Life In Six Minute Increments: Rocky Mountain National Park

Hello, friends! Today I'm writing to you from Prescott, Arizona where I'll be spending the next few days visiting with my mom and grandparents. (The grandparents live here, while Mom flew in from D.C. for a visit.)

Before heading out here, I spent the last few days in Rocky Mountain National Park and was really taken with that place. It was definitely my favorite, of the areas in Colorado that I had the opportunity to visit.

There is something about the mountains that has really gotten under my skin. They are just beautiful and spectacular and I can not come up with the proper adjectives to do them justice. More of my time recently in the Park was spent hiking and scrambling around on my own as opposed to climbing and there was plenty to see. The hike out to Sky Pond which sits in a beautiful cirque at the base of Taylor Peak, Thatchtop and the Petit Grepon was particularly enjoyable and is well worth the trip.

View out from the Lake of Glass, just before Sky Pond

Ditto

Some falls along the way

Thankfully, I did manage to squeeze in one more day of climbing at Lumpy Ridge. Mandi and I returned to the Book, where Megan and I had climbed previously and did Pear Buttress, a fun four-pitch 5.8. The third pitch is a ridiculously fun 140-foot 5.8 finger-to-hands crack on perfect granite. Highly recommended!

Mandi figuring out the fun and exposed feeling traverse moves at the top of the 3d pitch

We topped out fairly late in the day and were rewarded with some beautiful light on the surrounding mountains.

I am finding in my travels that for all the routes I get to climb, there are just as many new areas and new routes to add to my "must do someday" list. I had wondered prior to starting out on my travels whether climbing so much would leave me feeling burnt out on climbing. In fact, just the opposite is happening. After a day or two off from climbing, I am even more fired up to get back out there for more. For every place that I have the opportunity to visit or route that I climb it seems that I am exposed to even more possibilities. And on that note, here are just a few of the things in the Park that caught my eye: