February 3, 2018
Sheep’s Nose
Lost in Space
Early February and the weather is in the 50’s in the
mountains. A little wind can’t stop us, so we found a route in the normally
snow covered South Platte area an hour west of home and headed for a sunny
south face. Sheep’s nose is a 600’ rock formation just west of Woodland Park
and holds what is talked about as a classic 5.9 route called Lost in Space.
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| Sheep's Nose |
We have been trying to stay in shape over the last few
months, but with the short days and cold evenings, we haven’t found ourselves
outside nearly as much as we would like. We have started doing a few runs and
today was the Nielsen Challenge. A super short 2 mile cruise, so we ran that
and then headed straight for the rock figuring that both combined would make
for a good day of activity.
After dropping the dog off at Laura’s mothers house, we
arrived to Sheep’s Nose at 10:30. The short approach had us at the base of our
intended route just 15 minutes later.
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| Pitch 1 |
The climb is 4 pitches, none of great difficulty. I loaded
up a double set of cams and a set of stoppers and began climbing just before
11am. The first pitch works up a very short slab to an interesting step over on
thin footholds. A common theme for the day, I had to remind myself to trust my
feet on the slippery and mossy granite. Just 30 feet into the climb you work up
a right facing crack and then under a small overhang and to the first belay.
About 5.8 or so, the first pitch was fun and had great climbing.
The focal point of the view east of our climb was Pikes Peak
so as I belayed Laura, I tried to pick out specific areas that we had
previously climbed on “The Peak”.
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| Laura passing the overhand on pitch 1 |
The second pitch is about 150’ of great climbing. Up a short
distance and then a very careful traverse to the right. Once you cross an arête
and go out of view of your belayer you head up a steep crack in the rock until
eventually traversing back left and up to the second belay just before the
routes hardest sequence.
Pitch 3 begins with 20’ of 5.9 climbing on a crack large
enough for just one finger and some very delicate face moves. Again, trusting
your feet here is so important. A fall here would have landed my feet on
Laura’s head so I worked hard to get a decent piece of protection in just as
soon as I could. I slipped just a bit before placing a good stopper and
reducing the risk of a fall onto Laura just a few feet below. Climbing above, the difficulties ease and you
work up the left side of a huge chimney. This was my favorite part of the
climb.
At 5.7, Laura wanted to take the lead on the last pitch since she has
been practicing her leading and gear placing skills. Off she went to the final
belay where she built a solid anchor and brought me up.
We un-roped scrambled up the last 50’ of easy ground to the
summit. I had read that there were bolts for rappelling just beyond a notch and
we found a huge flat rock with cairns but unfortunately we couldn’t find the
bolts. Hidden or just blind, I don’t know, but we decided to down climb and
eventually got to a boulder with a set of rappel anchors just above a very
steep part of the descent. We rapped 50’, coiled the rope and headed back down
the easy path eventually reaching the car right around 3 pm.
We didn’t see another climbing party all day and had the
entire rock to ourselves. This was a pretty great route and I would highly
recommend it to anyone looking to take advantage of a warm winter day. We only
froze a few times, but with our down jackets on at the belays and just a fleece
when climbing, we stayed pretty warm.
On the drive out, the conversation turned to how great the
climb was and how you somehow only remember the great times you spent outside
and how quickly you forget the freezing hands and cold winds.
January 14, 2018
