Given the ton of snow falling in the high country I decided to stay closer to town on Saturday. Darin and I meet up at 6:30am for the short ride 4 miles up Clear Creek Canyon to hit the ice flows. We started on Mickey’s Big Mouth, with Darin taking the first pitch, then lowering off and we each top roped the rope a couple times. Then we booted further up the creek and hit the upper ice fall (my lead), and again did a few repeats with the top rope.
Crowds were already gathering, and we had a short wait at the base of Coors Ultra Light before soloing the first stair-steeped pitch.
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Two groups were already setup on the steeper ice above, so we walked off and headed back to town. Darin to take care of some work, me to hit a coffee shop before Pete arrived.
Pete and I drove back up the canyon and spotted almost no one on Coors Ultra Light so that’s what we hiked to first.
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Besides a climb of the Flying Dutchman Couloir this was Pete’s first time on ice. The upper ice flow was a little steeper than what I really wanted to put him on at first, but we made do and he got in a few laps while I critiqued his technique and shouted pointers.
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We then hiked out and visited Mickey’s, but a group had taken over the first ice flow. Heading further up we found only two other people on the top formation and they let us slide in next to them and share the anchors. Pete got a few more practice laps here and began to show improvement in his form. Having some small ice to run a few drills on while the other group rappelled off helped as well.
