apAdventures

posted by ARR

Durango, Colorado to be exact – with our long-time Pittsburgh climbing buddies!

posted by ARR

And the final destinations:
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Durango, Colorado

And now on to Fall 2015. Hope we have just as many adventures to report!!

Posted by arr

As predicted back when we decided to spend an extra day at Joe’s Valley, we found ourselves having to hack a destination from the trip’s hit list due to limited time. Sorry Wild Basin, Colorado. We’ll visit you some other time.

Then we figured what the heck, why not hack another destination and spend a nice three whole days in Rocky Mountain National Park? After all, it is our trip and we made up the rules so we can modify them if we want, right? Right. See ya Clear Creek, Colorado – another destination for another day.

So now that we’ve got destination’s 8 and 9 out of the way, it’s time for the grand finale: Durango, Colorado. We’d heard of the great plethora of rock in Durango from fellow climbers. There’s even a bouldering guidebook for it. And we’ve always liked the town the few times we’ve driven through it on the way to Ouray and Telluride. We were excited for destination #10.

We arrived in Durango around 3pm on Friday. The protocol we’ve fallen into on this trip has been to arrive at the destination late in the day. We spend the remainder of the day scoping the climbs we had picked out from the guidebook and/or videos. This way, the next day could be spent just climbing, not hunting around for stuff or getting stuck at the first boulder we see that looks amazing.

Durango was a little different. I’m not sure what fire got under our butts that day (maybe the REALLY great cup of coffee we scored in Pagosa Springs?), but we literally drove into town, found the local climbing shop, bought the guidebook, drove to the boulders while flipping through it’s pages as fast as possible looking for good lines, parked and haphazardly packed up the kids and pads, speed-hiked the all-uphill 25 minute approach, threw the pads down and just started climbing any and everything we could get our hands on. As Paul summarized rather brilliantly on the dark hike out, “I felt like a dog, running around and pissing on everything!” (Note: For those that haven’t hung around Paul or I enough to hear the vulgarities start spewing while we’re climbing, to “piss” on a climb is a climber’s way of saying he or she “climbed it with ease.” Or as in, “that climb was piss-easy” meaning, “that climb was extremely easy.”)

Annnnyyyywaaaay, vulgarities aside, the boulders were fun. Really fun! We climbed the next day too, until threatening clouds rolled in and started to thunder, lightening and rain on us. From there we topped the day off with burgers and a brew in town and a visit to the Narrow Gauge Railway museum for the kids timed perfectly with the train’s arrival from Silverton. Good climbing, good food and beer and a no-kidding operating authentic steam engine all in the same day???!!! Durango is awesome!!!! This made for a stellar ending to a superbly stellar trip. Now back to Tucson.

We tried our best to shoot video of this trip. More so to capture the boys at their adorable ages than us and our earth-shattering sends. 😉 The climbing video probably sucks anyway since it’s mostly all from a tripod. We hope to put together a little summary post soon, video included. Stay tuned.

A beautiful vista approaching Pagosa Springs from the east

Me warming up on the Petrified Boulder at Sailing Hawks in Durango. Our warm-up lasted probably a total of 10 minutes…

…and then we were trying the adjacent v5, Petrified Prow, which Paul sent and I did not. I was basically flash-pumped the whole 2 hours we had to climb that night!

Cute boys

and cool boulders

Google ‘Durango bouldering’ and this climb will come up, Sunday Stroll v6. Paul flashed it. I worked out the moves but wasn’t able to get on it the following day on account of the rain. Excellent line.

These guys ran around just as much if not more than us adults, gathering leaves

and after closer inspection I realized that some of the pretty colorful leaves they were grabbing was poison ivy. Eek!

And thus we learned that the boys have their mama’s genes of poison ivy immunity, cause dad was the only one who broke out. Poor dad, good thing it’s the end of the trip!

Paul making quick work of Legacy of the Kid v9, send!

Durango landscape

Another excellent line, Last Tango in Durango v6. Same as above, Paul sent that first evening. I came close and then wasn’t able to return the following day on account of the rain.

The following day we warmed up and then tried this just as it started to rain, Something Wicked This Way Comes, v6. Static and sweet movement required.

Although I was bummed not to have gotten to try Sunday Stroll and Last Tango in Durango again, sending this baby was a nice little consolation prize. And since Paul had sent literally every problem he had tried upon arrival, including this one, we were off for burgers and brews downtown! Wooo!

posted by arr

This October 2nd will mark TEN YEARS of marriage for Paul and I. Although ten years does kind of sound like a long time, to me it feels as though Paul and I have been together much longer. I reason that it’s probably because we’ve done a lot since we first met – a lot of climbing trips, moving out to Arizona together, a house, even more climbing trips, and now kids. We’ve really packed it in over the last decade. So ten years of marriage isn’t so mind-blowing to me right now. What IS mind-blowing to me though is the fact that Silas was born half-way through that ten year duration. That’s the fact I’m trying to come to grips with. My baby Silas whom I can clear as day picture as a newborn in my arms just yesterday is somehow turning five years old this October! Ten years with Paul I get. Five years with Silas I’m still shaking my head over in disbelief. I’m only just starting to understand the phrase “they grow up so fast.”

Paul and I decided this year’s anniversary we needed to do something adventurous. Not only because it was our 10th, but primarily because since we had the kids we haven’t really done much for our anniversaries, other than maybe toast with a glass of wine. I know, LAME! Here’s a recap of anniversaries past:

1st anniversary: Yosemite. We hiked to the top of North Dome and ate our wedding cake on top, with a magnificent view of Half Dome. (After our wedding in upstate NY my mom had saved the topper of our cake in the freezer, then shipped it to us in Arizona in dry ice a year later and we packed it in the cooler and took it with us to Yosemite, then hiked it to the top –a travelin’ little piece of cake that was!).

2nd anniversary: Grand Canyon. Having recently gotten psyched on long-distance trail running and completed Imogene Pass Run in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado for the first time just a few weeks prior, we decided it’d be fun to run across the Grand Canyon and back. It was both fun…AND HARD! And we loved it.

3rd anniversary: Long’s Peak. Hiking/running it, not climbing it. Hiking proved to be almost as epic as climbing might have been though because I got altitude sickness and we had to turn back below the summit. Still a great time though and we redeemed ourselves with some Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) bouldering the next day.

4th anniversary: Bishop. This anniversary was spent in the midst of our dreamy six month Colorado-Pittsburgh-Rocklands-Marathon New York-Bishop-Yosemite trip. Basically the entire six months was a big anniversary celebration that year. 

5th anniversary: Mt. Lemmon hike two weeks prior to Silas’ grand arrival. I was ready to pop! I remember doing a short little hike and then eating a cookie at the Cookie Cabin that I immediately went and upchucked in their bathroom.

6th anniversary: Can’t remember. My webposts around this time don’t even give me a clue so chances are we did the whole “cheers with a glass of wine” deal.

7th anniversary: I was pregnant in my first trimester with Ivan. If I had to guess I was probably vomiting most of that day. (Pregnancy was not good to me with either child).
8th anniversary: These were sad times as Morgie had passed away. ‘Nuff said about that.

9th anniversary: Feeling that we owed it to ourselves to do something (anything!) for our anniversary that year we arranged for our dear friend Linda to babysit the kids while we went out on the town. Unfortunately Linda fell ill and had to cancel last minute. So we instead gobbled down the homemade mac & cheese I had made special for the kids and the four of us were all in bed by 8pm.

So in classic apAdventures-style, we’re gonna go big this year. For our 10 years of blissful marriage we’re going to boulder at 10 blissful bouldering locations throughout Arizona, Utah and Colorado over the course of 17 days. Stay tuned. We hope to be able to do some posts along the way.

posted by ARR