The Craggin’ Classic is the first annual rock climbing festival sponsored by the American Alpine Club.
 |
I went down to the American Mountaineering Center a little early to do some of my own research in the library (instead of my usual volunteering research time for others). At 5pm I wandered upstairs and signed in for the weekend (free Patagonia organic cotton t-shirt, spork and folding bowl to reuse for all the meals). I picked up a Golden City beer and meandered through the vendor tents.
 |
I had a long conversation with Jason Hass, who has published a new guide book to the climbing on North Table Mountain (now covered in clouds). I also chatted with reps from Scarpa, Black Diamond and MSR about their gear. Dinner was provided by the Boulder restaurant Sherpa’s and served buffet style.
After a dinner and a few beers I was already starting to feel I’d already gotten my money’s worth from this event, and we hadn’t even done any climbing yet. The crowd gathered in the Foss Auditorium upstairs for an awards presentation. John Gill and Dave Turner both received awards for climbing styles that couldn’t be more different. Gill pioneered a very gymnastic approach to bouldering (extremely tough climbing moves very close to the ground) while Turner has become known for multi-day big wall ascents (30+ days climbing solo with no outside contact). Following the awards, Josh Wharton gave a slide show of trips to Alaska and Pakistan. A local band played in the parking lot to finish off the evening, but I was exhausted after the previous few late nights and made my way home after 3 songs.
Everyone met again at the American Mountaineering Center for coffee and breakfast burritos. With an all-day rain in the forecast, the weather was keeping us indoors. After some last minute arrangements, we split off to different rock climbing gyms with various guides and sponsored athletes. Majka Burhardt was leading one group of us to the Boulder Rock Club. I’d seen Majka’s Vertical Ethiopia presentation last month and thought she’d be interesting to learn from.
 |
After each climbing an easy route and Majka and others checking that we knew the fundamentals of belaying we were free to start lead climbing. Ben and Majka helped me learn to clip more efficiently, a useful and confidence inspiring skill.
We then found a slightly overhanging wall to practice taking leader falls – a good skill to get comfortable with in a safe setting. Knowing you can fall can help you stay confident to push yourself into harder routes. Climbing indoors today was actually and advantage – if we’d been outdoors the insurance covering the Craggin’ Classic wouldn’t have allowed us to lead climb.
 |
I then spent some time with guide Mark Hammond reviewing some rescue scenarios (lowering on a reverso device, giving an assist to a second with a 3-1 pulley, counter-balanced and tandem rappels). He asked what else I wanted to cover and I said I was interested in practicing some easy aid climbing to get past short sections that I might encounter beyond my climbing ability. So he demonstrated how to aid climb by moving from sport bolt to sport bolt using a few basic slings and carabiners that would be on any trad leader’s harness. I then repeated the lesson and Mandy took a lap as well.
 |
I left while Mandy was covering some other skills with Mark. Walking back downstairs I ran into her husband and had one of those “I know you from somewhere” moments. We realized we’d met on James Peak a couple months ago. I’d been climbing with Mandy all morning and neither of us recognized each other. I recalled that Mandy was a little exhausted on that day and couldn’t ever forget the the way she cussed in a Georgian accident. I joked that I didn’t recognize her since she hadn’t said “f*ck” all morning.
We then worked on our crack climbing technique and I took one final attempt at a route to finish me off for the day. I thought the route was 5.10, but later someone told me it was 5.11 – which certainly explains why I had to hang on the rope to rest and re-try and re-try the final moves.
Around 5pm I returned to the festival headquarters for more beer (Avery Brewing Company this time). I passed the time helping to stake out our territory in the warm part of the heated tent with Mandy and the rest of their crew. We’d send one person out to make foraging forays for beer and candy while the rest defended our space. Dave Turner stopped by for a few minutes and we asked him questions about how and why he solos such big walls for so many days.
After another excellent dinner we were treated to a slideshow by Jonny Copp. He took a different approach to his show, instead of presenting a series of chronological trips to Alaska, the Alps and Asia, he mixed them all together showing photos and often-hilarious videos in order of Planning, Training, Travel and Approach, Basecamp, Climbing, Bivouac, Summit or Bail and Descent. Before and after the slideshow I helped man the wine bar. To end the evening the Austin-based band The Gourds were playing in a heated tent while rain came down in spurts. I didn’t catch much of their show between working at the wine bar and then having to leave early to do some system maintenance on computers 1,500 miles away.
More rain on Sunday pretty much canceled most of the planned events. A few of us showed up around 11am to volunteer at the advertised “Adopt a Crag” service project, but no one in charge appeared. I spent a lazy afternoon thinking about the upcoming ice climbing season.
A large crowd showed up for the last event of the weekend: dinner, drinks and a movie at the Buffalo Rose in Golden. At 8pm they screened the movie “Perfecto” on deep water soloing. Seemed pretty standard climbing-film fare to me, some good climbing but little about motivations or interesting characters. All-in-all, I’m looking forward to next year’s event.
