It was off the the Black Canyon to meet Chris for a weekend of slabs, splitters, and runout fun for Ben and I last weekend.

Ben and I met Chris at his hotel in Montrose on Sat morning to food shop and get ready for the day’s route. The route we chose was called Ground Control To Major Tom (5.8+) and it was a first for all of us. After descending the Chillumstone Gully (a rather bushy affair) we arrived at the start of the route.

The route consisted of slabs and cracks for the first 600 or so feet followed by 600 more feet of exit pitches to finally reach the top. All in all, we figured the route was around 14 pitches and took all day. Good job Chris! That was a BIG route!

After completing the climb, we drove to the north rim which was just 1000feet or so by sight but 1.5 hours by car. Once there, we found camp and enjoyed some well earned burritos before bed.

The next day was a lot more casual climbing the five pitch route Maiden Voyage (5.8+)

A fun route.

When we finished we were off to drive back to Montrose only to learn that Chris’s flight was canceled but there was one he could make in Grand Junction and so we were off to race to make the flight.

…he made it

All in all, a great weekend full of adventure and incredible views. The Black yet again provides.

BG

Nate left off with the team about to carry up to camp 2.

May 28-Instead of making two carries to camp 2 as we did to camp 1 we did a single carry to give us another summit day. We ended up building camp 2 at 13,800′ which is a little lower then the plateau to stay out of the wind.

May 29-Rest day. Beautiful weather.

May 30-On our first summit attempt we got turned around at 16,200′ by wind and low visibility. Sadly the weather was pretty good everywhere other then the top of the mountain.

May 31- Planned day for second attempt at the summit but the weather didn’t play out as we needed it to so we sat in camp and rested up for a window.

June 1-Second summit attempt. Weather was great out of camp but we were again turned around with zero visibility and had to rely on compasses and GPS at times to return to camp safely.

After our second attempt we descended back to base camp arriving around 7pm

June 2-The team was flown out by the famous Paul Claus.

All in all it was a great trip with a really fun group of guys in an amazing range.

BK