chossmonkey.com Blog

When you spend time in “choss land” you’re bound to take some lumps, or at least have some punches thrown at you. Such was the case this weekend on a brief outing to one of our local choss wonderlands. In Glenwood Canyon there’s a beautiful, steep wall of quartzite that rises for over 500 feet from the base. It’s immediately next to the Dead Horse Crag, a new crag we developed last year that yielded a number of great climbs on solid rock. Last weekend I went out to the area seeking a break from skiing and winter to test out some new rock in the warm sun. This weekend, I returned for more climbing and exploration of new routes.

Sunny times on a big, ominous quartzite cliff in Glenwood Canyon.

We repeated the 60-foot tall 5.8ish crack climb that we established last week and begun toproping some of the steeper offerings on the wall. Instead of finding warm sun, we were greeted with cloudy skies and snow flurries. As the clouds began to break up, BJ was aroused from his belaying duties by an ominous “detaching” sound. He looked up the steep wall overhead to see a large chunk of rock making its way to terra firma. BJ yelled and I instinctively held tight into the wall and made myself as narrow as possible. Almost immediately I heard an ominous and scary sound of falling rock piercing the air waves, culminating in a large “whoompf” as it came to a stop. I looked down to see a couple of large rocks in a bomb hole in the snow with the remains of a scrub oak tree littered about, a mere 20 feet from where BJ belayed.

The widowmaker in its final resting place.
A hurried exchange between BJ and I about what just occurred preceded my speedy climb to the top of the route to clean our gear from the anchor. I couldn’t stop looking up in anticipation of more rockfall as my heart tried to bound out of my chest from the adrenaline coursing through my veins. After returning to the base BJ and I quickly packed up our gear from the relative safety of the overhangs above but still peeking out to spy for more falling choss. We were making our hasty retreat from the wall when another “whoompf” sound interrupted the silence, somewhere between the two of us. BJ asked if I saw the source of the sound before taking off in a run to escape the wall that now seemed to have it out for us. I couldn’t help but look into the soil and snow for signs of the sound but I sheepishly stuck to the base while heading for safety.

After excitedly talking about the events, we agreed that a lesson had just been learned. Stay away from big, chossy cliffs with loose, overhanging rock during the spring thaw! Now safely out of the way, the sun had decided to grace us with its presence, thus making for a pleasant climbing day and allowing me to finish a project from last fall, One Hold Shy.

Not only did the experience remind us of an important lesson but it also gave us a fitting name for a new climb, The Choss Strikes Back!
Check out BJ’s version of events (albeit shorter) and a neat picture of climbing at Dead Horse at his site, SplitterChoss.com.

I’ve been slacking big time, in a way. You can’t totally blame me because I’ve been making the most of my winter time, chiefly skiing. 10K+ of vertical today and 42 days in the bag so far. Not too bad for a working stiff. Lately I’ve been trying to cram in some uphill training in anticipation of the 24 Hours of Sunlight, an event that has participants ski up and down the mountain without a chair lift. I did it last year solo but this year I’m not feeling as prepared. Of course, it’s hard to prepare for a race of this nature when we’ve had an endless amount of  powder days. Who wants to train on a powder day?

Anyway, I might be motivated enough to get back on the blog rage. I’ve got some good stuff in store and it may be fitting for me to get back on track after getting my first outdoor rock climbing day in this weekend. Of course, it dealt with choss, but good choss. Since last spring I had been eyeing lines on a massive quartzite wall in Glenwood Canyon, right next to where we established the Dead Horse Crag. I dragged my reluctant wife along to belay who thought we were merely going out to clip bolts at a local sport crag. She just doesn’t understand the desire to explore new rock. Lucky for me, it was sunny and warm and she was comfortably situated in her Crazy Creek at the base as I tiptoed my way up. I’ve really fallen in love with the Glenwood Canyon quartzite. It’s fun climbing on horizontal bands and there’s so much to explore. This should be a great, fun-filled year of climbing.