Work schedules and the possibility of threatening weather dwindled our little group outing on Wednesday night to just Jeremy and I. We’d originally though about visiting the Lower Peanuts wall, but decided to stay closer to the entrance of Eldorado Canyon State Park and visit the Wind Tower.
We hadn’t brought a full guide book, and I’d only printed out the pages for Lower Peanuts, so we started up a climb based on memory. Turned out we were on the route called Breezy (5.5), just left of the Wind Ridge route. Jeremy took the first turn at leading pitch 1 and a light rain started as he finished the route. I tossed on my rain jacket and soon arrived at his belay ledge to take over leading.
A couple moves on pitch 2 were made a little harder by the rain, but it stopped by the time I reached the ledge marking the end of the pitch. As soon as I was off belay I took off my rain jacket to cool down and belay Jeremy up.
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We’d thought about climbing the lower pitches of Wind Ridge next, but another group had jumped on that climb, so we decided to continue with pitch 3 to the top of the tower. Jeremy took another turn at lead, then we scrambled down to the rappel anchors where I acquired a carabiner and sling someone left on the rappel anchor. I guess they didn’t realize it was okay to run the rope directly through the Metolius hanger.
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We didn’t have enough daylight for another multipitch route, so we moved over to the west side of the Whale’s Tail formation and I led up the easy classic West Crack (5.2). Jeremy quickly followed and we rappelled down then left the park.
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With any luck, we’ll start climbing regularly on Wednesday evenings, at least as long as the light and warm weather last.
