8-11-05: Mt. Evans

Scary Arete @ Mt. Evans

We decided to go check out Mt. Evans since we heard so many good thing about the bouldering there. The hike is about twice as long as the hike to RMNP and the weather was looking pretty nasty. By the time that we arrived we thought it was going to rain at any second so climbing was a little rushed. We went up to try Seurat, v8 but it was seeping from some recent rainfall. We went back to where we warmed up and I tried Bierstadt, v10 for a while. I must say that I had a frustrating time on it. I managed to to all the moves very quickly but I fell off the last hard move about 20 times! I kept thinking that my beta was screwed up so I tried all sorts of strange sequences but none of them worked. In the end the beta that worked had nothing to do with the problem and everything with me taking a short walk to clear my head. I came back and fired it.

We then went up to the Dahli boulder and tried the arete on the left side of the boulder (v6?) and Lyn and I both got scared out of our wits. It looked like the last move was a dyno to the top, but with only one spotter and not knowing exactly where we were going to land, we both chickened out.
We were both tired but not willing to quit when, as if by divine intervention, it started to rain on us. We took the hint and got out of Dodge but we got drenched on the way out. We were soaked. The car heater never felt so good.

-Raza