New Years in Colorado 2004

By: Matt Talley

 
I flew out of Little Rock on the 30th of December after spending Christmas with my children and mother. Mark flood picked me up at the Denver airport around 5:00 that afternoon. We dropped my stuff off at his place and went into Golden for pizza and a beer at Woody’s Wood Fired Pizza. After eating we went to the climbing gym that Mark frequents in Denver. Flood had an auto accident on his move out to Colorado and has had a shoulder and wrist surgery. He had to lay off climbing for a while so that he could heal. Everyone that climbs with Mark has heard for months “…I’m so weak. I won’t be able to climb much with you boys, but if you pull a rope behind you, I could Jumar up…” and similar tales of woe such as that. He is such a fucking sandbagger. He was climbing strong in the gym: Leading 10s and working 12s. I know that he was just waiting to humiliate us all on one of the trips planned for this summer. True, he wasn’t climbing as strong as when he left Arakasas, but not by much.

I dropped Flood off at work the next morning and I headed off to hike a bit to help my lungs acclimate to the thin air. I hiked the Dinosaur Ridge trail and got some great shots of Red Rocks Amphitheater. I picked Flood up about 5:30 and we headed to Boulder to do some shopping at Neptune’s Mountaineering. I needed some gear for our planned snowshoe outing and Mark loved the place. In addition to being an outdoorsman’s candy shop and toy store, there are displays covering every wall of historic climbing and mountaineering gear as well as glass top cases of failed gear and explanations of how and why they failed under stress. We got there about 20 minutes late, imagine that...

Kara Kanigal, another climbing buddy once from Little Rock, had invited us to her place for a little New Year’s Eve gathering, so we stopped by Mark's, got changed and headed to her place. She had a great little condo that sat just under Golden Cliffs and her boyfriend, Trent, had been working on the place a bit. He did an outstanding job on the slate floor tile in the entry and kitchen. Anyway, the party was fairly quite. A group of Trent’s friends from college were in town to ski and they were all pretty laid back. We are all getting so old! Everyone turned in just after midnight. No loud music, no broken furniture and no drunken naked debauchery. Even with the harsh Champagne, it was great to see Kara again.
 
 

Mark and I woke up late the next morning and nursed hangovers a bit. We made the drive to Eldorado Canyon State Park around noon and we got in parts of three routes on the canyon walls before darkness started to fall and the temperature dropped by 15 degrees. We were supposed to meet Kara and Trent to see the third Lord of the Rings movie, but they caught a matinee, so Mark and I went by ourselves. Great Movie!

Again, the next morning we got a late start, but Neptune’s was open when we got there. I spent way too much money while there. Oops… I picked up a kick-ass Arc’Teryx soft-shell jacket, mittens and some really nice
(and cheap!!) GorTex gaiters. We left from there and headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. The area that we had planned to snowshoe was closed because of icy roads, but a trail system near there was open. We parked at the Sprague Lake Lot, geared up and started walking the trail. Before I got to Colorado, Mark had bought a new pair of Tubbs snowshoes for himself and we had borrowed a pair of Trent’s for me to use. The snow wasn’t all that deep on the WELL worn trails and both of us kept having the crampons on our shoes bottom out the rocks and gravel of the trails. After a brief discussion we decided to break our own trail and do some off trail, backcountry touring. It was a fantastic idea! We got into 2-3 feet of fresh powder, there were stream crossings, mountain views, trackless snow and peaceful silence. About an hour and a half into the hike, we ran into one of those huge tubular steel bear traps/cages with semi fresh meat hanging in it. It was at that point when we decided that we had gone far enough and we started back to the parking area. We only got turned around once on the way back and found the truck well before dark. I had such a good time snowshoeing and I’m going to buy a set when they go on sale this summer.

Kara and Tent invited us back over to their place that night and we had spaghetti with squash noodles (yummy!), brownies and we watched a DVD and teased one another. Kara had a nasty, face first yet graceful, fall while skiing that day, so she caught the brunt of the teasing.

 
 

Saturday we morning we picked up Kara at her place and ate a big ol' mountain breakfast at a hotel across from Woody’s in Golden. She was supposed to go skiing with Trent, but her head hurt from the fall the day before and she pussed out on him;-). Mark and I dropped Kara off after breakfast and went to back to the climbing gym to run a few routes before I had to fly back to California. Again, Mark was climbing strong. He led a really pumpy overhung 60’ route and only hung on the rope once. We left the gym around 2:00 so that I could get everything packed. I was at the airport by 5:00 and after our goodbyes, I slogged into the mess that is airport security. When I arrived in Orange county I was short one bag, but it showed up the next day undamaged. I got to the house around midnight and was asleep by 2:00am.

My Christmas vacation this year was excellent! I could only wish for each future one to be so great. I got to see and spend time with my children and my mother, I got to see the light in Carlton and Madison’s eyes when they opened their gifts, I ran on new trails, caught up with good friends, ate great food, drank moderately, got outside to play, snowshoed in Rocky Mountain National Park, climbed on classic Colorado rock and made it home safely.

Outstanding!