The CragBaby

After my first six weeks of vacation in Utah, I officially hit the road heading to Rifle, Colorado.  I had been to Rifle a couple years back and completely gotten my ass kicked.  At the time I was working on 5.10’s and 5.11’s and Rifle was definitely NOT the place for someone working on such grades.  This year I am a bit stronger and so was excited to see if the climbing felt any better.

Beautiful Rifle canyon.

Screamer on one of the “do-able” 5.10 warmups, which were very few and far between.

Well….. unfortunately…. it was still ridiculously hard.  I am working on low 5.12’s in Salt Lake, which means in Rifle I am working on 5.11’s.  Also, the Rifle ‘word on the street’ is to stay off the polished 5.10’s and 5.11’s…… meaning I was once again scared to death.  Sigh.  I only climbed 4 days but honestly just wasn’t having any fun.  I couldn’t get into the grove of the Rifle climbing technique (basically nothing pulling downwards and the bolts being spread out), I was scared to lead anything, plus, there was some stuff going on at home that was affecting the experience.  I was so discouraged I almost drove home from the road trip and hung up the climbing shoes for good.  Thankfully, I decided to cut my losses short and left for the Red River Gorge, Kentucky.

Scott on the stunning Feline route.

Perhaps I need to go back to Rifle if I ever hit the 5.13 level.  Sigh.

Tags: climbing, Colorado, Rifle, RoadTrip2008

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Destination: Rifle, CO, RoadTrip2008, climbing, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.