Sheep's Nose

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.

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.

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”.

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.