Blog

Rifle…It’s Not Just For Climbing Anymore

• July 2008
• Dogs Uncategorized

People often ask me what’s my favorite climbing area. Usually no one believes me when I say Rifle. I’m not sure why? Well, obviously, it’s not the place I climb my hardest. But the fact is, it’s my favorite climbing area, and has been for years.

First of all, the climbing is amazing. Hard, yes. Humbling, yes! No matter what, it always takes a couple of weeks of climbing at Rifle to actually really start having fun climbing at Rifle. Though I don’t sport climb much, I have traveled around a bit in Europe, and visited lots of amazing climbing areas. Lots of those places are the best in the world. But I have discovered that Rifle is right up there, for quality and variety of routes. But for me, the climbing alone does not make a climbing area. Rifle is truly perfect, in all the ways that matter.

If you buy a $40 annual car pass, you are absolutely legit, and free to climb as much as you want. There is beautiful, free camping all over the place.

The canyon is perfect for dogs, and has 20 second approaches to all the sectors–crucial now that Fletcher is 14 and extremely arthritic! The summer temperatures are by no means perfect for hard sends, but temperate enough to be able to enjoy morning and evening climbing. Best of all, my Rifle equipment is a rope, a few quickdraws, shoes/chalkbag/harness, Stealth kneepads…..and a fold-up chair! How nice is that?! And climbing at Rifle gets you strong. Unbelievably strong. I have never seen climbers as strong as the Rifle locals.

If I climb at Rifle for a few weeks, and then go somewhere “normal,” I feel like I’m bionic. Now, if only there was some way I could feel bionic at Rifle…. 🙂

One of my favorite runs in the world is the Three Forks trail, at the top of the canyon. Though plenty of climbers come to the canyon, and lots of locals and mountain bikers, I always seem to be alone on that trail, along a beautiful creek with distant hillsides full of twinkling aspen leaves, climbing and snaking through fields of wild flowers, pine trees and grasses.

So just when it doesn’t seem like Rifle could get any better, it turns out there is a beautiful, curving cliff amphitheater on the Roan Plateau, the Heart Wall, just twenty miles away from the canyon.

Four wheeling is required, and it takes about forty-five minutes to drive the dirt roads to the edge of the cliff. You literally drive to the edge of the cliff. In fact, you could accidentally drive off the edge of the cliff! As with everything in Rifle, it is a lovely and deserted place, overlooking I-70, but from very very high up. The cliff top is at least 2000 feet above the valley. Though the rock is choss (darn!), the wall is totally undercut, with a very steep fifteen hundred foot talus slope below.

The downside of this jump is that it requires a shuttle–you have to find a friend to drive up you to the top, and then drive back down and get you from the bottom. So often you have to jump alone, which isn’t quite as much fun as landing with a friend. But still pretty darn fun!

The other downside is that the landing area is quite adventurous and committing, followed by a pretty rugged thirty minute hike out of a creek canyon. So getting hurt on the landing would not be ideal.

But all of these things add up to make this jump very special. Also, there are endless exit points to be jumped, all around the left and right sides of the cliff tops, ranging from 500 to 700+ feet.

My favorite so far is an exit that we call the “waterfall exit.” You jump right over a tiny water spout in the very center of the amphitheater, falling through the air with the droplets. After landing, you continue to follow the water down the narrow ravine, climbing down dropoffs and small waterfalls, until the wash meets a dirt road with a waterfall below it. The path of travel feels perfectly harmonious–following the water from the top of the wall, flowing with it, down two thousand feet to the bottom.

I love the moment of standing at the cliff edge, with my feet in the water and emptiness before me, ready to let go into the soft air.