Run Slow, Climb Fast

June 8, 2005

Here's a plan of suspect rationality: get up at 4:20 a.m.; head into Eldorado Springs; run for two hours; meet a friend and speed climb two laps up the Bastille. Now get it all done before 8:30 a.m. Why? is the obvious question. The usual: conflicting desires and committments. I have to train for the Lake City 50 (actually, it's too late to train for it) and I want to train for my Yosemite climbing trip.

I started late (5:15 a.m.) and therefore only ran for around 100 minutes. I ran up the Eldorado Trail a ways and then back down and up the Rattlesnake Gulch Trail and did the loop up there. I was back at my truck around 6:50 a.m. and Ben Hoyt showed up a couple minutes later. He brought me a banana to refuell myself after the run and we geared for the climb. Stefan showed up as well and did some soloing and then some roped climbing with somebody. I saw him at the top of the first pitch of a route on the Bastille as I headed out.

I took my standard Eldo rack, but dropped the #3 Camalot and took two #2 Camalots. I could have done it with just one #2 Camalot and I never used the RP's either. We were going to simul-climb as much as possible and we used my 7.8mm 100-foot rope for the climbing. This is a tad on the thin side for most people when simul-climbing 5.10... I can't argue with that.

Figure 1: The four peaks are the Eldorado Trail, Rattlesnake Gulch Trail and then the Bastille, twice.

All the routes we had planned Ben had previously soloed, so I had utmost confidence in him to be the bottom climber. I'd do all the leading this morning. We started up Werk Supp. I climbed the beautiful first pitch (5.8), then traversed left to climb the cool, Yosemite-style hand crack on the 2nd pitch (5.9). I led both of these pitches in 13m34s. Then I traversed right to merge with the Bastille Crack at the top of its third pitch. I followed the Bastille Crack (5.6) to the summit and arrived 23 minutes after I left the ground. I didn't stop to belay Ben, but immediately started the descent, while roped of course.

Figure 2: The climbing profile in detail.

We didn't even bother to untie ourselves from the rope, but coiled it over our shoulders and hiked back down to the base. Here we found a party of two gearing up for the Bastille Crack (5.8), but they didn't even have their shoes on and had no problem letting us jump on it first. After re-gearing, I started up. I placed one small Alien at the base of the main crack, then clipped the first belay, then one pin on the second pitch, arriving at the top of the second pitch in 5m38s after leaving the ground. I then traversed right into the first pitch of Outer Space (5.10a). This is such a cool pitch and it went a lot better than it did the last time I led it. I stayed more in the corner and stemmed much more efficiently.

I pulled onto the ledge at the top of the first pitch and decided not to continue up the second pitch (5.10b/c) until I brought Ben up. I slammed in a bomber piece and belayed Ben up to the ledge. We re-geared and I led the very cool second pitch to the summit, arriving 1h05m after we started. Ben joined me six minutes later. We coiled the rope, re-racked and hiked back down to the base, completing both routes, base-to-base in a casual 1h19m. Now that was a good morning!

Table 1: Climbing Splits