Andy in the Rockies

Trip reports, videos, and photos from hiking, climbing,
and mountaineering adventures in Colorado and beyond.

Fo - Quadratic Equation
July 14, 2007

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Me approaching the belay atop the first pitch....Me approaching the belay atop the first pitch....Starting up the second pitch along the arete....After crossing the gully there was a nice crack system leading up to the su...Almost to the summit....Almost to the summit....Fabio starts up the first pitch....Pro was sparse on the first pitch....Fabio on the first pitch....I think this rock is called "Back Porch"....Fabio belays....The rocks on Dinosaur Mountain. Fo is the rock second from the right on the...
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Trip Report [hide]

Fabio picked this climb out and it sounded good to me. It was in a part of the Flatirons I'd never been and it sounded like a nice two or three pitch 5.6.

Fabio took the first pitch and I was glad he did - I didn't really like it. It was pretty dirty, the rock wasn't very trustworthy, and the pro was sparse.

Thankfully, the second pitch was much better and I was happy to get to lead it. The first half was up a a nice arete with surprisingly good pro. At the top of the arete there was a real cool intersection of the arete, a deep gully, and the summit block. The gully was probably a good 3-4' across and perhaps 10' deep. I had to climb down off the arete chimney and stem my way down the gully for a good 20' before finding more face holds on the face of the summit block. Although not as hard as it first looked, it really got my attention. Once on the east face of the summit block there was a nice crack system that got me to the summit.

The downclimb off the back side was a bit trickier than Rossiter let on his guidebook. Fabio ended up downclimbing it on belay and I rapped it. From there we scrambled to the top of Dinosaur Mountain.

It was still pretty earlier so we thought we might want to climb something else and we picked out "Dinosaur Tracks" on Dinosaur Rock. We hiked down to the base of it, but the start of the route was not readily apparent. Besides, the temps were soaring into the low 90's neither I nor Fabio were looking forward to four more pitches on the baking rock.

We both agreed that a cold beer at Southern Sun sounded a lot better so we packed it in and headed down.

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