Sunday, January 18, 2009

Colorado Alpine Bouldering: Alternatives to RMNP and Evans

Let's talk secret bouldering areas for a second. After word got out back in the 90s about Rocky Mountain National Park bouldering - Chaos Canyon, Upper Chaos, Moraine Park boulders, the boulders at the bottom of the Diamond and down valley, Upper Thunder Basin, Emerald Lake boulders, and others - traffic in the Park really started to pick up. Now, if you go up there on a weekend, you might as well just go to the gym as there are on average 50+ people climbing in the Chaos Canyon area alone.

Groups of industrious boulderers began to hunt out other high alpine bouldering areas in the hopes of finding more gems, classic lines, and a break from the crowds and hot summer temps. Evans - although already known - became another Front Range favorite as it has more moderate problems and landings then the Park. Guanella Pass also got a second or third look. Swissco was found and developed, although the long 4x4 road has kept it fairly quiet despite it having some major undone roof problems. A couple other places were also found and developed: the Eldora walls, Empire boulders, Cameron Pass, and the Keystone boulders.

The Keystone boulders are one of those gems that seems to be holding out from massive amounts of Front Range traffic. Situated at 10,000 feet, they offer a unique opportunity to boulder in a forested slope and fairly cool environment for those hot summer days. Many lines remain undone, some have already been sent, and a few still need to be found. So, although they are buried under a few feet of snow right now, here are a few pictures from last summer to entice you...
Alpine Colorado bouldering in Keystone, Summit County

Summit County Colorado bouldering

Keystone bouldering in Colorado Summit County

Related Posts by Categories



2 comments:

Werdna said...

Where in keystone?

Peter N. Jones said...

Up towards Montezuma in the talus you shall find these gems...

Post a Comment

Rocky Mountain Raider's Friends

  • It was eight years ago that a little pug named Rocky entered our life, and promptly pulled me from the despair of narrowly missing the 9/11 tragedy to the ...
  • Mmmm...delicious. Jon Cardwell attempting a futuristic 8C(+) project a few hundred feet below "Slashface." Hueco Tanks season is officially in and I will b...
  • When I first moved to Colorado, Mt. Evans was virtually unknown. For almost three years, only a handful of boulderers visited the area and I was lucky enou...
  • Paul Barraza on the FA of 601 [v8] The El Cap Boulder is a solitary boulder found near the parking at the "Devil's Elbow" along Northside Drive. The estab...
  • Been able to spend a lot of time lately climbing at the buttermilks in Bishop. Here's one of Ana on High Plains Drifter from yesterday.
  • I wake up suddenly. I realize my running clothes are still on, even my shoes. I’m laying face down on top of my covers. The light in my room is on, door op...
  • A new movie about bouldering icon John Gill premiers tonight in Boulder, CO. UPDATED Related posts: 1. Video Of 2 Recent Chris Schulte Boulder Canyon...
  • Rattler at Fox Creek Thursday August 6th Steve Stoyles, Jenny Appel, Rob "Rattler" Hester, and I headed out to set up camp in Plain WA for a run covering t...
  • Damage to boot from improper use of Dynafit binding for backcountry skiing.
  • Most of my shifts are at odd hours, and to commute to Fremont, the farther of the main hospitals at which I work, I either run the whole way, or to and fro...
  • Sorry its been so long! AND you’re gonna have to wait a little longer…. HAHA… This site is under construction but stay tuned for the new and impoved mattse...
  • I believe this may have been a Pampered Chef recipe that came with a stone quad-mini-loaf pan. Holiday Cranberry Bread 3/4 cup milk mixed with 1 tablespoon...
  • There is a great interview at Planet Mountain with Alan Watts, the pioneer of sport-climbing in America. His attitude about the past is frank, straightfo...
  • Ok, so we left off in Leadville and headed to Asssssspen from there. This is home to Chris Erickson, Jake Sakson, Will Cardamone and Nick Devore. Everybody...
  • Latest model runs show much more confidence for a solid hit on Tahoe. Doesn’t look like we’ll get much snow, but a lot of rain Monday evening through Thurs...
  • Christian pulling into the crux of the 'Green Wall Center' (hard v6). Hannah, Simon and I finished our trip with several outstanding days in the Buttermilk...
  • Long time supporter of the Wasatch Speed Goat Mountain Racing Team has stashed up to 25% discounts off over a 1000 items for black Friday and Cyber Monday,...
  • When you not have many opportunities to enjoy the outdoor you should really make the most out of it. This means that we must carefully choose our boulderin...
  • tim on tmas' 'crudely painted...' and tmas on the low start to 'punani'
  • mandanos tu: Nombre y dos Apellidos Número DNI Dirección email Dirección Postal+codigo Postal+ciudad+provincia telefono movil+fijo Nº de cuenta+nombre del ba...
  • I am heading to Slovenia in a couple of days and am very psyched! The comp in Brno was last weekend and was awesome to watch the live streaming of and gave...
  • The NY Times has a great article on Matt Carpenter probably the greatest mountain runner of all time. Check it out: Article, Video.
  • Book: Mountain Running in the Canadian Rockies: Bow Valley Edition Author: Bob Walker Year: 2009 Link: http://mtnrunning.ca/ Reviewer: Jonathan Schmidt Roc...
  • Obviously. It's summer here in Vegas. Nothing happens in Vegas in the summer... at least, climbing-wise. After nagging tendon pain in BOTH my ring fingers...

Privacy Policy for Rocky Mountain Raider (http://rockymountainraider.blogspot.com)

The privacy of our visitors to Rocky Mountain Raider is important to us.

At Rocky Mountain Raider, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use visit Rocky Mountain Raider, and how we safeguard your information. We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Log Files

As with most other websites, we collect and use the data contained in log files. The information in the log files include your IP (internet protocol) address, your ISP (internet service provider, such as AOL or Shaw Cable), the browser you used to visit our site (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), the time you visited our site and which pages you visited throughout our site.

Cookies and Web Beacons

We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a pop-up once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums.

We also use third party advertisements on Rocky Mountain Raider to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP, the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites). Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on this site. Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.

You can chose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your browser settings, or by managing preferences in programs such as Norton Internet Security. However, this can affect how you are able to interact with our site as well as other websites. This could include the inability to login to services or programs, such as logging into forums or accounts.

Thank you for understanding and supporting Rocky Mountain Raider.