Choss Wrestling and Rockfall
On Sunday, Western Colorado was drenched in a heavy downpour. I had a few choices; go climbing in a dank, nasty cave at Rifle, hang out inside all day, or go work on some “projects” at area cliffs that we’ve been developing. The projects seemed like a sensible idea because there are always numerous little things that get put off because we’re too busy climbing and don’t want to spend our time with. The biggest project, that has been looming ominously for some time now, was a giant block perched on a slab with two climbs around it. Knowing that granite weighs approximately 170 pounds per square foot, this block easily weighed 2,000 pounds and it was clearly detached from the wall and hanging on by who-knows-what.
Usually, a block like that would be sent with glee into terra firma. This time, however, a steep gully sat below the climb, feeding directly on to the highway below. Last year, we bolted and chained the block to the wall, but a couple 3/8″ bolts couldn’t ease our fears that this massive block wouldn’t end up ruining someone’s scenic drive in the mountains. In the last year we had brainstormed how to get this block to a safe location but we long had serious questions about the strength of any system we could make. It’s one thing to catch a 200 pound climber, quite another to arrest the fall of a 2,000 pound block. I’ll give more details when I get some pictures ready, but this past weekend we dealt with the block, wrestling it into a safe location.
The next day I was sipping my coffee and spending some quiet time reading and relaxing before work when I heard a large rockfall in the manky sandstone cliffs across the valley from our house. It had been raining all night, as well as the day before, so things had definitely been loosened up. Of course, I anxiously went to our deck and looked across the valley at the cliffs and gullies, scanning for falling rock. I left for work earlier than normal that morning, just to see if anything had made it to the road, but it had not.
I sometimes wonder what it is about rockfall and choss wrestling that is so alluring. Perhaps it’s the feeling the nature is constantly at work with unfathomable forces. A 2,000 pound block is heavy. Once it was on the ground, there was no budging it. Over Labor Day weekend, my wife and her friends witnessed the massive rockfall that came through the Stettner Couloir on the Grand Teton. They heard a horrible rumble and then a cloud of dust enveloped them that was sick big and thick that they thought it was fog. The cloud was over 5,000 feet tall, going above the summit of the Grand and down below the Platforms. They quickly went up to the Moraine Park to see if anyone was hurt and found a car-sized boulder in the middle of a tent pad, thankfully with no tent beneath. And, they talked to guys who were awaken from a nap in their tent by the rockfall who quickly ran behind a boulder. Their tent was sliced through by rocks and the rocks also went through their sleeping bags and pads and into the ground. Read on with a Jackson Hole News and Guide article and a story on Alpinist.com about the rockfall.
The rockfall on the Grand and my recent adventures in choss wrestling are an eery reminder that as an AMGA instructor once told me, “all mountains are in a continual state of erosion.”
