Weird, Weird Rock: Climbing at Garden of the Gods and the Maiden

Lauren flew in on Sunday morning. Jeff (who'd arrived Saturday night), Amy and I picked her up at DIA and headed south to Colorado Springs and the famous Garden of the Gods. This is a popular tourist destination and features dozens of rock pinacles and fins of all descriptions. Some of these rocks are several hundred feet tall while others are of a more human scale. Most are red, but there are white and gray formations also. All of them are carved in fantastic shapes and stuck improbably in the middle of a city park with paved trails, picnic tables and a fantastic view of Pike's Peak.
Our goal was the super-classic North Ridge on the unsettling Montezuma's Tower, a 140' sandstone fin sticking almost vertically out of the ground in the center of the park. "Climb it before it falls over!" is what I've been told and it certainly seems unstable up close. I wasn't feeling terribly up for an "airy, scary" 5.7 lead, but the indomitable Jeff leapt up to the challenge. Unfortunately, we'd brought only two ropes; Amy ended up tying into the mid-point of the 60 meter rope while I brought up the end.
Jeff waltzed up the first pitch and established a belay at what turned out to be the 32 meter mark. Lauren followed and had almost reached the ledge when she ran out of rope. Amy moved up the first few moves of the climb (which is also the technical crux) unprotected while Lauren got anchored in. Finally, Amy neared the end of P1 and I moved up through the crux. The moves weren't terribly hard, but it was left clinging to a large, loose boulder with my feet sitting in steps made by decades of traffic on this soft, fragile rock. Finally, I pulled up onto the ridge itself and, amazed at the exposure, tip-toed my way up the run-out pitch. The stone is soft enough that repeated climbs have worn actual steps in many of the sections. None of the holds are good and all of them are loose and sandy. The exposure is intense but the climbing generally pretty easy after the first few moves. A couple of large bolts provide nice protection and there are occasional spots for more. Not bad, but I'm just as glad I didn't lead it! Mostly I was worried about falling off the 1-2 foot wide ridge!
Meanwhile, dozens of people were gathering at the base of the tower. Apparently some woman had recently recovered from some aweful abdominal ailment after two years of convalescence. This was to be a 'life party' and her official return to active endeavors. She would climb the tower. Many friends and relations were gathered below with refreshments, guitars and many children running around. It was very strange to climb with applause and singing in the background.
The second pitch is much shorter and steeper but with actual holds! I finally made it up there to find the others nestled into a snug summit. I straddled the fin and we prepared the double-rope rap. It's about 140' down the tower and it's a fine and pleasent rap the entire way. By the time I touched down, the festivities were winding down. We were fed cookies and hob-knobbed with the various celebrants.
There was still plenty of daylight left, so we went looking for something else to climb. After talking to some locals, we headed for the Drug Wall on the northeastern part of the South Gateway Rock. This one isn't as weird as Monty's Tower. We spied a line of bolts up a slab and under a roof which is Silver Spoon (5.5). The first bolt is about 25' up so I spotted Jeff until he clipped it. Three more pins and bolts lead to the anchor where he set up a nice toprope. Lauren and Amy both scampered up it with not too much trouble and I followed last.
Nice climb. Not too bad with lots of little crimps all over the face. Once I got under the roof, there were a set of underclings on the roof and small flakes on the slab. I got to the anchors (a pin and bolt around the corner from the slab), cleaned the gear, and rapped down. Back to Boulder and a hearty dinner.

The Maiden from the northwest. P1 is the short ramp on the extreme right. P2 follows the ridge down, up a short ramp and then down again to the Crows Nest under the massive overhang. P3 heads down across the north face off the bottom edge of the photo and then back up to the tree in the lower left corner. Eventually, the route gets onto the east face and scampers up to the summit. The rap drops off the tip of the cobra head for 100' completely free. Yee ha!

P1 is a short, enjoyably-runnout bit up a slanting wall with no protection. I placed a #3 Camalot after one move to protect the next one, but it wouldn't have done anything above that. Fortunately there were numerous small holds and I never felt in danger. The view from up here revealed more clearly exactly how strange a rock and route this is. Looming overhead was the huge, ferrociously-overhanging cobra head of the summit. Between me and it was a long ridge descending steeply down in a couple of sawteeth.
I set to work leading P2 while the others joined Amy on the spacious perch. Pretty easy stuff, but downclimbing is especially weird on lead. I was on toprope, but placed copious gear to protect Amy who would be cleaning above my gear. After 60-80' of this, I headed up a short ramp and then more downclimbing on a wildly-exposed knife-edge. With inches of rope to spare, I made it to the relative comfort of the Crows Nest and clipped the single eye-bolt backing it up with a tricam in a crack. The Crows Nest is significantly below the beginning of the pitch and even the start of the route on the west end. The cobrahead was directly above me now and the summit was conciderably wider than my narrow, knife-edge perch. It's hard to describe exactly how weird this was!
By the time everyone else arrived, we were forced with a decision: to continue the four more pitches to the summit or to rap out here and start the monumental descent back to decent trails. It was about 3:30 at this point and we were not making great progress. Fearing benighting, we opted to rap out and be safe. In the meantime, I checked out P3 which is supposedly the crux pitch (5.6R). I swung over onto the sheer northern face and tip-toed down a good ramp until I was far below and to the east of the Crow's Nest. From there, the ramp dropped away and the route headed up a sharply overhanging corner with many pockets. Looks like there might be reasonable gear in there, but it looked pretty spicy for a 5.6! Even the tree marking the end of P3 was below the start. Shaking my head in puzzlement, retreated back to the Crow's Nest.
Everyone was nervous at the idea of rapping from a single bolt, so Jeff backed it up with a nut and some webbing. I rapped out first down the very interesting looking Gates of Galas (5.10d) and to the ground. When we'd all landed and pulled the ropes, we faced a steep hike back up to the west end. To our amusement, the way is blocked by some very large boulders with no obvious way around them. I found a small cave to crawl through and the girls took my lead. I don't know how Jeff made it around, but he doesn't cave!
No one really was looking forward to the long, steep bushwhack back to the east. According to the book, the route west into Shadow Canyon was also possible and much shorter. I scouted it out and it looked doable. We escaped the ridge on massive tallus following avalanche chutes and vague 'trails'. One large rock cairn was found near the bottom, but I have no idea what it signified; certainly not a trail! Adventure climbing all the way and, while we were sorry not to have made it any farther (or climbed anything all that challenging), an interesting time was had by all.

Rock On!

Neithernor