Just finishing this feat would do nicely.

We met at Neptune's at 6 a.m. and drove over together to Chatauqua Park - the north end of the Mesa Trail. We'd do the entire day in the same shoes: our Five Tennies. We both wore Camelback packs stuffed with water and food. Hardly carried a small rack and I carried a 9mm 60m rope on my back. At this time of year we had exactly 12 hours of daylight so we both carried a headlamp. We were ready. It was 45 degrees out. We left the car at 6:27 a.m. wearing shorts (the weather called for 80 degrees today), long sleeve capilene over a short sleeve capilene.

The first route is the East Face and North Ridge of the First Flatiron. At 13 pitches this would be the longest route of the day. It is rated 5.6 and quite runout to begin with. We decided to solo this route. It took us 20:35 to get to the base of the route. We didn't run a single step on the flats or uphills and only trotted a tiny bit on the downhills. I questioned whether I could just hike for 12+ hours straight and knew that any running would make things worse. When we topped out after 30 tiring minutes I told Hardly that Buzz has climbed the First Flatiron car-to-car in 37 minutes! Hardly said, "And we're trying to break his record?"

As soon as we hit the summit, we set up the rappel and went down. When I hit the ground I started towards the Third Flatiron while Hardly rappelled and coiled the rope. No use in me standing around and I was slower on the downhills due to my bad ankle. Of course I was slower on the uphills also, but that was due to lack of fitness. It took us 18 minutes to rappel off and hike over to the start of the East Face of the Third Flatiron. We then climbed the 8 pitch routes in 13:43 - a fast time for this route. We rapped off the back in only two rappels due to our 60 meter rope and Hardly immediately started up Friday's Folly (one pitch 5.7). This was the only route in the Top Ten were we didn't have to hike. Hardly had never climbed the route before. It took him 5 minutes to lead it and I followed in the same time. This is a fabulous, steep route. Three down, seven to go.

We descended south and bushwhacked over to the Royal Arch trail. We took this to Sentinel Pass and dumped our packs as we'd be returning here. We humped straight up hill to the scene of my accident on Green Mountain Pinnacle and climbed the West Chimney route (5.6, one pitch) on it. The approach from the Third Flatiron only took us 34 minutes and we both climbed
the route in 6 minutes. We were trying to do as many of the first routes in under an hour for the approach and climbing combined. So far we hadn't failed.

Back down the long slope to the packs we went. Then we continued on the Royal Arch trail to the Royal Arch itself. Hardly had never been there before and was surprised the Flatirons harbored such an impressive arch. From here we went cross country over to the saddle between Stairway to Heaven and Satan's Slab. We descended the gully east of Stairway to Heaven
to the base of the route. Once again we dropped our packs since we'd be returning. This approach took us 37 minutes. We soloed the easy Stairway to Heaven (5.4, 10 pitches) in just under 17 minutes and then downclimbed off the summit and back down the gully to our gear.

We now hiked east out of Skunk Canyon to the Mesa Trail and headed south to the Mallory Cave trail. Once there we turned onto it and climbed west to the Porch Alley climber's trail. Here we dropped the packs again and just took the rack and the rope as we headed up the long approach to the Back Porch. We simul-climbed this 300 foot route in 15 minutes with me leading. One of our sub-goals for this day was to lead any climb that we hadn't led before. I only needed to lead two: the Backporch and the Pellaea. The approach to this route took us forty minutes so we just barely got under an hour for this route.

We had done the first six routes in 4 hours and 13 minutes. I had eaten three PowerGels up to this point - not enough. We returned to our packs and retraced our steps to the Mesa Trail and headed further south. We dropped into Bear Canyon and began the laborious climb up the other side and then up the even steeper Fern Canyon trail. I was starting to bonk and fell further and further behind Hardly. I ate a Cliff Bar and had some more water. We dropped our backs at the Shanahan Trial junction and continued up Fern Canyon to the Pellaea. I was totally whipped and fading fast, but tied into the lead rope and set-off. This approach had taken an hour.

Here we past our first party all day. It was easy to slip by them by climbing further to the left - on the edge of the rock. We actually took the same path as we did when we first climbed this route a couple of weeks ago. The other party stayed more towards the center of the face. This route has a couple of hard friction cruxes if you go this way. The route is supposedly
rated 5.5, but I felt the friction we did was 5.6/7. It took us twenty minutes to simul-climb the four pitch route and soon I was rappelling off the top. I took the rack and headed down while Hardly handled the rope once again.

I was in a bit of trouble at this point. I was seriously dehydrated. On the long hike south on the Mesa Trail, I ate my sandwhich and drank most of my remaining water. Yet I still felt quite weak and moved slowly. I carried one of those new Motorola radios so that I could get in touch with Hardly's girlfriend, Judy. Judy was meeting Homie at the South Mesa trailhead at 12:30 p.m. and they were going to climb either the Maiden or the Matron or both. We agreed to turn on the radios at 12:30 p.m. so that we could check on each other. I flipped my on a bit early and at 12:27 Judy called in. She was waiting for Homie in the parking lot. I told her we had seven done already. She was quite surprised and promised to cal back when Homie got there. We'd keep in touch via these radios for the rest of the day.

We got to the water trough on the Mesa Trail which is where we'd leave the Mesa Trail for the last time. Above us was the Fatiron and the Maiden. We had hoped to get water out of this trough and treat it with the iodine we carried but the water looked so horrible that we passed on it - hoping that we could survive on our meager supplies. The hike up to and the climb of the Fatiron were very tough on me. I just had no energy and got out of breath after relatively little hiking/climbing. We hadn't stopped moving all day long, but not I needed to take short 15 seconds rests every minute or so. We had a slight route finding problem and ended up climbing straight up and over the Fatironette. We soloed the 9 pitch, 5.4 East Face route in about 30 minutes.

We rappelled off the back and made our way over to the Maiden. Hardly would lead this route also as he had never climbed the Maiden before. We checked in with John and Judy via the radios and they were just about to start of the East Ridge of the Matron. We simul-climbed to the Crow's Nest and then set-up a belay for the crux traverse pitch. Hardly led the high, 5.7
variation to the traverse and set-up a belay at the tree on the other side. I followed and Hardly led off again on the Walton Traverse. Hardly ran out the rope, but didn't quite make the summit. I climbed through to the top and set up the rappel. We have to thank Mark Oveson for giving us the beta that a single 60 meter rope was sufficient for this rappel.

Once down from the extremely overhanging and exciting rappel, I led back over the first three pitches to our packs. Then we hiked over the ridge and down into Shadow Canyon. As we stumbled down the steep slope towards the trail, my car keys fell out of my pack and into a boulder field. It looked hopeless to retrieve the keys and I told Hardly that we'd just leave them.
Hardly was not to be deterred so easily. He wormed his way into an impossibly tight slot in the boulders and I fed him a constant supply of various sticks so that he could retrieve the keys. After a few minutes of effort he met with success and we were off again.

We hit the Shadow Canyon trail and followed it down to the stream. We had been out of water since we got down from the Maiden and we filled my Camelback with water from this stream and treated it with iodine. We wouldn't be able to drink it until we were done with our last climb, but it would make the hike out more enjoyable. We left out packs at the junction of the Shadow Canyon trail and the climber's trail to the Matron and hiked up to the North Face. This steep, 5.6 pitch is one of the best in all the Flatirons. Hardly and I simul-climbed the four pitches to the summit in a red-line effort of 16 minutes. I was so tired. We rappelled off the back and found John at the next belay station. Judy had rappelled off the wrong side on the second
rappel and was stuck. The rope didn't reach the ground. So we ended our day by rescuing the damsel in distress.

At the base we took off without waiting for John and Judy. We'd see them at the trailhead. We hiked out at a decent pace by nothing extraordinary. We couldn't break ten hours and I was too wasted to trim the time any further. It took us 55 minutes from the summit of the Matron to get to the trailhead. We slumped down on the bench and removed our shoes and socks. Everything hurt on me, but just from fatigue. Now a few more weekends like this and I'll be back in shape.

You think that climbing the Top Ten routes on the most perfect autumn day imaginable that other parties would be an issue. Surprisingly, we passed only two parties and one of those were our friends out to meet us. The classic routes of the Flatirons still offer great scrambling and solitude.

In summary, we probably did covered 15 miles. With the downclimbing of the Maiden, we did exactly 60 pitches of climbing. We gained (and lost obviously) 8,720 vertical feet. I started the day weighing 173-174 pounds. Afterwards, when I got home, I weighed 164 pounds. This is certainly one of the reasons I bonked so badly, but the alternative was considerably more
weight which would have made us slower and hence needing even more water. We had broken the record by almost 5 hours - a reduction of one third. All routes had been led and two were on-sighted.

So, was this the highlight of my weekend? Not even close. On Saturday my four-year old son Daniel, playing in this third soccer game and never having even kicked the ball in a game before, scored his first goal. As soon as it went in he turned and ran across the entire width of the field into my arms. As he ran, he said, "I scored that goal, Daddy!" His joy was so complete. As was mine. I nearly cried.

So, less than 1/4 of the time was spent climbing up the routes.