[TR] Rocky Mountain National Park - Casual Route 8/15/2000

[matt_warfield]

Trip: Rocky Mountain National Park - Casual Route

 

Date: 8/15/2000

 

Trip Report:

All right folks, a picture is worth a thousand words but a thousand words can be worth a picture. In other words: no pictures!

 

Disclaimer: some of this was already posted on this site but I have noticed that the attention span of posters is pretty limited so here I go again to get the synapses going. If you don't know about synapses got to Wikipedia. If you don't know about Wikipedia go to Google. If you don't know about Google God help you or whatever higher spirit interests you the most.

 

Rocky Mountain National Park along with Squamish are amongst our greatest places to visit in the USA for rock and alpine rock. My visit to do the Diamond started with a "warmup" climb at Lumpy called "Mainliner" on an 800 ft. wall followed by a second route named "Kor's Flake", also 800 ft.

 

 

RIP Layton Kor: a true treasure in our climbing history.

 

But that SOB rated this climb 5.7 and it has soiled the pants of many expecting something different than way harder than 5.7 and by the way there is a "wide" section.

 

Back to the main story.

 

Casual Route was renamed by Charlie Fowler (also RIP) after he free soloed it. When interviewed he said it was "Casual".

 

Now we are really back to the main story.

 

Up at 12:00 because 2:00 is happy hour for the Diamond. And whe are not not talking PM. At that hour some are smoking rock and some going to get on the rock. On the rock at 6:00 and off by noon unless you have an affinity for getting zapped.

 

My partner and I took off and as hard chargers were hell bent to get past these folks but one was from Chicago and was therefore disqualified from the altitude game and perhaps the cardio game as well.

 

We will get to the climb eventually.

 

We stormed up the approach trail and nearly croaked the Chicago guy since we were a "team" at this point except they were going different ways (N. Face instead of Diamond).

 

We rested and started chatting before our climbs. Some folks in their tents got a little pissed about the noise and we advised them that this was a hiker's trail also used by climber's and they can be complete assholes when confronted. We were and several tails were between their feet soon enough.

 

Next up: The bivy site. We go in at 5:00 a.m. on rappel to get on the wall at 6:00 a.m. But wait, some folks (I say that it in the most reasonable way) are bivying and got caught with their pants down because we were the "first in" unless you want to risk you life with the North Chimney.

 

Later, we dropped our fanny pack with keys and wallets which required much backtracking and rapelling past Cameron Tague's rope (Google it) which had been abandoned after his death from slipping on snow after doing the Diamond many times. His GF said this rope is going down.

 

Be careful out there my friends.

 

P.S. I climbed the Diamond and for the first time in my life went to sleep with the lights on at 6:00 p.m.

 

 

 

Edited April 26, 2013 by matt_warfield