First of this seasons Mt. Evan’s Epics

Max and Hayden enroute to Area A

I kind of have this long standing relationship with Mt. Evans; it was the first area I ever climbed at in Colorado, my first trip there (October, 2007) I did the hike from the Summit Lake to Echo Lake hitting Areas E-A (which is a blog post of it’s own) and it is home to my longest standing project, Dali (which I have slept under.) Following the madness of the Bouldering World Cup in Vail the majority of the climbers I knew, who didn’t compete were jonsenin’ to pull to down on some real rock. Conveniently, Mt. Evans is located on the way back to Denver/Boulder so it just so happened to be a stopping point for many returning climbers.

Nick Duttle sticking the Dali Dyno with Ease

We arrived semi-late in the day, around noonish so we didn’t exactly start out right. The weather started out decent, overcast and a bit chilly but great for climbing. Wouldn’t you know it, as soon we hit the boulders the snow started to fall. It was intermittent at first, still allowing for some climbing but of course as soon as I was warmed up and ready to hop on Dali it started dumping. So much so that after trying to sit it out for 20 minutes we decided to start hiking out but by the time we got to the ladder warm up we were able to see blue skies coming over the peaks. I was surprised how quickly the boulders dried off once the sun came out. The weather stayed schitzo pretty much all day giving us burst of sunshine and flurries of snow at indeterminable rates which always makes things much more interesting. Classic Colorado weather; if you don’t like it, wait 5 minutes.

My first go on Dali I tried using my old beta which involved a very reach-y foot and I got shut down at the same spot I always had. I noticed someone using some different beta which involved a deep flag off a decent crimp, my forte. This worked much better then the beta I had been using and I got to the last hard move which is a straight forward dyno but after the opening moves I was worked and just couldn’t stick it. *Note to self - Train endurance* Seeing as how I’ve now done all the moves on the problem I am convinced I’ll send it next trip, which hopefully should be sometime this week. On a side note, I only stuck to area A but everything looked climbable. The trails have been improved and are much more noticeable so let’s try to stick to them!

Me on Dali ©David Jones

David Jones aka Lordscience got this great shot of me on Dali. Check out more of his photos here on Flickr.

Tags: Bouldering, Mt. Evans, Pictures