frontrangetrip2004

Flood’s Front Range Bonanza

Cast of Characters:

Ross Brown, Mark Flood, Amy Moore, Grover Shipman, Matt Talley, Chris George and Matt Brauning at Shelf Road, CO.

Gear shipped to Mark Flood before the trip.

In addition to getting our gear together, packing, organizing and tying up loose ends at work, I also had to take care of a few other things before the trip… For years I have been teased about being the “hairy Frenchman” in my group of friends. I’m not Robin Williams/gorilla hairy, but I do have some natural insulation here and there. Well, my girlfriend, Laurel, came over one night just before I left and waxed the offending fur coat. HOLY SHIT!! You have no idea how much that hurts! In a moment of pain induced clarity, I decided that Pamela Anderson is the toughest person on this entire earth. I screamed, cried, cussed in three languages, jumped, shook and wiggled over just a touch of unsightly back hair. That crazy woman has her entire pubic area done as well as a place a little further back that is best left to the imagination. I pondered on it for a second or two and just the thought of the amount and intensity of the pain made me a little light-headed. I am telling you, from the pain that woman has endured she makes Clint Eastwood look like a pussy.

Ross on the way to Shelf Road.

We had climbed all day Saturday in the sun and none of us, especially those partaking in the wine the night before wanted to repeat that, so Chris and Amy led us to a shady bluff that we happily played at for the entire day. While packing camp, sorting gear and organizing the vehicles for the move to the shade, Flood discovered that his helmet was missing. After a search of everyone’s pack, camp and the vehicles, Flood decided that he had left his helmet at the crag the day before. He ran about two miles in the sun and heat. We all played hacky-sack on the gravel road while waiting for him. Note: Never serve yourself while playing with Grover. Trust me when I say that Grover is very serous about the second rule of hacky-sack (The first is don’t use your hands.) He will call you on it, call you names and question your parentage. Flood found his brain-bucket just where he left it and made it fairly quickly back to where we were parked, winded and red faced. We sang him a little tune about losing his helmet that made his face just a touch redder – it was well worth the extra time and effort on our part. The climbing that day was good and we all got on some really sweet routes before packing it in around 3:30 that afternoon and heading back to Golden.

After two days of climbing, camping, dusty trails and hacky-sack, we were filthy. All seven of us took turns making the bottom of Flood’s tub and bathroom floor reddish-brown. It felt so good to wash the sand out of my ears and get the rest of me sort of clean. Sushi was planned for the evening meal and Flood knew of a little place close to his house. I know, I know. You are thinking ‘Sushi? In the mountains!?!’ That is exactly what I thought, but it was pretty good and no one got sick, well at least not from the sushi. Kara Kanigel and her boyfriend, Trent Copanas, met us there as well as Chris’s girlfriend, Connie. Ross had met a girl at the rock gym and invited her along too, but Flood’s directions for her were sketchy and no one really knew the name of the place, so she backed out. We all ate off of each other’s plates, sampling this and that, caught up with Kara and Trent and Sake was passed around. Grover demonstrated his theory concerning The Facial Expressions of Caucasians and Their Effect on the Perception of Rhythmic Dancing Ability during the meal as well. He believed that white people make stupid faces while dancing and that makes others believe that they can’t dance or that we have no natural rhythm. Grover demonstrated this at length and had the whole table roaring with laughter.

Brauning, Ross, Me, Kara and Mark shotting pool.

We left Clear Creek Canyon about 5:00 and headed to Golden Cliffs, an area perched above the Coors Brewery in Golden, to meet a couple of female climbers, Rowena and Sarah, who Ross and Mark knew. The hike in sucked: It was up hill for about ½ a mile and just as I topped the trail a bee nailed me right in the middle joint of my right pointer finger. Can you imagine how much “fun” it is to climb with a swollen throbbing finger that a bee has just used for target practice? It wasn’t exactly an afternoon at Chucky Cheese's…. The routes were about 80’ high and the rock was glass smooth. We got on four routes while there, but getting to the first bolt on each of them was daunting. The landing areas were full of bulbous rock protrusions that were ankle breakers in the event of a sharp fall before the first clip. If you are planning a trip to climb the Colorado Front Range, just keep going past Golden cliffs. The crappy hike in, highly polished rock and poor first bolt placement on many routes makes the area easy to pass up. Clouds and thunder started moving in quickly so Ross, Brauning and I coiled our rope, stashed the gear in our packs and headed for the Blazer while Flood, Grover and the girls got in one last route. Just as we hit the parking area it started to rain. That night while Ross cooked a great chicken fettuccine alfredo dish, the blowing rained turned to hail. It hailed for hours, starting as pea and marble sized and turning into golf ball sized chunks. Early the next morning snow plows had to move almost three feet of the stuff off of the Golden and Denver roads. It was the freakish weather that Colorado is known for in the summer.

Flood and I were up early the next morning organizing the rafting trip for that afternoon, which was to be one of our two “rest” days during the nine day trip. We decided to raft the Arkansas River through the Royal Gorge and called an outfit that Flood had used once before, Raft Masters, out of Canon City. After getting gas for the trip and stopping next door to the gas station for breakfast burritos, we hit the road. About 1/8 of a mile later, Ross got pulled over by a City of Golden Police Officer. Oops! Ross had forgotten to pay for his gas that morning. The officer was nice enough and said, “I didn’t figure that you were trying to get away, I watched you stop and get breakfast.” He followed us back to the gas station and made sure Ross paid. Ross was such the rebel: Breakin’ the law!

Ross drove and we napped to Canyon City, getting there about an hour and a half early. We sat down at a quasi-Mexican place next door to the outfitters and had lunch. After gearing up with life jackets, spray shirts, wetsuits and helmets, we took a short van ride to the river. The Arkansas was running at 2,600cfs, which was almost the river’s peak water level and we were incredibly lucky to get assigned an outstanding guide. Will Colon was the head boatman for Raft Masters and in addition to his experience; we had the owner of the company, Dennis and his daughter, Arron in our boat. Will quizzed us some on our white water experience, why we were in Colorado and then began to ask what we all did for a living. I don’t think that he expected “doctor, structural engineer, electrical engineer, med student or mortgage broker” to come out of the mouths of five unshaven, tattooed, dirt bag climbers. After hearing what we all did for a living, he cocked his head to the side and said, “Well, I would have gotten every single one of those wrong.” He decided right away that because of all the muscle in the boat and the fact that three guides were along we would be able to hit all the sweet rapids and holes in the river, except for the two of the roughest spots (Boat Eater and Piglets Revenge). After a little group paddling practice and going over the paddling commands we were dropped into a couple of small Class III rapids which we all handled smoothly, hooping and hollering with joy the whole time. At which point another raft made reference to the “rednecks” in our boat. We decided to give ‘em a little show and call the Hogs for ‘em. Will and Dennis just shook their heads and snorted a little begrudging laugh. Then we hit some really big water: Class IV and V rapids and holes that hammered both us and the boat. It was FANTASTIC!! Ross and I were in the front of the boat and were totally insink and pulling strong on the paddles setting the rhythm for everyone else. About half way through, we were given a choice of what line to go through: Rough or really rough. We chose really rough! In one hole, I ended up in Grover’s lap, our guide got rocketed up to the front of the raft, Brauning held onto the back of the raft with little more than one leg and a butt cheek and Flood almost bear hugged Ross overboard. Damn, it was a good time! Because of the river’s flow rate, we ran our stretch of the Arkansas in almost record time. When running the Arkansas River through the Royal Gorge, Raft Masters is the way to go!

Mark Flood is addicted to his cell phone. He talked on it for the entire two-hour drive home from Rafting and for an additional hour while we were getting ready. I started to think that he might take in the shower with him and answer/talk on it while making love. It is almost as if that little ear bud was surgically attached to his inner ear. Brauning, because of the nature of his business, spends some time on the phone but even he was amazed at Flood’s devotion to his mobile phone. AT&T must have had special “Mark Flood Plan:” 20,000 anytime minutes per month…

After getting back to Flood’s and cleaning up, running by the bookstore and having ice cream, we drove into downtown Boulder to a Reggae show at The Red Fish -- singing Bob Marley for most of the way. We were all there because Ross had met a couple of female climbers the week before and had made plans to see them at the club. The band was pretty good and Grover watched and talked to the DJ during the band’s intermission. Of the two girls that we were supposed to meet, only one showed up right away, the larger one. The poor girl was a new resident of Colorado and was originally from Maine. It turned out that she had absolutely no natural rhythm and was tragically Caucasian in both conversation and when it came time to dance. Let’s just call her “Cracker,” since she embodied all the stereotypes of a white girl. Ross was interested in the second of the two climbers and I took it upon my self to be his wingman and entertain this tragic creature until the other young lady showed up, as any good friend would have done. While Cracker was moving arhythmically, Ross noticed a guy dancing near us wearing flip-flops. That in its self was no big deal; we were all wearing sandals or flip-flops. What was unique about this ol’ boy was that in addition to tweaking on some sort of home-brewed pharmaceutical, he had six toes on each foot. We all had to look three or four times and you could see people staring and mentally counting 1-2-3…6-7-8…12! I guess if you’ve got, it flaunt it. Ross observed that with that particular adaptation, he bet the guy was a swimming fiend and could stop on a dime while running!

In addition to my assigned wingman duty, a girl that was maybe nine inches taller than me started showing an interest. It was quickly turning into one of those situations that I would have had to run screaming from to protect my sanity and chastity. About the time the Amazon was deftly slipping me her number; I glanced over and saw Ross and Brauning dancing with three very hot young women. I asked Cracker if one of them was her buddy. She looked, shook her head “no” and began her non-rhythmic face-contorting movements again. I felt that if Ross had moved on, I had done my duty as a buddy and slipped away from Cracker and the Amazon. We left shortly after that, it seems that while Ross has a knack for finding and attracting fine specimens of the opposite sex, he also has a penchant for finding those specimens who are leaving town the next day… We got home and were in bed by 2:30am.

Flood had ditched us the night before to perform a little relationship maintenance and rolled in the house the next morning around 8:30. Ross and I spent the morning downloading digital pictures to his computer and Brauning finally rolled off the couch around 10:30. The entire trip was documented with three digital cameras, one waterproof disposable and Grover’s nice 35mm loaded with B&W film for portraits. After we put about 200 pictures on Ross’s Mac, everyone huddled around and checked out their favorites. After breakfast, we hit Clear Creek Canyon, Cat’s Lab Wall. While at Cat’s Lab Wall, we all gave Flood a new rope bag as a way to say thanks for putting us all up for the week, planning everything and for showing us around. He accepted it in his normal humble way and turned a little red and bashful. It was the very least we could do after all of his hard work and friendship. We met Cracker (the girl from the night before) and her very nice looking/strong climbing friend, Heather, at the wall (After the rest of us left Colorado, Ross took to spending a good amount of time with Heather and Flood reported that Ross didn’t come home from “climbing” with her more than once). We switched up on a bunch of routes and all led some really stellar climbs. Ross wanted to work a route that had a 5.12a second pitch and I agreed to belay him. He had been climbing strong all week and was doing great on the first 4 bolts, but by the time he got to the crux he was somewhat tired. Ross wedged himself into an overhanging sloppy crux and started to clip the bolt. I was at the belay ledge and heard him say something. All of a sudden his quickdraw flew off the route. I yelled “ROCK!” to the guys below and a ¼ of a second later I heard Ross say “FALL!!” I took up a full arm’s length of slack before I locked the rope down on my belay device and Ross bounced on the end of the rope lying horizontal after a 10’ lead fall, 220’ off the ground. It was a good clean fall, but it still hurt him a little. After one more attempt, he left my screw-link as a ditch piece on the crux bolt and I lowered him down.

At one point during the afternoon, I led an overrated 5.10a (it was a 5.9) and set up a belay at the top of the route. Cracker followed me up. Brauning was hanging near the crux, taking pictures of all of us climbing on various routes. He had to talk her through the crux and practically put her hands on the holds. By the time she got to me she was in tears and was leaning into and hugging the rock like it was Jesus. I’m not one to put someone down because of fear, Lord knows that I have been scared shitless on a bunch of routes and have lost the nerve to lead big routes while still on them more than once. That is just a part of climbing. This was a little different, though: She wouldn’t move as if paralyzed by fear. I had never seen it before and didn’t know how I was going to get her off the rock. After about ten minutes of rock hugging and me reassuring her, she loosened up and eventually let me lower her very slowly to the ground. I don’t know what I/we would have done if she would have refused to be lowered. Just another example of why one should team up with a partner that one both knows and trusts before tying into the rope.

We finished climbing under darkening skies and headed to Flood’s around 6:30. Kara met us in a parking lot by happenstance and we invited her out for pizza and beer at Woody’s (“Coke for me thanks...” - fucking stupid medicine…). We spent two hours on a couple of tables laughing, drinking, playing bad pool, slapping each other with chalk covered hands and performing other juvenile antics. Good times… Grover packed his gear and clothes when we got back to Flood’s that night. He had a Wilderness Medicine School in Northern California that started on Saturday. Before we went to sleep and while everyone was still there, we talked about next year’s trip. It was sort of decided to make a foray into Europe next October. Flood still has to be sold on the idea, but we will eventually take care of dragging him along. If not a European trip next year, then maybe Kalifornia or the East Coast.

We got up on Friday, and I rode to the airport with Flood and Grover. Ross and Brauning followed, but got separated on the highway. There was some time to kill before Grover’s flight out, so we stopped to have breakfast at a ‘50’s style dinner. Ross and Brauning were nowhere to be found as we were seated. About ten minutes later, they came dragging in with sad faces: Ross got a speeding ticket from the most matter of fact cop in all of Colorado. The officer said maybe 15 words, had Ross sign the ticket and was on his way. That ticket cut into Ross’s road trip budget somewhat. We had all been paying for little things and buying gas here and there, but after that we tried to take care of all of Ross’s expenses. We were all living vicariously through him during his summer on the road and we didn’t want the lack of funds getting in the way of his freedom.

Grover was sent off with handshakes and hugs and then we drove toward Eldorado Canyon for some more trad climbing. We had all spent time in Eldo this trip and were actually itching to get on some different rock. As we neared the turnoff for Eldo, Ross looked over and said “We could get on the Flat Irons.” We looked around, all nodded and drove past the Eldo turn-off and into Boulder to pick up a Flat Irons guide book at Neptune Mountaineering (my favorite climbing/expedition store on earth). I bought the book and we chose to get on the Direct East Face Route (5.6s) on the 1st Flat Iron. I partnered with Ross and Brauning partnered with Flood. Each group ran up similar lines for the first 400’ and then we both got on the same route line for the rest of the climb. Ross led the first pitch and was about 75’ off the ground when he put his first piece in. I followed up and led the next 200’. I only placed 3 pieces of gear for the entire pitch and wasn’t really safe until I built my belay anchor. If Ross or I either one had slipped during any point on either lead, it would have meant a ground fall, a painful trip to the hospital and the end of a vacation. Brauning, who is more of a sport climber was having none of it and let Mark lead every pitch. Brauning was a little shaken up by the exposure, lack of placements and the height of the route. He didn’t exactly get off easy -- Flood sets passive protection with sledgehammer force. The night that we all arrived he passed out nut-tools that have the heft, weight and shape of a large long-dong lost arrow piton. There was a two-fold purpose in his gift. One, they were wonderful souvenirs that would remind each one of us of our trip every time it was used to wedge a stubborn stopper out of a crack. Two, they were a necessary tool to second Flood and retrieve the gear that he set without an extraordinary amount of frustration and foul language. Brauning forgot his new nut tool… He bitched and cried as he pulled every placement. And then there was the belay ledge that he was trapped on with Flood when there was a methane eruption that almost caused Brauning to unclip from the anchor and jump into the warm embracing void.

At the top of the 5th pitch Ross was taking a few pics and dropped my camera bag with a USB drive/CF adaptor and a CF card, full of pictures. It dropped about 40 feet and skidded to a stop precariously on a small ledge just before a 500’ drop off the face of the Flat Iron. I lowered Ross down to it and after grabbing it, he secured it to his harness with two carabineers and a runner of webbing so that it would be safe until we were on solid ground.

I awoke the next morning and sat up on the couch for a minute or two in a daze, then pulled multiple layers of manmade, breathable, insolating, space age and entirely too expensive clothes on. It took a couple of us to wake Ross up, but with enough prodding he finally started to move. The plan was to hike to the Summit of Torry’s Peak step down into a lower saddle and then ascend nearby Gray’s peak. Flood loves to bag peaks over 14,000’ and has tackled thirteen in the year+ that he had lived in Colorado. I live at ten feet (10’) above sea level, Brauning lives maybe twenty feet higher than me and Ross normally lives near 350’. I knew that our little trip uphill was going to hurt if my lungs and legs weren’t ready for it. I stepped up the amount of miles I ran every week and increased the time I spent in the saddle of my road bike about two months before the trip. I wasn’t completely acclimated to elevation by the morning of our hike, but after 7 days of sleeping at 6,000’ I felt pretty good about my chances of keeping up with uber-hiker Flood.

Mark Flood was banned from using the word “casual” during our entire trip. When he refers to an outing as “casual,” it is misleading. It could mean that he had a pleasant stroll on snowshoes and saw fantastic vistas from a certain ridge during the outing or it could mean that it was an epic adventure where someone lost toes to frost bite, his food was eaten by a crazy-large bear or that there was a huge lead-fall after a gigantic boulder was pulled off the route and everyone there had to be heli-rescued. One just never knows what they are dealing with when Flood utters that banned word. To keep from being wrangled into one of the former described outings, we made him be very clear about all the aspects of the journey and what dangers might have to be faced.

It was a little chilly when we left the parking area that morning, but we started shedding layers as soon as we were on the trail in earnest. Gray’s and Torry’s are popular peaks, so there were a number of parties on the trail with us that morning. Ross and Brauning did OK on the trail for the first hour and a half. When the air got really thin and the trail got good and steep they had to stop and rest every couple of hundred yards. At one point Brauning was sitting on a large rock about ¾ of the way to the top and said, “I never really promised anyone that I would actually top this thing.” To his credit though, he got up and soldiered on. I have been to 14,000’ feet before and I wasn’t racing to the top, so when I got too far ahead of them I would stop and wait: I was on the trip to be with friends, not to wander on a high trail, lost in my own thoughts. There were a couple snowfields that we crossed on our route and we met a few skiers and snowboarders on the trail who were going to top the mountain and then ski/board down Dead Dog Couloir. There was a group that was making a technical ascent of a lesser snow and ice filled gully as well, but it looked as though they were getting familiar with their gear and one another instead of ascending for the sake of climbing. We really, really should have brought our boards…

Earlier in the week, Ross and I had run by Neptune Mountaineering and I had asked about the snow conditions in Dead Dog Couloir and on the mountain in general. We were told very matter of factly that the probability for avalanche was high and that we needed to be off the vertical snow before 9:00am. Any “what if” questions were answered with “it would be VERY risky!” We left downhearted. None of us had avalanche beacons, probes, a snow shovel, avalungs, etc… and didn’t want to be caught in a wave of roaring ice, rock and snow. We should have asked around more. While Neptune’s is the epicenter of climbing and mountaineering for the area, they are a business and so their condition reports are on the conservative side. When we hit the snow and met the other skiers and boarders we knew that our decent would have gone as planned and we would have been fine. That said, Dead Dog was so out of our league: it was mad-steep with just a sliver of ice/snow wedged between two sharp walls of grey lifeless stone. We could have taken a ride from the saddle below the two summits down to the bottom (roughly 2000’ of drop). That wouldn’t have been a real problem for us and would have made for a good time, a great story and a priceless memory. We really should have brought our boards up!!

Our last 300 semi-vertical feet went slowly, but we hit the summit of Torry’s about 3 hours after we began the hike in. There was rough looking weather moving in over the Rockies heading our way, so we only stayed on the summit long enough to snap off a couple of pics, take in the view and for Ross to send off a text message to friends and family from his phone. It was another moment during our trip that I wished Grover could have been a part of. By the time we got down to the saddle we made the call to forgo the summit of Gray’s because of the hairy weather that was blowing in. It had snowed lightly on us three times during the ascent during fair skies, so we didn’t want to get caught in a storm that high up. The trip down was so much better than the trip up. Mark used his mountaineering axe to glissade down from the saddle and met us on the lower trail. We made it to the parking lot in just over 2 hours. About a half a mile from Ross’s Blazer, it started snowing again. We looked back and both peaks were shrouded in clouds bursting with snow. The temperature on the trail dropped twenty degrees on us in about twenty feet and the snow started blowing in sideways ferociously. We were all glad that we had decided against topping out the second fourteener.

Mark had dropped his truck off for service on Friday morning and we ran by the dealership on the way home from Torry’s for him to pick it up. When leaving Ross took a wrong turn and got trapped in a parking lot. Since we had all arrived in Colorado, Ross had been railing against all the medians that, to him, seemed to proliferate the state. He made daily comments about their inconvenience. One has to understand that while there are roads in Arkansas with curbed medians there are also a great many two lane and dirt roads where one can cut a U-turn wherever one pleases. That was just Ross’s point of reference. Well, this particular afternoon, our boy Ross was both tired and cranky. When he realized that he was trapped in that circular parking lot his shoulders got tense, his right eye started twitching and I think he may have started mumbling in tongues. He gunned the engine, jumped a curb, spilled down a sloppy area of grass, bumped over the lower curb and sped away cursing Colorado parking lots, roads and medians.

We tried to take a long nap at Flood’s after the ascent of Torry’s and the neighborhood kids seeing our long tired faces and spent bodies drag in, did their very best to lull us to sleep with the sweet sounds of thumping ghetto Rap and with the whimsical sound of their skateboards on the concrete just outside of the front door. Bless their little crumb snatching shriveled bastard souls. I got about an hour in of restless shut eye before we showered up and headed to dinner and into downtown Denver to meet Trent and Kara for drinks (“A Coke for me, thanks…” - damn hateful pain in the ass rash…).

We had a drink or two, laughed, and made promises to get together this fall with the two of them for more climbing and some snowboarding. Kara and Trent have been together for about three years and every time one of us visits, she has him slaving away in the house with some complicated home improvement project. I felt it my duty to have a little talk with him about nuptials. True, Kara is gorgeous and fun and loving etc… etc… and he would be a fool to not take her off the market for those reasons alone, but I see it as a sweat-equity issue: He has put A LOT of work into their place, a lot. If he doesn’t hurry up and marry our Kara, he stands a chance of all that hard work not paying off. In addition to securing true love and community property, it would be a fine, fine reason for our little group to fly back to Colorado, drink, climb, snow board/ski, drink a little more, witness/participate in debauchery, toast the couple in our own special way, drink a lot more and cause general havoc. So Trent, get on the ball, son!

After saying goodnight to Kara and Trent, the rest of us dropped by a great pool hall just across from Denver’s Union Station that was housed in the old railway station. During every other outing of our trip the cue ball had rolled a little funny for me and I had lost more than a couple of games senselessly. That night, however, I was on fire. At one point I ran seven balls and Brauning and I hammered Ross and his partner every single game. To his credit though, Ross’s game was thrown off just a touch by a young lady that was playing on the table adjacent to us. She was about 5’4” with long black hair, a crop top and a very, very short black skirt. What screwed up his shooting was that every time she went to shoot she would bend over the table and her tiny skirt would lift up and expose her entire bare ass. I pointed this out to Ross just before he tried and failed to make a critical shot. He looked up from the table, shuttered, shook his head and had to turn away. You see, this raven-haired beauty must have weighed 200+ pounds and there was a whole bunch of lumpy misshapen ass hanging out from the bottom of that tiny skirt. He was so horrified and his concentration was so off that at one point he drew his pool stick back for a shot and broke a pint glass of beer. Someone else might feel bad for bringing such a sight to Ross’s attention, but not me. I accepted a very long time ago that what I have within me is a touch of glowing red evil. Throwing off his concentration in such a way and exposing him to a sight that his mind will never be able to unsee made my coal black heart sing with the joy of new-found love.

On our last morning we slept late, had some eggs and pancakes, did some last minute packing and made it to the airport about 1:35 that afternoon. After a round of goodbyes and hugs, Mark, Amy and Ross wheeled of back toward Denver and Brauning and I got caught up in the mess and confusion that is the Denver Airport on a Sunday afternoon. We spent fifty minutes in the security line and the train to our assigned terminal slid along at a snails pace. We missed our flight by five minutes, but a helpful lady at United’s Customer Service Desk hooked us up with flights to LAX. After having a snack and picking up some souvenirs, we boarded our plane and slept almost the whole way home. Brauning’s girlfriend (now ex - stupid girl - long story...), Cory, picked us up at LAX and I was asleep by 10:30 after a long overdue call to Laurel.

The entire trip was awesome!! Brauning melded seamlessly with the rest of the group. We all got away from the pressures of work and school and caught up on old, comfortable friendships. We experienced absolutely fantastic weather with only clear blue skies while we were climbing and assaulting the long routes. We really couldn’t have asked for better from the weather gods. The day we left, the weather turned to crap. It rained off and on for eight days and Ross and Chris got rained out of Lumpy Ridge twice. We couldn’t have picked a better time to have been on the Front Range. Brauning and Ross summited their first 14ers. Brauning took his first raft ride and climbed his tallest routes to date. I got to see old friends, cause mischief, laugh a great deal, spend some quality time outside and miss work for a week, but I really missed participating the beer drinking... Ross got on some quality rock, almost nailed his first 5.11 onsite and learned all about the effects of altitude as it pertains to alcohol consumption. Flood got a needed vacation from work, got to introduce his girlfriend to his shy, respectful and low key buddies and happily played mother hen to all of us. Grover kept us all laughing: “How do you know that the tooth brush was developed in Arkansas? If it had been anywhere else it would have been the teeth brush.” He was a solid partner for all of us and our trip was a much needed break from the 70+ hours a week that he had been working at the hospital.

There was roughly 4287' of elevation gain during those nine days while hiking, we climbed a total of 4700+ vertical feet and we spent the entire trip laughing at each other and ourselves. There was no discord between anyone and no one got hurt or injured. It was a trip that will make me smile randomly for years to come and will serve as a blue print for our further yearly/bi-yearly adventures.


Flood’s Front Range Bonanza
By: Matt Talley

Cast of Characters: Mark Flood: Structural Engineer who moved to Colorado to be closer to good climbing and good trails. Would do absolutely anything for a friend, has a +4 ape index, and is a good natured liar: When Mark states an ability for something, double it. He sandbags his abilities on the rock and on the trail. Banned from eating high fiber foods and from saying the word “casual” in the presence of those listed in this tale Ross Brown: Strong climber and fresh college graduate who, by the grace of God, was born in Texas, but regretfully grew up in Arkansas. He spent the summer on an extended road trip. Doesn’t hold his alcohol well, but plays pool well enough. Quite the ladies man… Grover's Hetro-lifemate. Grover Shipman: Medical Doctor from Arkansas who now lives in southern Oregon and the king of one-liners, shade-tree mechanic imitations and funny faces. Great trad climber, world traveler, aspiring DJ. Known affectionately as “Catfish” due to his reflective white belly. Matt Brauning: Mortgage broker originally from Orange County, CA. Strong sport climber, but easily confused by tri-cams. World traveler, needs 12 hours of sleep a night and has absolutely no short term memory. Matt Talley: Mediocre climber, father to two wonderful children, world traveler, tattooed, very perverse, short, slightly hairy, a practical joker and chronicler of this tale who now lives on the beach in Southern California. Amy Moore: World traveler, Flood’s girlfriend and fellow climber. Although born a Yankee, she saw the folly of living in the cold north and moved to Colorado. She is able to stand Flood’s friends for days at a time, hates Flood’s eggs and will never be the hacky-sack world champion. Kara Kanigel: Wonderfully sweet pediatric physical therapist with a great laugh, who is drop dead gorgeous and has a foul mouth that would make George Carlin blink twice with mouth agape. A Sport Climber/trad climb cleaner who once made the neighbor cry over dog poop in her yard and is a repository for only the dirtiest of jokes. Dates a really good guy named Trent, who she makes slave away on her home improvement projects.

Ross Brown, Mark Flood, Amy Moore, Grover Shipman, Matt Talley, Chris George and Matt Brauning at Shelf Road, CO.

I spent the 2003/04 New Years Holiday with Mark Flood and some other friends in Colorado. We had a ball: climbing, eating, snowshoeing, hiking, drinking and laughing. Right after I got home Mark and I started talking about planning two trips for the coming year so we could get together with our group of friends and go outside and play. August was going to be the date for the big one, but I sort of wanted to have a small leisurely hiking, fishing, climbing trip into Wyoming or the Colorado Rockies for the first outing. This “little” trip soon ballooned into a fire-breathing monster with a mind and soul of its own as the gears in Flood’s head started turning and the August trip was put on the very back burner. David Vasquez was going to be home from Iraq around May or June, Grover wanted in, Ross and Adam Brown were interested. One of my buddies in California, Matt Brauning was all for climbing in the Rockies and I was going to have some time off. The trip was on!! Mark went to work. After looking at different areas to climb in the West, it was decided that Colorado would work out the best for everyone’s schedule and for the ease of travel. It was to be an entire week of climbing in and on the wondrous Colorado Rocky Mountain Front Range. Flood did some scouting, planning, scheming and figuring. Mark, Ross, Grover and I decided on our available dates and David was finally headed home from Iraq and would be there just in time for the trip, but with any group trip and as time passes people fall out: Adam was interested at first, but he took a position at a new company and he didn’t know if he could ask for the time off or if he needed to be away from home for nine days. David came home to a new wife, a new baby and a mountain of responsibilities so understandably, he had to pull out. Grover’s vacation dates changed about 6 weeks before the beginning of the trip, so we had to shuffle around a bit, but it all got worked out smoothly. The group finally rounded out to Mark Flood, Ross Brown, Grover Shipman, me and Matt Brauning. From our Previous group trip to the Cirque of the Towers in 2002, we all learned that days and days of only climbing makes one hurt and it makes everyone cranky. Flood worked on his trip itinerary until it was decided that in addition to climbing we would do some Class IV-V rafting and summit a fourteener. The first weekend was to be spent car camping at Shelf Road, south of Colorado Springs and the rest of the time we were going to use Flood’s apartment as a base camp to strike out for all the decent rocks within an hour or so of Golden along the Front Range. Gray’s and Torry’s Peaks were picked for our summit bid. In passing, Mark mentioned that last year there were lots of guys with snowboards hiking up to the summit and riding down. I heard that and my little black lump of coal heart started to sing. Snowboarding down a fourteener in the summer… OH HELL YES!! Flood sent me what information he had on the subject and I e-mailed another buddy in Colorado, Kara, to see if she was in for a little skiing/snowboarding and if she had any info. She was on-board, but mentioned that snow conditions would be unknown until we got to Colorado. When I told Brauning he started smiling ear to ear and he was as happy as a puppy with two peckers. It was all he talked about for weeks. Because of shipping & baggage issues and because of the unknown conditions, we decided to leave our boarding gear at home and just rent or borrow what we would need for the decent. This casual/restful trip that I initially wanted turned into a balls-out adventure! I couldn’t wait. Ross graduated in May with a Pre-Med/Biology degree from Hendrix College and after some unexpected last minute repairs on his new vehicle, he hauled ass to Colorado. He had just bought his brother’s fairly new Blazer, so he wasn’t expecting to have to put in the shop right off the bat. I spoke with him just before he left Little Rock and warned him that Mark Flood was an evil bastard and had plans to toughen him up/break his soul while Ross was in Colorado. I think that my warning fell on deaf ears. He should have listened to me… Ross arrived 10 days before our trip was to start and Flood had him climbing every day. Flood called late one night and advised me that Ross had been really hitting the rock and gyms hard in the last year and had gotten very strong. We hatched an outline of a plan to handicap him before the rest of us arrived and started climbing. None of us wanted to be reminded of how old, weak and fat we had gotten. We weren’t thinking of permanent damage, just some bruising and limping… Ross was doing well: onsiting 5.10d routes, working 5.11s hard and pocketing a few phone numbers from female climbers here and there. Well, Mark took this assignment seriously and he broke Ross on day six: pulled a muscle in his neck. OK, maybe it was not wholly Mark’s fault, but mission accomplished anyway… for about a day and a half. Ross was all better by the time we arrived. Damn. There is a measurement of time among my circle of friends in California known as “Brauning Time.” Matt Brauning is perpetually late and could be a paid professional procrastinator. If one needs him to be somewhere at noon then he must be told that the event starts at 10:00am. If you want to get an early start on a climbing trip and he is going with you then you must sleep at his house, wake him up, and drive to your destination with him sleeping/farting/snoring in the back seat. It is very similar with out-of-town trips. He bought his plane tickets two weeks before the trip and only after three weeks of prodding (I sat on the phone and made him go online to purchase them while I listened). From past experience we have all learned that it is better not to have checked luggage when flying in for a climbing/boarding trip – if your gear gets lost or stolen, you are screwed!! I decided to ship our gear to Flood a couple of weeks ahead of time. I sent Brauning my packing list as a sample and after three days of him not bringing his gear to work for shipment, I made him drop it off at my place. I happened to be on a date that night and when I got back to my place the next morning I found that Brauning had rented a dump truck, backed it up to my door and unloaded a mountain of outdoor gear. An Everest expedition leader would have scoffed at the amount of shit that sat there waiting for me. I combined our climbing gear racks and threw aside as much superfluous crap as I could. It was still left with a butt-load of gear. I took it to work the next day and the guys in shipping and receiving laughed at me when I asked them to put it in a couple of cardboard boxes. After some head-shaking, one of them went out back of the receiving dock and knocked a plywood crate together for me. When it shipped out I sent Flood this e-mail: “Our stuff is on its way to your place. You’re still driving a truck, right? Are there any burly guys at your office to help you load the crate? What about [your] new place, anyone there to help? Do you have a screw gun and a pry bar? I shipped it via: Say Cargo Express… It should be delivered on Tuesday. If it is not there by three o’clock, your time let me know and I will start tracking. I insured it for $5,000 just in case. Brauning dropped his stuff off at my place for me to group with mine and I almost shit myself: He packs like a woman, a fat woman going to a fucking beauty pageant. I whittled it down some, but with my one bag and all the climbing gear, there was a lot of stuff. I took it to my shipping and receiving department and they balked at putting it in a cardboard box. They nailed a wooden crate together and we packed everything in there. It is ½ plywood and is 31”X31”X31” and weighs 100+ lbs. Have fun!”

Gear shipped to Mark Flood before the trip.

When he received my little care package the next Tuesday, he dropped me this note: “Crap---What [the] hell happened to shipping a little stuff out---light and fast, etc, etc. Yesterday I had a delivery guy come into the office and verify that he had the correct address before he even tried unloading it. It is a plywood box that comes complete with it own built-in pallet attached. I asked the delivery guy if we could unload it directly into my truck and he opted for that idea so he would not have to use the pallet jack to take the package in the building---yes a pallet jack---those things the grocery stockers use to move pallets of food around. The "100" pound package is like a fat girl---if you ask her weight she tells you half of what it is. A 100+ pounds my ass---one ton is on the plus side of 100 too Talley.... So there we are trying to man handle the package----aye hell it’s a crate.... So there we are trying to man the 200+ pound crate into the back of my truck---It didn't fit in the back!!! After much cursing and bitching the delivery guy asked how close I lived to work. I've got to say one thing Talley----thanks for making it small enough to fit through a standard door---at least I didn't have to take it off the hinges… So Brauning, Talley---your crate is in, and is still intact---despite all the kicking, bitching and other forms of abuse it took on the way here:-)…”

Hair Removal...	In addition to getting our gear together, packing, organizing and tying up loose ends at work, I also had to take care of a few other things before the trip… For years I have been teased about being the “hairy Frenchman” in my group of friends. I’m not Robin Williams/gorilla hairy, but I do have some natural insulation here and there. Well, my girlfriend, Laurel, came over one night just before I left and waxed the offending fur coat. HOLY SHIT!! You have no idea how much that hurts! In a moment of pain induced clarity, I decided that Pamela Anderson is the toughest person on this entire earth. I screamed, cried, cussed in three languages, jumped, shook and wiggled over just a touch of unsightly back hair. That crazy woman has her entire pubic area done as well as a place a little further back that is best left to the imagination. I pondered on it for a second or two and just the thought of the amount and intensity of the pain made me a little light-headed. I am telling you, from the pain that woman has endured she makes Clint Eastwood look like a pussy.

I stopped by Brauning’s office at 4:00 Friday afternoon, fully expecting him to be ready to go. Imagine my surprise when he wasn’t there… His girlfriend had been out of town for a week and had swung by to see him just before 4:00 and they “had” to go to the bank or some such other lie. They came in all giddy, arm-in-arm about 4:40. By the time I pried the two lovebirds apart and we got on the road, it was 5:00. Brauning time – I should have known… After dropping off my rental car (truck accident, long story…), we headed over to the Orange County/John Wayne Airport. All went well and our flight into Denver was without incident. Mark and Ross met us near baggage claim in the Denver airport and we all waited around for another hour for Grover’s plane to land. While waiting for Grover we looked for a bar to have a beer or two in and found that they were all closed. Who was the idiot that thought it would be a good idea to close a bar at an airport on a Friday night before 10:00? If you have to fly on Friday or Saturday night and you have a layover, beer just makes it all better. What were they thinking?! Now that I’ve ranted a bit on the subject, I need to admit it really didn’t matter to me that we couldn’t drink, I only mention it because of both the stupidity of closing a bar so early and because my cohorts were crushed with their inability to have just one beer. Why couldn’t I drink, you ask? Well, my girlfriend is a child of hippies and cooks interesting (tasty) dishes that you don’t see on many tables in the South. A few weeks before I left on the trip she made an outstanding artichoke-heart pizza completely from scratch. It was wonderful, but just after eating it, I got an itchy rash all over my chest and back that wouldn’t go away. After two trips to the doctor it was determined that I was allergic to artichoke (a form of thistle) and that it had caused the rash. I was given drugs to make it go away, but I was warned not to drink any alcohol while taking the medication because it could cause liver damage. GREAT!!! I go to Colorado, the home of Fat Tire Beer and the Coors Brewery and I can’t drink -- stupid rash! Don’t think that the fact that my girlfriend gave me a rash that I had to take meds for escaped my buddies’ attention. They got a lot of mileage out of teasing me with that one, the bastards. Grover arrived on-time, looking happy and with a backpack and a wheeled duffle that didn’t roll (?). No big deal, he was just going to carry it to the truck. That would have been a fine plan if Flood wasn’t so cheap. Don’t get me wrong, I have been accused of being frugal/cheap, but Flood takes it to a whole new level. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t separate the plies on 2-ply toilet paper. Well, Mark had Ross park in the lot past the fifth gate of Hell. Grover had to lug his gear all the way through the parking structure, down four flights of stairs, across a street and almost the entire way through a semi-gravel, semi-asphalt parking area. After finally finding Ross’s Blazer, we threw our combined gear in the back, crammed in and got on the road to Golden. The jokes and laughter started right away. Grover, who has a dry one liner type of humor, was unusually animated and told us all how becoming a doctor had robbed him of his compassion and humanity. Apparently, it is like being a kindergarten teacher: One kid too many pukes on you and you just snap. Grover’s whole description of this phenomenon left us in stitches. I had been worried about throwing Brauning into the mix since he really didn’t know anyone but me, but he fell into the group right away. Instead of going right to sleep after out drive, we stopped by Woody’s Pizza in downtown Golden for food, beer (“a Coke for me, thanks…”) and a few games of pool so that everyone could get acquainted. The antics continued and we didn’t get to Floods place until about 1:30am. Flood’s house has become a sort of Colorado hostel for our group of friends. The first half of 2004 alone, he had 12+ people stay with him while climbing, rafting, skiing, hiking and snowshoeing. He really should have charged people room and board to both increase his gear budget and to offset the cost of feeding everyone and providing a place to take a hot shower. After four hours of sleep, we got up, repacked our gear for a weekend of climbing and tent camping and hauled ass to Shelf Road. Flood’s girlfriend, Amy, had been asleep at his place when we got there and came along on the trip to Shelf Road with us. She is a very competent climber and had been there more than anyone else so she became our de facto guide. Flood, for some reason, was worried about us meeting her? Apparently, he was scared that we might tell her stories about him or that we might be disgusting, perverse and foul. Well, let me assure you that every single one of us lived up to his expectation. She was there for comments on the anatomy and demeanor of women in general, was awakened to the bright happy sound of early morning flatulence, told of Flood’s various adventures and we corrected the sugar coated tales of Mark Flood’s escapades that he had mentioned to her in passing and with a good deal of abridgement. Through all of it, she stood up like a trooper and didn’t bat an eye at our behavior or tales. Mark is a lucky man indeed.

Flapper	Matt Brauning on the same steller route that gave me the flapper.

Part of Flood’s plan for this trip was to get us on as many different types of rock in Colorado as possible. Shelf Road is a valley with exposed 50’-80’ limestone bluffs on each side. The climbs are mostly bolted (sport climbing) because the limestone rock is too brittle to take a hard fall on placed protection (traditional [trad] climbing). We set up our tents, slathered on sunscreen, hiked to a chosen bluff area and were climbing by 10:30 that (Saturday) morning. The rock was sharp, but the footing was really positive. After doing three or four routes, I decided to lead a 5.10a that a couple of others had already worked. It was a great route. I moved past a small brow, wedged my hands into a crack about fifty feet off the ground and high-stepped to get a better foot placement. As I tried to move from that position my left foot greased off the rock and I took about a five-foot fall. The bottom pad on my left middle finger hung on one of the sharp edges in the crack and it ripped the skin deeply. I have ripped my fingers on the first day on the last three climbing trips that I have been on. I looked down and got pissed off. I wedged back into that same crack, got my feet back up onto the same foothold, applied a little intestinal fortitude and finished the route. When I came back down I cleaned my hand, snipped off the flappers of ripped skin, gobbed some Neosporin into the wound, taped my finger/hand up and climbed the rest of the day. Regardless of the finger incident, it was the best route that I got on all day.

Ross on the way to Shelf Road.	Anyone that climbs with me knows how much I detest snakes. If there were a society that promoted the eradication of those cold heartless things, I would be on the Board of Directors and the chief fundraiser. Whenever I climb or hike with someone new I will advise them of this personality quirk and apologize in advance for turning away, screaming like a little girl, pushing them down and stepping on their chest while trying to get as far as possible from any of the slithering soulless beasts that might appear in my path. I do this because screaming, shoving, trampling and abandonment has happened before and I feel it only right to give them some advance warning. I will cross three sets of double yellow lines with my truck to take a snake out on the highway and will back up and hit it again, just to make sure that I was successful in ending its time on this earth. As we were driving into Shelf Road we topped a little rise and there was a light tan snake that stretched from yellow to white line with its head up starring in my direction as if mocking me. The little no-leg-having bastard!!! Ross, in what I can only believe was a moment of temporary insanity, swerved to miss the hateful creature. I came unglued! What was he thinking?!? I yelled, “KILL THE GOD-DAMNED THING!!” I almost jerked the wheel from his hands to go back and take care of the business at hand. Brauning and Ross both took great pleasure in my reaction. So much so that when we got to the camping area I had to advise everyone that I did not find snakes or the thought of them funny. This conversation ended with a stern talk about how throwing a cord/spring/stick/plant at me and yelling “SNAKE!!” would cause me to hit the offending party, even if I had to chase them down first. I mentioned that I truly loved everyone there, but there were consequences for all of our actions and that a pounding was the consequence for crying wolf with me and a snake. Ross really should have run over that damn snake!

Flood hadn’t exaggerated about the level that Ross was climbing at. He was onsiting all the 5.10d routes that were thrown his way and was working 5.11/5.12 diligently. Ross has always been one of us and never really suffered from being in his brother’s shadow as some younger siblings do -- they are just two totally different people and on this trip it was really apparent that Ross had made the transition from college into the adult world. He fell right in with the joking and harassment, he was climbing stronger than any of us and because of recent joy and heartache in his life we could all talk to him about more than just climbing, off-roading, girls, school or beer. He came up with some great ones during the trip: What would he do if he found a $100 dollar bill? “Hookers and steak, in that order…” When discussing “taking one for the team…” he flatly refused and made a boxing analogy about “keeping your dukes up” followed with a pantomime of a bare-knuckle 19th century prize fighter and a comment about never, EVER lowering his standards when it came to women. Oh, to be that young again… I know that we were all a little jealous of Ross: He just graduated from a good school, with good grades and is spending his entire summer on the road climbing, laughing with friends, making new ones, seeing the West, entertaining a vast assortment of pretty young ladies, sleeping late, eating well and with no real responsibility tugging at him while he is on the road. There was not one of us that wouldn’t have given an unmentioned body part for the same opportunity and memory. Grover and Ross really bonded on the Colorado leg of our trip out west in 2002. They shared a tent, sharing duties and chores like they could read each other’s minds. It was the same on this trip. Because of similar interests (Grover is an M.D. and Ross wants to go to Medical School) and similar personalities, they had an easy bond for the entire trip that kept the rest of us laughing as they bounced jokes, one-liners and stories off one another. Like so many trips since February 2004, Dave Chappell and his Rick James skit eventually came up. It was a skit about a true-life incident between Rick James (singer of Superfreak) and Charlie Murphy (Eddie Murphy’s brother) that just made everyone laugh because of both its unbelievable humor and the shared experience. Quips and quotes from the Chappell Show and South Park flew at least 4 times a day for the entire week: “…SLAP!!…I’m Rick James, bitch!... Cocaine is a hell of a drug… Darkness is here… FUCK YO COUCH…” Later that day as the rest of us climbed, Flood gave Brauning a lesson on trad anchors and rope management on multi pitched routes. Matt was a very strong sport climber and boulderer, but he had limited experience on either trad or multi-pitch climbs. Since both were on the table for later that week, Flood wanted to impart some knowledge that would help Brauning have a better and safer time. Flood really missed his calling. He was very patient, explains things well, went go over and over key points and wasn’t easily ruffled. He really should have been a teacher. Brauning took his lessons well and absorbed all the information and skills that Flood so patiently imparted him with, using them on-route during the rest of the week. After hitting 12 good routes, we headed back to our campground and started fixing supper. It was a weird hodge-podge of chips, snacks, dehydrated and canned goods, jerky, powerbars and almonds. All washed down with a couple jugs of the finest wine that can be bought for $5.00 a gallon, YUM!!! The night sky was shrouded in clouds until about 9:00 or so. As the clouds began to clear away, a starry western sky exploded above us: that sky is one of the reasons that I love being outside, especially in the Rocky Mountains. A guy that Flood climbs with, Chris George, met us on the rock that first day around 2:00. He camped with us that night, provided the jugs of wine and climbed with us on Sunday as well. Chris was a strong (5.11) climber who was also a high school math teacher. Somehow a physics discussion got started while the wine was being consumed and he, Brauning and Flood stayed up well past mid-night discussing particle properties, states of matter and laws of motion. The rest of us were sound asleep long before that and I only know when the “great thinkers” turned in because Brauning crashed into our tent, then his tent and wrestled with the rain fly zippers on his tent for what seemed like forever. Apparently, that type of conversation for extended periods of time throws one’s balance off and make their vision blurry, or it could have been the delectable wine… Sounds like a good time, huh? None of the three were early risers the next morning. It was the only time during the whole trip that I was glad that I couldn’t drink.

Boys on a road trip...

We had climbed all day Saturday in the sun and none of us, especially those partaking in the wine the night before wanted to repeat that, so Chris and Amy led us to a shady bluff that we happily played at for the entire day. While packing camp, sorting gear and organizing the vehicles for the move to the shade, Flood discovered that his helmet was missing. After a search of everyone’s pack, camp and the vehicles, Flood decided that he had left his helmet at the crag the day before. He ran about two miles in the sun and heat. We all played hacky-sack on the gravel road while waiting for him. Note: Never serve yourself while playing with Grover. Trust me when I say that Grover is very serous about the second rule of hacky-sack (The first is don’t use your hands.) He will call you on it, call you names and question your parentage. Flood found his brain-bucket just where he left it and made it fairly quickly back to where we were parked, winded and red faced. We sang him a little tune about losing his helmet that made his face just a touch redder – it was well worth the extra time and effort on our part. The climbing that day was good and we all got on some really sweet routes before packing it in around 3:30 that afternoon and heading back to Golden.	*Grover looking for a hold on a great 5.10*

*Grover dancing like a white-boy.*	After two days of climbing, camping, dusty trails and hacky-sack, we were filthy. All seven of us took turns making the bottom of Flood’s tub and bathroom floor reddish-brown. It felt so good to wash the sand out of my ears and get the rest of me sort of clean. Sushi was planned for the evening meal and Flood knew of a little place close to his house. I know, I know. You are thinking ‘Sushi? In the mountains!?!’ That is exactly what I thought, but it was pretty good and no one got sick, well at least not from the sushi. Kara Kanigel and her boyfriend, Trent Copanas, met us there as well as Chris’s girlfriend, Connie. Ross had met a girl at the rock gym and invited her along too, but Flood’s directions for her were sketchy and no one really knew the name of the place, so she backed out. We all ate off of each other’s plates, sampling this and that, caught up with Kara and Trent and Sake was passed around. Grover demonstrated his theory concerning *The Facial Expressions of Caucasians and Their Effect on the Perception of Rhythmic Dancing Ability* during the meal as well. He believed that white people make stupid faces while dancing and that makes others believe that they can’t dance or that we have no natural rhythm. Grover demonstrated this at length and had the whole table roaring with laughter.

After dinner we headed to a bar close to Kara’s house to play some pool. It turns out that the bartender was from Jonesboro, Arkansas and that, we felt, sort of gave every one of us license to be a hillbilly. We played pool barefoot, called the Hogs, our accents got thick, alcohol was consumed liberally and Brauning’s education on how to talk Southern started in earnest. He learned the singular and plural use for “folk”, the meaning of words like: fidna [about to], hain’t never [have not ever], upinnar [inside there], youins [you people], battri [battery], if’ndatbe [if that is true], big ol’ [large], mess of [a lot] and Laurd [Lord], just to mention a few. I think given a few months of intense language study, some cultural background work, a little moonshine/bourbon sipping and Brauning might just be able to visit Southern Alabama and not get shot.

*Brauning, Ross, Me, Kara and Mark shotting pool.*

It seems that a few of the boys (Brauning, Ross and Grover) had a little bit too much to drink. After some sake, two medium Arrogant Bastard Ales and one shot they were all pretty hammered. Mark thought it might be a good idea to take them to IHOP to help them sober up a bit and to keep them from hurting too terribly bad the next day. Poor Ross, he was very loud and very drunk and after ordering hot wings at 2:00am, Grover had to take him outside. While enjoying their time outdoors it seems that Grover challenged Ross to a race, which Ross won after kicking his sandals off mid stride. Ross won the battle, but not the war. After coming back in and taking one bite of his hot wings, he had to go outside and lay in the grass while his belly and head sloshed around on the inside. While I was driving home after the rest of us got through eating, Ross politely mentioned that it would be nice if I pulled over because he was going to be sick – calling God on the big phone, as it were. Ross ended up puking behind a carwash. Poor, poor lightweight Ross just couldn’t hold his liquor. The next morning we all got up around 8:30 and started gearing up for some trad climbing in Eldorado Canyon State Park, just south of Boulder. Brauning and Ross were the walking dead and Grover wasn’t exactly feeling spry. We met Kara and Chris at the parking area just inside the park and organized into climbing teams. Grover and Chris partnered up and Flood took Brauning on a few moderate routes to get him more comfortable with multipitch climbing and rope management. Ross, Kara and I hopped on Bastille Crack, which is a stellar 5.7 climb. The first 40 feet of the route is REALLY polished from all the years of climbing pressure. It is also the most accident-prone route in the park because of the polish and the real lack of protection placements for the first 50 feet. I had really wanted to bag this route and Ross was more than happy to let me lead the whole thing because of his still sluggish head. I led with two ropes attached to my harness and belayed Ross and Kara up on separate ropes as they simo-climbed with about 20 feet between them. Let me say here and now that I HATE using the double rope technique! Flood loves it and tries to force it upon all those around him while extolling its merits. While I think using two ropes has its place, like on very long traversing alpine routes, it is just not for me: Rope management at a hanging belay is a nightmare. The act of pulling the slack for your second can be grueling on one’s arm and shoulder muscles and it is a huge pain in the ass to switch leaders because the ropes have to be restacked, untied and retied which can lead to accidents. I belayed Ross and Kara up to the first ledge and was spent. I asked Ross if he wanted the next lead and he gave me a rolling fish-eyed look that bespoke of both a lingering hangover and tired limbs from a week of non-stop lead climbing. Kara was plenty strong enough to finish the route, but she didn’t feel comfortable leading on trad gear at that point. Damn. We restacked the rope so that Ross could belay me again and I headed up the next short pitch. I didn’t have the right gear for the next belay: When someone tells you at the car “You won’t need those…” ignore him and take it anyway. My tri-cams and large hexes were left in the Blazer and I REALLY needed them to build the anchor at the next belay. I set up a 6 micro-cam belay anchor and brought the two of them up to a sloppy and uncomfortable belay ledge. I led the last two pitches as one long one and set up a hasty, but very secure standing belay. Because of rope drag, Ross was ¾ the way up the route before I could start pulling the rope for Kara. Apparently, she made some disparaging remarks about me while she was waiting at the belay. Kara’s very first and very favorite word is “fuck” and I’m sure that she used it in all of its various forms venting her frustration while waiting. It is one of her endearing qualities. We turned a five-pitch route into a three pitch one, but it was slow going because we had to deal with double ropes. It was a great route and not a bad day spent climbing.

*Kara Kanigel, Ross Brown and Matt Talley after summiting Bastile Crack.*

After topping out Bastille Crack, Ross, Kara and I lounged around the Blazer and waited for everyone else to get off their routes, took a few pictures, ate a snack and Ross napped. After everyone else was down for the day, we all headed back to Flood’s place for showers and dinner. After dinner, we all went to see Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban. Brauning protested a little because he felt that it was sort of childish to see that particular flick. However, he didn’t feel that it was too childish to see a cartoon since he slipped into Shrek 2 before our movie started and came out with a happy “I love cartoons” expression on his face. The next morning was to set the tone for the rest of our time in Colorado. In what became known among us as an “Arkansas Alpine Start”, we got up around 9:00, cooked a big breakfast of pancakes and eggs, made a couple of Flood’s tent/house burning alcohol Coors beer can stoves, wrote notes, read, and Grover and Ross gave each other road trip hair cuts (shaved heads). Ross, either because of a shaky hand, lack of experience or because it was just plain fun, gave Grover side burns that were only about an inch out of whack with each other. Grover fixed it as best as he could in the mirror and we geared up for a day of climbing in Clear Creek Canyon. Just a note about Floods eggs that morning: Mark sort of makes an egg kiesh instead of omelets. He used farm eggs (with chicken crap still on the shell), cheese, oregano, garlic, dried onion bits and various other spices to create a dish that his girlfriend RAN from. The rest of us ate it because we both loved him and appreciated the effort that he made in feeding us. However, there will be an omelet cookbook in someone’s Christmas stocking this year… We got on the Little Eiger Face at Clear Creek Canyon and climbed a bunch of really good sport routes. I got on a 10b with Grover on belay toward the end of the day. It was a tricky climb, but it was well bolted. I got to the crux and wedged myself on a decent handhold and a marginal foot jib. I clipped a draw to the bolt and pulled out a bunch of slack to clip the rope to the draw. As I was attempting to do just that, my foot greased off and I took a fall with all that slack pulled out. I fell far enough that Grover took up slack twice and stepped back down the hill before I hit the end of the rope. The fall and sudden stop didn’t really hurt and I really didn’t realize how far I had fallen until I got back to the draw and finally clipped in. I had taken a good 20’ fall, my biggest to date. Grover did an outstanding job catching me and really saved my ass, which is testimony to the need for climbing with an experienced partner that you trust. Thanks Grover!

*Mark Flood taking a fall.*	Ross Brown heal-hooking on a route.

We left Clear Creek Canyon about 5:00 and headed to Golden Cliffs, an area perched above the Coors Brewery in Golden, to meet a couple of female climbers, Rowena and Sarah, who Ross and Mark knew. The hike in sucked: It was up hill for about ½ a mile and just as I topped the trail a bee nailed me right in the middle joint of my right pointer finger. Can you imagine how much “fun” it is to climb with a swollen throbbing finger that a bee has just used for target practice? It wasn’t exactly an afternoon at Chucky Cheese's…. The routes were about 80’ high and the rock was glass smooth. We got on four routes while there, but getting to the first bolt on each of them was daunting. The landing areas were full of bulbous rock protrusions that were ankle breakers in the event of a sharp fall before the first clip. If you are planning a trip to climb the Colorado Front Range, just keep going past Golden cliffs. The crappy hike in, highly polished rock and poor first bolt placement on many routes makes the area easy to pass up. Clouds and thunder started moving in quickly so Ross, Brauning and I coiled our rope, stashed the gear in our packs and headed for the Blazer while Flood, Grover and the girls got in one last route. Just as we hit the parking area it started to rain. That night while Ross cooked a great chicken fettuccine alfredo dish, the blowing rained turned to hail. It hailed for hours, starting as pea and marble sized and turning into golf ball sized chunks. Early the next morning snow plows had to move almost three feet of the stuff off of the Golden and Denver roads. It was the freakish weather that Colorado is known for in the summer.

*Ross paying for his gas and the waiting cop.*	Flood and I were up early the next morning organizing the rafting trip for that afternoon, which was to be one of our two “rest” days during the nine day trip. We decided to raft the Arkansas River through the Royal Gorge and called an outfit that Flood had used once before, Raft Masters, out of Canon City. After getting gas for the trip and stopping next door to the gas station for breakfast burritos, we hit the road. About 1/8 of a mile later, Ross got pulled over by a City of Golden Police Officer. Oops! Ross had forgotten to pay for his gas that morning. The officer was nice enough and said, “I didn’t figure that you were trying to get away, I watched you stop and get breakfast.” He followed us back to the gas station and made sure Ross paid. Ross was such the rebel: Breakin’ the law!

Ross drove and we napped to Canyon City, getting there about an hour and a half early. We sat down at a quasi-Mexican place next door to the outfitters and had lunch. After gearing up with life jackets, spray shirts, wetsuits and helmets, we took a short van ride to the river. The Arkansas was running at 2,600cfs, which was almost the river’s peak water level and we were incredibly lucky to get assigned an outstanding guide. Will Colon was the head boatman for Raft Masters and in addition to his experience; we had the owner of the company, Dennis and his daughter, Arron in our boat. Will quizzed us some on our white water experience, why we were in Colorado and then began to ask what we all did for a living. I don’t think that he expected “doctor, structural engineer, electrical engineer, med student or mortgage broker” to come out of the mouths of five unshaven, tattooed, dirt bag climbers. After hearing what we all did for a living, he cocked his head to the side and said, “Well, I would have gotten every single one of those wrong.” He decided right away that because of all the muscle in the boat and the fact that three guides were along we would be able to hit all the sweet rapids and holes in the river, except for the two of the roughest spots (Boat Eater and Piglets Revenge). After a little group paddling practice and going over the paddling commands we were dropped into a couple of small Class III rapids which we all handled smoothly, hooping and hollering with joy the whole time. At which point another raft made reference to the “rednecks” in our boat. We decided to give ‘em a little show and call the Hogs for ‘em. Will and Dennis just shook their heads and snorted a little begrudging laugh. Then we hit some really big water: Class IV and V rapids and holes that hammered both us and the boat. It was FANTASTIC!! Ross and I were in the front of the boat and were totally insink and pulling strong on the paddles setting the rhythm for everyone else. About half way through, we were given a choice of what line to go through: Rough or really rough. We chose really rough! In one hole, I ended up in Grover’s lap, our guide got rocketed up to the front of the raft, Brauning held onto the back of the raft with little more than one leg and a butt cheek and Flood almost bear hugged Ross overboard. Damn, it was a good time! Because of the river’s flow rate, we ran our stretch of the Arkansas in almost record time. When running the Arkansas River through the Royal Gorge, Raft Masters is the way to go!

Arkansas River Class IV-V rafting!!

Group picture after our raft ride.

Mark Flood is addicted to his cell phone. He talked on it for the entire two-hour drive home from Rafting and for an additional hour while we were getting ready. I started to think that he might take in the shower with him and answer/talk on it while making love. It is almost as if that little ear bud was surgically attached to his inner ear. Brauning, because of the nature of his business, spends some time on the phone but even he was amazed at Flood’s devotion to his mobile phone. AT&T must have had special “Mark Flood Plan:” 20,000 anytime minutes per month… After getting back to Flood’s and cleaning up, running by the bookstore and having ice cream, we drove into downtown Boulder to a Reggae show at The Red Fish -- singing Bob Marley for most of the way. We were all there because Ross had met a couple of female climbers the week before and had made plans to see them at the club. The band was pretty good and Grover watched and talked to the DJ during the band’s intermission. Of the two girls that we were supposed to meet, only one showed up right away, the larger one. The poor girl was a new resident of Colorado and was originally from Maine. It turned out that she had absolutely no natural rhythm and was tragically Caucasian in both conversation and when it came time to dance. Let’s just call her “Cracker,” since she embodied all the stereotypes of a white girl. Ross was interested in the second of the two climbers and I took it upon my self to be his wingman and entertain this tragic creature until the other young lady showed up, as any good friend would have done. While Cracker was moving arhythmically, Ross noticed a guy dancing near us wearing flip-flops. That in its self was no big deal; we were all wearing sandals or flip-flops. What was unique about this ol’ boy was that in addition to tweaking on some sort of home-brewed pharmaceutical, he had six toes on each foot. We all had to look three or four times and you could see people staring and mentally counting 1-2-3…6-7-8…12! I guess if you’ve got, it flaunt it. Ross observed that with that particular adaptation, he bet the guy was a swimming fiend and could stop on a dime while running! In addition to my assigned wingman duty, a girl that was maybe nine inches taller than me started showing an interest. It was quickly turning into one of those situations that I would have had to run screaming from to protect my sanity and chastity. About the time the Amazon was deftly slipping me her number; I glanced over and saw Ross and Brauning dancing with three very hot young women. I asked Cracker if one of them was her buddy. She looked, shook her head “no” and began her non-rhythmic face-contorting movements again. I felt that if Ross had moved on, I had done my duty as a buddy and slipped away from Cracker and the Amazon. We left shortly after that, it seems that while Ross has a knack for finding and attracting fine specimens of the opposite sex, he also has a penchant for finding those specimens who are leaving town the next day… We got home and were in bed by 2:30am. Flood had ditched us the night before to perform a little relationship maintenance and rolled in the house the next morning around 8:30. Ross and I spent the morning downloading digital pictures to his computer and Brauning finally rolled off the couch around 10:30. The entire trip was documented with three digital cameras, one waterproof disposable and Grover’s nice 35mm loaded with B&W film for portraits. After we put about 200 pictures on Ross’s Mac, everyone huddled around and checked out their favorites. After breakfast, we hit Clear Creek Canyon, Cat’s Lab Wall. While at Cat’s Lab Wall, we all gave Flood a new rope bag as a way to say thanks for putting us all up for the week, planning everything and for showing us around. He accepted it in his normal humble way and turned a little red and bashful. It was the very least we could do after all of his hard work and friendship. We met Cracker (the girl from the night before) and her very nice looking/strong climbing friend, Heather, at the wall (After the rest of us left Colorado, Ross took to spending a good amount of time with Heather and Flood reported that Ross didn’t come home from “climbing” with her more than once). We switched up on a bunch of routes and all led some really stellar climbs. Ross wanted to work a route that had a 5.12a second pitch and I agreed to belay him. He had been climbing strong all week and was doing great on the first 4 bolts, but by the time he got to the crux he was somewhat tired. Ross wedged himself into an overhanging sloppy crux and started to clip the bolt. I was at the belay ledge and heard him say something. All of a sudden his quickdraw flew off the route. I yelled “ROCK!” to the guys below and a ¼ of a second later I heard Ross say “FALL!!” I took up a full arm’s length of slack before I locked the rope down on my belay device and Ross bounced on the end of the rope lying horizontal after a 10’ lead fall, 220’ off the ground. It was a good clean fall, but it still hurt him a little. After one more attempt, he left my screw-link as a ditch piece on the crux bolt and I lowered him down. At one point during the afternoon, I led an overrated 5.10a (it was a 5.9) and set up a belay at the top of the route. Cracker followed me up. Brauning was hanging near the crux, taking pictures of all of us climbing on various routes. He had to talk her through the crux and practically put her hands on the holds. By the time she got to me she was in tears and was leaning into and hugging the rock like it was Jesus. I’m not one to put someone down because of fear, Lord knows that I have been scared shitless on a bunch of routes and have lost the nerve to lead big routes while still on them more than once. That is just a part of climbing. This was a little different, though: She wouldn’t move as if paralyzed by fear. I had never seen it before and didn’t know how I was going to get her off the rock. After about ten minutes of rock hugging and me reassuring her, she loosened up and eventually let me lower her very slowly to the ground. I don’t know what I/we would have done if she would have refused to be lowered. Just another example of why one should team up with a partner that one both knows and trusts before tying into the rope. We finished climbing under darkening skies and headed to Flood’s around 6:30. Kara met us in a parking lot by happenstance and we invited her out for pizza and beer at Woody’s (“Coke for me thanks...” - fucking stupid medicine…). We spent two hours on a couple of tables laughing, drinking, playing bad pool, slapping each other with chalk covered hands and performing other juvenile antics. Good times… Grover packed his gear and clothes when we got back to Flood’s that night. He had a Wilderness Medicine School in Northern California that started on Saturday. Before we went to sleep and while everyone was still there, we talked about next year’s trip. It was sort of decided to make a foray into Europe next October. Flood still has to be sold on the idea, but we will eventually take care of dragging him along. If not a European trip next year, then maybe Kalifornia or the East Coast. We got up on Friday, and I rode to the airport with Flood and Grover. Ross and Brauning followed, but got separated on the highway. There was some time to kill before Grover’s flight out, so we stopped to have breakfast at a ‘50’s style dinner. Ross and Brauning were nowhere to be found as we were seated. About ten minutes later, they came dragging in with sad faces: Ross got a speeding ticket from the most matter of fact cop in all of Colorado. The officer said maybe 15 words, had Ross sign the ticket and was on his way. That ticket cut into Ross’s road trip budget somewhat. We had all been paying for little things and buying gas here and there, but after that we tried to take care of all of Ross’s expenses. We were all living vicariously through him during his summer on the road and we didn’t want the lack of funds getting in the way of his freedom. Grover was sent off with handshakes and hugs and then we drove toward Eldorado Canyon for some more trad climbing. We had all spent time in Eldo this trip and were actually itching to get on some different rock. As we neared the turnoff for Eldo, Ross looked over and said “We could get on the Flat Irons.” We looked around, all nodded and drove past the Eldo turn-off and into Boulder to pick up a Flat Irons guide book at Neptune Mountaineering (my favorite climbing/expedition store on earth). I bought the book and we chose to get on the Direct East Face Route (5.6s) on the 1st Flat Iron. I partnered with Ross and Brauning partnered with Flood. Each group ran up similar lines for the first 400’ and then we both got on the same route line for the rest of the climb. Ross led the first pitch and was about 75’ off the ground when he put his first piece in. I followed up and led the next 200’. I only placed 3 pieces of gear for the entire pitch and wasn’t really safe until I built my belay anchor. If Ross or I either one had slipped during any point on either lead, it would have meant a ground fall, a painful trip to the hospital and the end of a vacation. Brauning, who is more of a sport climber was having none of it and let Mark lead every pitch. Brauning was a little shaken up by the exposure, lack of placements and the height of the route. He didn’t exactly get off easy -- Flood sets passive protection with sledgehammer force. The night that we all arrived he passed out nut-tools that have the heft, weight and shape of a large long-dong lost arrow piton. There was a two-fold purpose in his gift. One, they were wonderful souvenirs that would remind each one of us of our trip every time it was used to wedge a stubborn stopper out of a crack. Two, they were a necessary tool to second Flood and retrieve the gear that he set without an extraordinary amount of frustration and foul language. Brauning forgot his new nut tool… He bitched and cried as he pulled every placement. And then there was the belay ledge that he was trapped on with Flood when there was a methane eruption that almost caused Brauning to unclip from the anchor and jump into the warm embracing void.

The Matt Talley and Ross Brown Climbing Machine at a belay ledge on the 1st Flatiron.	Matt Brauning at a belay ledge on the 1st Flatiron.

At the top of the 5th pitch Ross was taking a few pics and dropped my camera bag with a USB drive/CF adaptor and a CF card, full of pictures. It dropped about 40 feet and skidded to a stop precariously on a small ledge just before a 500’ drop off the face of the Flat Iron. I lowered Ross down to it and after grabbing it, he secured it to his harness with two carabineers and a runner of webbing so that it would be safe until we were on solid ground. Both groups moved really fast on the rock and turned a 1000’ ten pitch climb into a six pitch one by linking pitches with 70m ropes. It could have been done in 5 pitches, but the route got crowded at the top and there was a lot of rope drag on the final traversing pitch to the top of the slab. At the very top of the route there were two huge glued-in rappel anchors, a brass washer marking the summit location and a brass tube with a screw top cemented in place that contained a log book for climbers who had summited the route and wanted to leave their mark. I wanted to jot down a note about all of us and our trip but, the winds were just too gusty. I didn’t want to take the log out and risk it blowing out of my hands. Because of the traffic on the route and really high winds at the summit, it was five hours from the first hand hold until the rope was pulled from the rappel anchors and everyone was on solid ground again. Brauning and Flood ran back to the Blazer while Ross and I took our time getting back to the parking lot. In a green meadow, next to a small boulder, about ¼ of the way up from the parking area, we got a few shots of a mule deer lying in the grass. His antlers were still in the velvet and he was so accustomed to being unmolested by people that he laid there 30 yards from us and just stared at the traffic on the trail. He was very majestic. In my mind, it was the absolute best day of climbing during the whole trip. Every one of us preformed well and felt secure and strong all day. My only regret is that Grover wasn’t there to top the route out with us: he would have absolutely loved it! After leaving us, Grover flew to California and drove into the mountains for a wilderness medicine mountain seminar. While we missed him for the last three days we were in Colorado, he was both learning and having a balls-out good time! We received this e-mail upon his return: Jesus Christ!!!! I'm finally back home for good. Jesus Christ!!! Did I already say that? I had a fucking spectacular time at the conference. We camped every day. Every evening's lectures was either under this expansive sycamore tree on the Klamath River or behind a wall of Ponderosa pines on the Scott River. I rafted three more rivers after the Arkansas!!! The Klamath, the Scott and the California Salmon. Holy crap that was cool. I met some eminent folks in wilderness medicine E-M-I-N-E-N-T. We rafted every day but one. That day we traveled swam, jumped and made shelters. So much to tell. Then was Mount fucking Shasta baby. Then unfortunately was a 16 hour two day test that I just got back from. Fuuuuuck. Matt T: I'll get the pics to you soon. I've gotta get em developed first Matt B: Great to meet you. Looking forward to crashing on your couch or girlfriend, either or... slump buster... hah Mark: Thanks again Ross: Miss you already. The 1st Flat Iron was the tallest and longest route that Brauning had ever been on and he was all kinds of happy about it the entire way back to Floods. Since Friday was our last “climbing” day, we pulled out all the various gear and started sorting it. Climbers mark their gear because we all have very similar equipment. I marked everything with either “TALLEY” written on slings or with cobalt blue fingernail polish on the metal parts. Brauning used yellow electrical tape, Flood used black tape or a black marker and Ross used a stripe of yellow tape with a smaller stripe of blue laid over that. Even with all that marking it took an hour to sort out who had what. That done, Ross and I hit the shower and headed into Denver to meet yet another young lady that he had met while climbing. The drive into downtown wasn’t too bad but this girl gave directions like a blind retarded dog humps: We were all over the place and ended up about seven blocks from when the club was. After asking a couple of strangers, we found the club and waited in line for an hour to get in and have one beer (“Just a Coke for me please”… stupid shitty rash…). She and a couple of her friends came out to keep us company in line, but after about three minutes of listening to the conversation, I wanted to walk away. Ross’s new friend was not the brightest turnip in the patch (“What do people DO in Arkansas”…”I can’t believe that I am talking to someone from Arkansas, how weird…”) and one of her friends was an annoying liar: “I used to be a 5.12 climber, but I don’t climb anymore because I couldn’t find a partner and I didn’t have a rope.” 5.12 my ass… Ross was similarly annoyed and we hit the road fairly quickly and made our way back to Flood’s. I was out by 2:30 and Flood had us up the next morning by 5:30am to climb a 14,000’+ mountain.

The three Flatirons.

I awoke the next morning and sat up on the couch for a minute or two in a daze, then pulled multiple layers of manmade, breathable, insolating, space age and entirely too expensive clothes on. It took a couple of us to wake Ross up, but with enough prodding he finally started to move. The plan was to hike to the Summit of Torry’s Peak step down into a lower saddle and then ascend nearby Gray’s peak. Flood loves to bag peaks over 14,000’ and has tackled thirteen in the year+ that he had lived in Colorado. I live at ten feet (10’) above sea level, Brauning lives maybe twenty feet higher than me and Ross normally lives near 350’. I knew that our little trip uphill was going to hurt if my lungs and legs weren’t ready for it. I stepped up the amount of miles I ran every week and increased the time I spent in the saddle of my road bike about two months before the trip. I wasn’t completely acclimated to elevation by the morning of our hike, but after 7 days of sleeping at 6,000’ I felt pretty good about my chances of keeping up with uber-hiker Flood. Mark Flood was banned from using the word “casual” during our entire trip. When he refers to an outing as “casual,” it is misleading. It could mean that he had a pleasant stroll on snowshoes and saw fantastic vistas from a certain ridge during the outing or it could mean that it was an epic adventure where someone lost toes to frost bite, his food was eaten by a crazy-large bear or that there was a huge lead-fall after a gigantic boulder was pulled off the route and everyone there had to be heli-rescued. One just never knows what they are dealing with when Flood utters that banned word. To keep from being wrangled into one of the former described outings, we made him be very clear about all the aspects of the journey and what dangers might have to be faced. It was a little chilly when we left the parking area that morning, but we started shedding layers as soon as we were on the trail in earnest. Gray’s and Torry’s are popular peaks, so there were a number of parties on the trail with us that morning. Ross and Brauning did OK on the trail for the first hour and a half. When the air got really thin and the trail got good and steep they had to stop and rest every couple of hundred yards. At one point Brauning was sitting on a large rock about ¾ of the way to the top and said, “I never really promised anyone that I would actually top this thing.” To his credit though, he got up and soldiered on. I have been to 14,000’ feet before and I wasn’t racing to the top, so when I got too far ahead of them I would stop and wait: I was on the trip to be with friends, not to wander on a high trail, lost in my own thoughts. There were a couple snowfields that we crossed on our route and we met a few skiers and snowboarders on the trail who were going to top the mountain and then ski/board down Dead Dog Couloir. There was a group that was making a technical ascent of a lesser snow and ice filled gully as well, but it looked as though they were getting familiar with their gear and one another instead of ascending for the sake of climbing. We really, really should have brought our boards…

Earlier in the week, Ross and I had run by Neptune Mountaineering and I had asked about the snow conditions in Dead Dog Couloir and on the mountain in general. We were told very matter of factly that the probability for avalanche was high and that we needed to be off the vertical snow before 9:00am. Any “what if” questions were answered with “it would be VERY risky!” We left downhearted. None of us had avalanche beacons, probes, a snow shovel, avalungs, etc… and didn’t want to be caught in a wave of roaring ice, rock and snow. We should have asked around more. While Neptune’s is the epicenter of climbing and mountaineering for the area, they are a business and so their condition reports are on the conservative side. When we hit the snow and met the other skiers and boarders we knew that our decent would have gone as planned and we would have been fine. That said, Dead Dog was so out of our league: it was mad-steep with just a sliver of ice/snow wedged between two sharp walls of grey lifeless stone. We could have taken a ride from the saddle below the two summits down to the bottom (roughly 2000’ of drop). That wouldn’t have been a real problem for us and would have made for a good time, a great story and a priceless memory. We really should have brought our boards up!!	Mark Flood on trail to Torry's Peak


*Matt Brauning, Matt Talley, Ross Brown and Mark Flood on the summit of Torry's Peak in Colorado.*

Our last 300 semi-vertical feet went slowly, but we hit the summit of Torry’s about 3 hours after we began the hike in. There was rough looking weather moving in over the Rockies heading our way, so we only stayed on the summit long enough to snap off a couple of pics, take in the view and for Ross to send off a text message to friends and family from his phone. It was another moment during our trip that I wished Grover could have been a part of. By the time we got down to the saddle we made the call to forgo the summit of Gray’s because of the hairy weather that was blowing in. It had snowed lightly on us three times during the ascent during fair skies, so we didn’t want to get caught in a storm that high up. The trip down was so much better than the trip up. Mark used his mountaineering axe to glissade down from the saddle and met us on the lower trail. We made it to the parking lot in just over 2 hours. About a half a mile from Ross’s Blazer, it started snowing again. We looked back and both peaks were shrouded in clouds bursting with snow. The temperature on the trail dropped twenty degrees on us in about twenty feet and the snow started blowing in sideways ferociously. We were all glad that we had decided against topping out the second fourteener.

Matt Talley on the trail out.	Snow covered peaks and flakes blowing in sideways.

Mark had dropped his truck off for service on Friday morning and we ran by the dealership on the way home from Torry’s for him to pick it up. When leaving Ross took a wrong turn and got trapped in a parking lot. Since we had all arrived in Colorado, Ross had been railing against all the medians that, to him, seemed to proliferate the state. He made daily comments about their inconvenience. One has to understand that while there are roads in Arkansas with curbed medians there are also a great many two lane and dirt roads where one can cut a U-turn wherever one pleases. That was just Ross’s point of reference. Well, this particular afternoon, our boy Ross was both tired and cranky. When he realized that he was trapped in that circular parking lot his shoulders got tense, his right eye started twitching and I think he may have started mumbling in tongues. He gunned the engine, jumped a curb, spilled down a sloppy area of grass, bumped over the lower curb and sped away cursing Colorado parking lots, roads and medians. We tried to take a long nap at Flood’s after the ascent of Torry’s and the neighborhood kids seeing our long tired faces and spent bodies drag in, did their very best to lull us to sleep with the sweet sounds of thumping ghetto Rap and with the whimsical sound of their skateboards on the concrete just outside of the front door. Bless their little crumb snatching shriveled bastard souls. I got about an hour in of restless shut eye before we showered up and headed to dinner and into downtown Denver to meet Trent and Kara for drinks (“A Coke for me, thanks…” - damn hateful pain in the ass rash…). We had a drink or two, laughed, and made promises to get together this fall with the two of them for more climbing and some snowboarding. Kara and Trent have been together for about three years and every time one of us visits, she has him slaving away in the house with some complicated home improvement project. I felt it my duty to have a little talk with him about nuptials. True, Kara is gorgeous and fun and loving etc… etc… and he would be a fool to not take her off the market for those reasons alone, but I see it as a sweat-equity issue: He has put A LOT of work into their place, a lot. If he doesn’t hurry up and marry our Kara, he stands a chance of all that hard work not paying off. In addition to securing true love and community property, it would be a fine, fine reason for our little group to fly back to Colorado, drink, climb, snow board/ski, drink a little more, witness/participate in debauchery, toast the couple in our own special way, drink a lot more and cause general havoc. So Trent, get on the ball, son! After saying goodnight to Kara and Trent, the rest of us dropped by a great pool hall just across from Denver’s Union Station that was housed in the old railway station. During every other outing of our trip the cue ball had rolled a little funny for me and I had lost more than a couple of games senselessly. That night, however, I was on fire. At one point I ran seven balls and Brauning and I hammered Ross and his partner every single game. To his credit though, Ross’s game was thrown off just a touch by a young lady that was playing on the table adjacent to us. She was about 5’4” with long black hair, a crop top and a very, very short black skirt. What screwed up his shooting was that every time she went to shoot she would bend over the table and her tiny skirt would lift up and expose her entire bare ass. I pointed this out to Ross just before he tried and failed to make a critical shot. He looked up from the table, shuttered, shook his head and had to turn away. You see, this raven-haired beauty must have weighed 200+ pounds and there was a whole bunch of lumpy misshapen ass hanging out from the bottom of that tiny skirt. He was so horrified and his concentration was so off that at one point he drew his pool stick back for a shot and broke a pint glass of beer. Someone else might feel bad for bringing such a sight to Ross’s attention, but not me. I accepted a very long time ago that what I have within me is a touch of glowing red evil. Throwing off his concentration in such a way and exposing him to a sight that his mind will never be able to unsee made my coal black heart sing with the joy of new-found love. On our last morning we slept late, had some eggs and pancakes, did some last minute packing and made it to the airport about 1:35 that afternoon. After a round of goodbyes and hugs, Mark, Amy and Ross wheeled of back toward Denver and Brauning and I got caught up in the mess and confusion that is the Denver Airport on a Sunday afternoon. We spent fifty minutes in the security line and the train to our assigned terminal slid along at a snails pace. We missed our flight by five minutes, but a helpful lady at United’s Customer Service Desk hooked us up with flights to LAX. After having a snack and picking up some souvenirs, we boarded our plane and slept almost the whole way home. Brauning’s girlfriend (now ex - stupid girl - long story...), Cory, picked us up at LAX and I was asleep by 10:30 after a long overdue call to Laurel. The entire trip was awesome!! Brauning melded seamlessly with the rest of the group. We all got away from the pressures of work and school and caught up on old, comfortable friendships. We experienced absolutely fantastic weather with only clear blue skies while we were climbing and assaulting the long routes. We really couldn’t have asked for better from the weather gods. The day we left, the weather turned to crap. It rained off and on for eight days and Ross and Chris got rained out of Lumpy Ridge twice. We couldn’t have picked a better time to have been on the Front Range. Brauning and Ross summited their first 14ers. Brauning took his first raft ride and climbed his tallest routes to date. I got to see old friends, cause mischief, laugh a great deal, spend some quality time outside and miss work for a week, but I really missed participating the beer drinking... Ross got on some quality rock, almost nailed his first 5.11 onsite and learned all about the effects of altitude as it pertains to alcohol consumption. Flood got a needed vacation from work, got to introduce his girlfriend to his shy, respectful and low key buddies and happily played mother hen to all of us. Grover kept us all laughing: “How do you know that the tooth brush was developed in Arkansas? If it had been anywhere else it would have been the teeth brush.” He was a solid partner for all of us and our trip was a much needed break from the 70+ hours a week that he had been working at the hospital. There was roughly 4287' of elevation gain during those nine days while hiking, we climbed a total of 4700+ vertical feet and we spent the entire trip laughing at each other and ourselves. There was no discord between anyone and no one got hurt or injured. It was a trip that will make me smile randomly for years to come and will serve as a blue print for our further yearly/bi-yearly adventures.