Five Fountains

September 15, 2002

After a great weekend spent with just my boys (Sheri was off bagging 14ers – she has the Fever, you see), I took off for a quick jaunt in the Flatirons. Starting at the late hour of 4:30 p.m., I had my doubts about going for the Quinfecta – all Five Flatirons by their East Face routes – but I could always abort after any Flatiron.

I first called this the Flatiron Quinfecta – taken from Hans’ El Capitan Trifecta. Bill Briggs calls it the Five Fountains. Being the speed record holder, maybe he should be the one to name it. I certainly wasn’t the first one to do it, but might have been the first one to name it. I’d done this twice before. First with Trashy and Wayne and we simul-climbed the Second and Fourth Flatirons and rapped off each one (except for the Fourth, which you can jump and walk off). We soloed the First, Third, and Fifth Flatirons, I think. Maybe we roped the start of the First as well. Either way, we moved pretty efficiently, but had a siesta on top of the Fifth Flatiron and completed the trip in 9h5m.

Last year I did it again with Bill Briggs and Buzz Burrell. We soloed everything and moved efficiently, but didn’t run any of it. We finished in 4h5m. A couple days later Bill went back and set the record at 2h16m. I knew I couldn’t touch Bill’s time, but I obviously wanted to take my time under four hours.

I hiked the entire steep approach from Chautauqua to the base of the First Flatiron in sixteen minutes – three minutes slower than the last time I did it. I wasn’t feeling real strong or fast or even that motivated and already had thoughts of bagging this thing after the first three Flatirons. Heck, I rationalize, I don’t have any times for linking up those three. I’m always ready with a good rationalization.

I passed a party on the first pitch of the First and then downclimbed past a party setting up the rappel from the summit. I downclimbed, slowly and hesitantly, off the First. I didn’t feel smooth and my downclimbing wasn’t flowing. I always take things very carefully on the downclimbs as a mistake, with your momentum going down, would be very bad.

I trotted slowly and clumsily down the trail, catching up with a big group of climbers weighted down with heavy packs. Here I broke off into the woods and bushwhacked down to the base of the Second Flatiron. This rock is the most challenging to solo in my mind and I screwed things up to add further stress to my ascent. I went up the Pullman Car – the large block that forms the summit – too far to the right. I had to do some dicey downclimbing and traversed to the left to get back on route. Roach’s route description (he calls this route Free For All) says to traverse all the way to the gully and hike up it a ways before regaining the rock. I think this is aesthetically unpleasing and always hug the south side of the Pullman Car by climbing up a steep ramp system until I can turn the overhang. This section seems no harder than 5.6 rating that Gerry gives Free For All, but protection is pretty scarce here so that is maybe the reason for this curiously disjointed route.

I hit the summit of the Second after 1h7m. I did the short downclimb off the backside and then down the talus and directly across to the Third Flatiron’s East Bench. I passed a couple of climbers descending the trail here. Once at the base of the Third, I was determined to shake myself out of my lethargy. I tried to move fluidly and consistently up the face. Lately it seems like I take a different route up this face each time. I passed a guy after one pitch who was all alone, but was wrestling with a massively tangled rope. I don’t know if he was rapping off or trying to rope solo the route. We didn’t talk but to say hello.

I climbed the face in just under ten minutes, which is a respectable time for me, but I was pretty well rested at the base of the face and not gassed like I am during a time trial. Downclimbing off via the Southwest Chimney took me nearly as long as it took to ascend. My trouble with downclimbing had obviously continued, but there wasn’t much left. The downclimb off the Fifth is very short and the downclimb off the Fourth consists of a single jump.

I scrambled down the south slopes and ramps and up to the Royal Arch Trail. Once I hit this I just hiked up to the Fifth Flatiron. I elected to do the East Face South Side route since it has the best and easiest climbing. I raced up this face in just over seven minutes; arriving on the summit just a few minutes passed two hours. Here I first thought about breaking three hours. I did the calculations and didn’t think I’d make it, but I knew that a concerted effort from the start very well might yield success.

I did the cool, secret downclimb off the Fifth and then followed the climbers’ trail down to the Royal Arch Trail and then down to the base of the Fourth Flatiron. Indeed, this Flatiron is my least favorite. It is discontinuous (as is the Second, but this one more so), the rock is a bit flakey in spots and covered in more lichen than the others, and it is very long. As I started up this rock, I noticed that I had just reached Bill Briggs’ time for the complete link-up. He’d be back at the car now, having a cold one, while I still had 1400 feet of scrambling to go and then 2000 vertical feet to descend.

On the final section, instead of doing the long traverse left to the water-groove crack, I decided to head up more directly via a wide chimney-groove thing. Lower down this was fun with some great, wide stemming, but then I had to pass a few bushes and things got a bit more grungy. I was tiring of this scrambling as well and just wanted the summit now.

I topped out after 2h41m and remembered that Bill Briggs, on his record link-up, had descended from here to Chautauqua in 19 minutes. If I was Bill Briggs, I’d be able to finish in three hours. Of course, I’m not Bill Briggs, I’m Bill Wright, and even if I could do this final descent as fast I’d still be nearly three quarters of an hour behind his time.

I got back down to Sentinel Pass in under fifteen minutes, which was faster than I expected given the steep, tricky terrain involved here. I trotted down the trail and had to push a bit at the end to ensure that I finished under 3h10m. I stopped the watch at 3h9m54s. This is the second fastest time of which I’m aware, but I know Buzz is going to try this again and he’ll surely go under three hours, maybe under 2.5 hours. This outing probably covers about ten miles, 4500-5000 vertical feet and about 60 pitches of climbing, if you belayed all of the ascents and descents. What a different experience it would be to belay this stuff.

Unfortunately, now I want to take my time under three hours. This stuff just never stops…