2nd Flatiron with Nick

We finally got to climb with Nick! The three of us have been talking about it since we were in WTS together in the spring. We met at 8am at the Chautauqua ranger cottage and started up the Second Flatiron at 9am. Our aim was to climb the Free For All route -- one we're familiar with and one that has some good climbing on it (5.6 on some pitches). The picture on the right is Nick a few hundred feet up the climb (click it to see the whole album).

We hadn't given Nick much warning about this climb -- in particular, that we'd be out on the rock for probably 6-7 hours! Oops. Instead of climbing the last few pitches we bailed into the gully (which probably had harder climbing in it) and then finished up less than 100 feet from the summit.

The day went well except for one glitch. After traversing under a roof and then climbing up around a corner, the rope got stuck behind Nick. He had to downclimb 30 feet to get it uncaught so that once he was at the top of the pitch Laurel could be belayed up. Epic averted!

The hike down and back to the car took almost an hour. We headed home and had BeauJo's pizza (yum!) that Ann and Sean brought over. Good WTS-themed weekend!