The morning started with a drive up to one of the few places I’ve actually been bouldering, just north of the first Horsetooth Reservoir dam.  There are lots of problems here, but most are too difficult for me right now.  I’m mostly trying to build up arm strength and get my fingers a bit roughed up and used to the rock.

We ran into a local who climbs there often.  He ended up giving me some tips and let me use his crash pad for a bit while I tried to complete a move he said I should work on.  He also told me a bit about the history of bouldering in the area, including about John Gill, apparently one of the pioneers of the sport in the 60′s.  He marked problems all along Centennial Drive (the road along the east side of the reservoir) with white paint so others would be curious and attempt the climbs too.  He was a professor at CSU and ex-gymnast.

My arms get tired pretty quickly so most days I’m only climbing for 25-35 minutes, an hour total after breaks and such.   After stopping I wandered around the area with Rachael and found a little lizard friend:

Lizard Friend!

After the little lizard ran away, I headed down towards where we were told John Gill had marked one of his problems.  I found it after a bit of a walk:

White paint marking a problem by John Gill

The problem (1)

The problem (2)

Also, I found a post on the Inside Fort Collins blog on Bouldering around Horsetooth that has some interesting information.  Also, they link to Inner Strength Rock Gym which I’ve been meaning to check out–their prices don’t look too bad.

Finally, here’s an article that talks about John Gill and climbing in Fort Collins from 2001.

Also, check out the gallery here for all of the pictures from that day.

Midway through the day we decided we’d like to try Bear peak.  We ducked out of work a bit early and after grabbing our gear and waiting a bit for Ben, we headed out around 4:30.  As we knew, this is definitely too late to head out for a hike as early/late afternoon storms have made themselves a part of Colorado life for the past few months.  Despite this, we were hopeful and tried to make a decent pace up the trail.

The first mile or so along the mesa trail isn’t so bad.  We held a pretty good pace for this section on the Mesa trail.  Apparently there are two ways to reach the top of Bear Peak: Along the Bear Canyon trail (longer and less steep) or along the Fern Canyon trail (much shorter but much steeper).  We chose the latter option.

Most of the way up the Fern Canyon trail was full of rock steps and switchbacks due to the decently steep incline we were ascending.  After multiple breaks, we made it to a decent lookout over the west side of the climb and could see some very pretty snow covered peaks and another peak to our north:

Peak north of the Bear Peak trail

Up to this point we had heard a few rumbles of thunder.  As we could see west, the building storm clouds were visible.  The combination of the continuing thunder, slight sprinkles, and occasional lightning were enough to convince us to turn back.  I’m not one who likes to mess with lightning in elevated terrain.  As we turned around to descend, a nice view of the plains just south of boulder presented itself:

View of the plains from the Bear Peak trail

Also, a picture of us descending (from right to left) Nick (fixing his shoe), Ben, Kuo, Dan, and Evan:

Descending Bear Peak

After a knee/shin jarring descent and a quick hike back down the Mesa trail towards NCAR, I snapped a quick few images of Boulder from the trail just west of the office:

Start/End of the Mesa trail just north of NCAR

By this time it was quite close to raining pretty good, so some of us hurried back to the building.  Just as Ben and I made it to the back entrance (across the bridge) it started raining.  Perfect timing!

After hiking Evan, Kate, and I headed to Southern Sun for dinner and a few beers.  Also, Evan and I decided we were sick of the weather denying us a full hike, so we are planning on leaving around 6:30 tomorrow morning to try again.  It is 11pm now, we’ll see if we actually make it.  I’m sure I’ll at least post photos if we do.

Side note: I found a Linux GUI/CLI tool called Hugin that does photo stitching very easily.  The third and fourth images of this post were made using Hugin and turned out pretty well.  I plan to make more in the future as they are much more impressive than a single image.