Trails with climbing? [Archive] - Front Range 4x4 Forums

Brody

February 8th, 2009, 05:56 PM

The first one that comes to mind is the Ironclads Trail off of Peak to Peak and Bunce School Road. There are climbs ranging from 5.5 up to 5.13+ that you can drive your rig up to. These are covered in one of the Rocky Mountain Park Rock Climbing Guides, by Ned Gillette or Richard Rossiter. They both wrote essentially the same guide, but one covered the Ironclads, the other didn't.

Secondly, there are many climbs off of Balanced Rock Road, FS 323, FS324, and South Rampart Range on the Woodland Park side, but these are not documented anywhere in any books. ( The exception being a very few climbs off of FS 323 that showed up in Stewart Green's book 'Climbing Colorado' and also in my Platte guide. The great bulk of the real climbing isn't documented)) There are some climbs off of the now closed real Balanced Rock Road, which is something like FS 221A, but you have to walk to them now from the Mt Herman Road access. This small area I did cover in my Platte guide.They are usually pretty hard, starting around 5.9 and going up to around the 5.13 range. My friends and I have been putting climbs up in this area since 1990 and I have that information if you need it. We have actually put up about 10 climbs for the sole purpose of getting some easier climbs in these areas. These are all around 5.7-5.8 range. Also in my Platte guide is Parachute Rock, which is just on the Woodland Park side of Devil's Head of of Rampart Range Road. Easy dirt road to a free standing spire type rock.

There are also a number of climbs on this side of the Devil's Head area, on Devil's Head itself (the giude book is called "the Devil Made Me do It" and is written by Todd Anderson), Topaz Mountain, Cabin Ridge, and the whole Jackson Creek Valley. Many of these climbs are covered in my 'South Platte, a Climber's Guide'.

Next is the Eagle Rock and Saran Wrap areas where there are many climbs located off of the Gold Camp Road access. These are sort of documented in a couple of climbing guides, but I have some relatively comprehensive information on these too, as I was supposed to do a guide book on that area. Again, the difficulty levels start around 5.9 and go up from there.

There are also a number of climbs off of trails in the Summit County area, all up and down the Officer's Gulch and Montezuma/Frisco corridor. These are documented in the guide book High Country Climbing, which I have a copy of if you cannot find it. I was also supposed to do a comprehensive guide to this area, too, so I have a bit of info on it. There are also climbs at the end of the Wheeler Lake Trail directly across the lake from where the parking is. These are noted in the High Country guide, too. These climbs range from easy trad routes to very hard sport climbs and are on many different types of rock.

There are also a number of rock climbs around the Buena Vista area, some documented, many not, and the information is hard to find. Some friends of mine and I were asked a number of years ago to put up some rocks on a ranch for the purpose of the guy offering rock climbs as part of his 'dude ranch' experience. About 10 friends of mine and I went there for 3 days and put up around 30 routes from 5.5 to hard 5.13, both sport and trad, on decent rock. I have this information somewhere, but don't know what the access is anymore. There is or was a guide book on the Buena Vista rock climbs kicking around for awhile, but I don't know if that is still in print.

So, yeah, I guess I know of a few spots. PM me or email me if you want some info..I think that my Platte guide is now out of print...my a**hole publishers don't tell me squat..so if you want a copy, you will probably have to go through Amazon.com. Ditto with the High Country and Buena Vista guides. Like I said, I have a couple of these, but will have to dig a little...