More Shelf Road

Cactus Cliff

Sunset

We returned to Shelf Road fully stocked on water and food ready for some more climbing. But we started to become more aware of why people had told us that shelf was too hot this time of year. With temps in the low 90's we were limited to climbing in the morning shade before things just became miserable out. Our guidebook was clearly written in the winter since it only described about half of the cliffs at shelf and the descriptions on all were how they got great winter sun. This is not a good thing in June. We pretty much stuck to one cliff the whole time, but since there is pretty much endless rock at shelf, there was still plenty to do to keep us busy.

unknown climber on Cactus Cliff

The typical day at shelf consists of waking up fairly early, drinking coffee and eating breakfast from the great view of the tent pad, hiking to Cactus Cliff, doing a few fun climbs until it was in the sun, enduring the hot hike back to camp, then lazing about in the shade of camp in the hammock until it cooled off enough to think about dinner. We had frequent intentions of returning to climb in the evening, but the heat had sapped all of our motivation by that point.

Morning coffee - self portrait

One evening a couple stopped by our camp asking if we hadn't just been climbing in Penitente as they recognized our van from there. We started chatting and learned that they were also on a two year road trip. Donn and Jody are from West Virginia and about three months in to their trip. It was great to meet another couple doing something similar! We shared some stories of good places to climb. We didn't get a chance to climb with them since they left Shelf the next day, but it sounds like we will be on similar paths this summer and hopefully will meet up with them again.

 As far as the quality of the climbing we were very impressed and got on a bunch more routes that were challenging. Cassie redpointed (got to the top without falling) a great climb called Leisure Class 11b and I redpointed the route just to the left of it called Pick a Peck of Perfect Pulling Pockets 11d. We were both really happy to have bumped up our hardest redpoint of the trip and were incredibly happy with the quality of the routes. We also got on a bunch of other climbs such as Blackmans Buurden 10c, three-quarter ton 10d, Illegal Smile 11b, Diedrus 10b, La Cholla Jackson 5.8, Stress Rehearsal 10d and others. Each of the routes was very good and we even took some pictures while climbing to document.

Cassie on Blackman's Burden 10c

After climbing two days in a row Cassie's elbow started bothering her, and my ring finger was acting up so we decided to leave Shelf a bit early and begin working our way to Rock Mountain National Park and after that Boulder Colorado. We were sad to leave early and have every intention of coming back at some point to climb more. On the other hand a local Coloradoan told us that the climbing at Ten-Sleep in Wyoming is even better limestone than Shelf Road, and that France was even better than either so I guess we only have better climbing to look forward to.

Very tired puppy

Currently we are typing this email from a small park in Cripple Creek, Co. Mojo is rolling in the grass enjoying not having to make the steep hike today and Cassie and I are looking forward to taking a few days off of climbing to just camp and hike around. We should be in RMNP by the weekend and in Boulder by the following weekend of June 18th.

Cassie on Three-Quarter Ton 10d (steeper than it looks)

Granite Arch - Shelf Road

crescent moon