Hiking up to Way Rambo wall; you can see the arch that forms Chest Full of Kindness (a route) in in the right third of the photo; basically where the sun turns to shade, go a little more to the right and look for the lighter colored sandstone arch
The creek we had to cross to get to Way Rambo (crag we climbed at today)
Yesterday was an emotional stew for me, the lows of who-knows-what, and the highs of MY FIRST LEAD CLIMB AT INDIAN CREEK!! I am elated to get back on the wall today, and soon we will have another emotional low when the van breaks down but first - let’s talk about the epic climbing at Way Rambo and the sweetest dog that ever did walk the Earth.
I am still high off of the accomplishment of leading a 5.9 route at Indian Creek yesterday at Optimator Wall. Today, we head to the popular wall “Way Rambo'“. The crag will face the sun, but Jason is being really sweet and agreeing to go here because it hosts a route I want to do: “Chest Full of Kind” 5.10. Cass recommended it, and it sounds awesome- a short (45ft) overhanging handcrack with perfect hands the entire way. Jason and I hike up the trail to the wall, and I feel loved and full of excitement to try out Chest Full of Kind. We arrive at the base of the wall and of course, both of our potential warm up routes are occupied. Funny how that happens when there are only one or two (or zero) 5.9’s at a crag, and most of the routes are graded much harder. We chat with the climbers, and when they find out we live in Golden they ask if we know “Crash Tyson” or “Corduroy Johnson” or something that required me to ask if that is a product line or a human being. Clearly we didn’t know this person, but we laugh and wait for a route to open up. Meanwhile, the sweetest dog in the world is at our feet, begging for pets and cocking her head at us. Her name is Eva, and she’s pictured lowered down.
We warm up on an AWESOME splitter route called Blue Sun, which must be named for the fact that it only takes 2’s and 3’s (cam sizes; yellow and blue, respectively). I lead the route - my first 5.10 trad lead EVER! Despite it being almost-perfect handsizes (1’s and 2’s are perfect for my little paws), I get insanely pumped out while climbing. I have never lead such a splitter route, save for the hand crack at the climbing gym. But this route is much longer, and there’s not option to bail to a facehold to rest your grip or your feet. I make it up, feeling once again high on the exhilaration of achievement.
Excited for another spin on the sharp end of the rope!
Making my way up the route (Blue Sun, 5.10)
Two cuties
After a warmup, we decide it’s time to tackle my “project”, Chest Full of Kind. I wish I had some photos of me on the route (maybe Jason does! We haven’t shared photos yet), but it was a a powerful battle for me to get up the route. By far this was the hardest route I had ever led on trad. Maybe….ever? I sweat and yelped and shoved my hands into the crack, but the slight overhang and the baggy hands at the start made getting into the flow difficult from the onset. Right off the ground, I had to commit to holding my body weight on sub-par fist jams/baggy hands. I tried to take deep breaths and stay calm as I placed my first piece, a blue #3, and placed a few more of those as I desperately jammed my way up the crack, hoping it would constrict and give me better hand placements. Thankfully, it did, but the overhanging nature of the rock meant that I was getting more exhausted with each body movement. At one point, I decided that I wanted to face my fear of falling (I’ve been waiting years for it to evaporate away) and decided to fall on a piece. I was above a lovely orange totem when I simply let my fatigue win, swinging down and abrading my left elbow on the sandstone. I laughed aloud - I was ecstatic.
Facing fears can be laughter-inducing like that. I rested, shouted something to express my excitement to Jason, and eventually got right back into the crack. While the route is only 45 ft, it packs a punch and never lets off as far as commitment and intensity go. The final 5 ft of the route require navigating around a bulge, which required me to change my technique since the rock was no longer a simple splitter crack, but a strange bulge I had to figure out. I smeared my feet on what appeared to be minor texturing of the rock, desperate for some kind of positive foot hold to support my weight as I maneuvered out of the crack. I fell at least a dozen times, but Jason had given me the tip of placing some gear above the bulge as far as I could reach to protect the fall (and hold my progress) which I’m glad he did. Finally, I performed some freaky kind of layback move and made it to the anchors. I’ve never been so relieved to be at the end of the route! My arms throbbing, I let out a whoop, took in the view, and was lowered down to the ground.
We climbed one more route besides Blue Sun and Chest Full of Kind called Rochambeau, 5.9, which was a hoot and a holler. We loved it, and highly recommend it for a fun jaunt of a warmup. It was a very different style than the other two routes we climbed; it wasn’t a classic Indian Creek splitter, but rather of series of bulges with plentiful faceholds and foot ledges to accompany the crack.
Not mentioned, but pictured above, is the small creek we had to cross to get to Way Rambo. Scroll up if you missed it. The water reached just below my knees when I skirted the right side of the creek, and I didn’t feel like driving through it but Jason felt confident he could do it. He wondered out loud if we should just park on the near side of the creek and avoid driving through it, but excited for the adventure of driving through a creek and not wanting to add too much distance to our approach I told him, “If you feel like you can drive through it without getting the van stuck, I think you should go for it!”. So he did, and he sent it 100% clean! On the way back, of course we had to go through the creek again. Little did we know, we were flooding parts of the van that aren’t supposed to get wet but we will get there.
Yikes.
Leaving the crag, we saw a helicopter and several ambulances. This is never a good sign, and when we saw the emergency vehicles blocking the main north-south dirt road we parked the van and I walked out to investigate. I could feel my heart rising into my throat with fear as I cautiously approached the group of trucks and uniformed folks. I didn’t want to intrude, so I stood ~10ft away and then a woman approached me, looking like a climber herself. “My friend had a basejumping accident off of Whale Wall [I think is what she said] and he somehow had phone service and was able to call me. He thinks he broke his hip, but is ok otherwise.” My heart flipped, but I also felt a wave of relief. Someone able to make a phone call is not dead. I retreated to the van, where I waited with Jason and two other stuck parties until the helicopter lifted into the air and the emergency responders began hiking at a brisk pace to perform the rescue. Despite the warm sun that warranted shirts off, I had goosebumps. I hope he was ok.
Once the road cleared, we hopped back into the van and started the engine. The check engine light came on, which was a little troubling. We drove for a bit, and decided to pull over at the Beef Basin trailhead lot to inspect the van for any obvious damage that may have been incurred during our creek crossing. Popping the hood and crawling under the van revealed dripping water caught in several nooks and crannies, but nothing seemed too alarming. We re-started the engine, the check engine light re-illuminated, but the engine seemed ok. It seemed ok until the van kind of shuddered along the road, the battery light came on, Jason lost power steering, and then the gas pedal was unresponsive. Jason dictated each of these events as they unfolded and coasted us to an impeccably placed road shoulder that could fit a huge van. The van was dead, or so it seemed. My heart sank, yet again, and I was soaked in fear that this was it, the van was kaput.
After the initial wave of fear, we both sprung to action. We popped the hood and heard a lovely sizzling noise akin to sausages roasting on the fire. The origin of the noise seemed to be our fuse box. Great. Under the van, water steadily dripped, and a sniff test seemed to confirm the identity of the liquid to be water, not coolant or oil. The sizzling was ceaseless and I decided to disconnect the van battery, to hopefully avoid either (1) shocking ourselves with all of the water + buzzing electricity, (2) draining the battery. I disconnected the battery, but the sizzling never stopped. This raised a question for me, how could electricity flow if I disconnected the circuit, and I wondered if our solar panels and their affiliated batteries (just two normal 12V car batteries) were somehow not as isolated from our car battery circuit as I thought. While I pondered the physics of it all, Jason took action and flagged down passing cars, trying to get help. I stopped drawing circuits in my head and decided to call my Dad, who has helped me so many times with random car issues. I had no service - but thanks to our diversity in phone plans, Jason’s phone had one single bar of service if I stood outside the van by the back right wheel.
For the next hour and probably much longer, I paced in a tiny square box so I wouldn’t lose service and troubleshot with my Dad. My dad’s final advice was that something got wet that shouldn’t have, and since it was pushing hours past sunset, we should let the van dry out overnight and try again in the morning. Meanwhile, Jason waved several cars over, and the kindness of strangers was not lost on us. Most did not have much help to offer, but several made sure that we had water (with no water in Indian Creek, getting stuck could get really ugly without sufficient water backup) and food, and someone lent us a bag of supplies that included several fuses and a soldering iron.
Eventually, two lovely gentlemen who I reallllllllllly wish we had taken a photo of pulled over and began performing wizardry. Their names were Dave and Tony, and one of them had a shirt that said, “Don’t worry - everything is out of control” or something ironic that I had to point out in the current context. We all laughed, and the one who I think was Dave explained that we probably sucked water into our air intake when we crossed the river (indeed - a torrent of water cascaded all the way to the tippy top of our windshield on the second crossing). If water was sucked into the engine, that could be bad. Ya know, water and oil immiscibility and all that jazz. He disconnected the tube to our air intake, the filter was somehow dry, and he proclaimed that we should start the engine, get it really hot, and let that hot engine help evaporate the water. I hesitantly reconnected the battery (he hadn’t really found anything wrong - why are we reconnecting the battery), and lo and behold the engine started. I drove up and down the road at 50 mph, and every time I passed back to our safe little pull-over where Jason waited (to meet another car that promised to come back to help us) he urged me to take another lap.
When I returned from my engine-warming expedition, I idled in the pullover which I hate doing but in this situation it seemed reasonable to idle. We called my dad to give him an update (the van runs!), and as we sat on the phone with him, the engine died. Jason and I looked at each other, exhausted, starving, and exasperated. We decided to follow my dad’s advice - turn the engine off, and sleep it off. Try again in the morning.