It wasn’t hard to wonder if I was on a fool’s errand, driving through the rain and watching a lightening strike as I headed to Boulder to go rock climbing. Gary assured me the weather was better there than in Golden so I continued north figuring I’d soon be headed home.
It was cloudy in Boulder Canyon, but not raining, so after watching the clouds a bit we put on our packs and made the short hike up to The Dome formation. Weather looked okay, but we weren’t ready to commit to any multipitch lines, so we started with the classic East Slabs (5.6) which could be done in one pitch.
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Gary hadn’t been out climbing for a while, so was feeling rusty and gave me the lead. The opening moves were a bit tricky to figure out at first, but the rest of the climbing went pretty well, if just a tad run-out on the slab. Pulling the roof made for a fun top out.
After hiking back down the side, we found a group of three just starting the same climb.
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The clouds still had us a bit nervous, so we killed some time watching them climb, then finally decided to try another one pitch route which I think was “East Face, Far Right” (5.7), but that portion of the guidebook was cut off when I photocopied the page so I’m not positive. Regardless, it was a fun, shorter climb, and definitely a little harder than East Slab.
By now the weather showed a definite improvement, so we decided to try The Owl, a 2 pitch climb. Gary was feeling better, but still didn’t have all the kinks worked out so I took the lead again.
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After an easy start, the first pitch threw a wide variety of really classic sections all at a grade near 5.7 at me – a hand traverse on a solid lip, continuing on steep slab with large chicken-heads, then up a fun hand crack. Gary followed, also loving the pitch despite the look on his face as he pulled over the roof.
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Rust all gone, Gary seemed to think about leading the last pitch, but graciously let me take it as he had done this route before (but it had been years ago). I stopped to take a photo of Gary at this belay, when he reminded me that he was hungry and looking forward to dinner.
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An easy slab traverse led to the last roof which took me a while to figure out the secret to getting around, then a really nice hand crack took me to the summit where the lingering storm clouds generated some beautiful reds.
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Gary cleaned the route and joined me on top to lead the way off the other side of the formation and we made it back to the cars before needing a headlamp. Just the perfect amount of climbing in the time we had.
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