This one took place on a climb in the South St. Vrain Canyon just outside of Lyons, CO.  I was living with Z & Tiny E and we were climbing a lot.  Z was big into putting up new routes and he got me involved as well.  On this particular day I was out with Z and Vino.  We had made the steep hike up to the top what would be a new route.  We set up an anchor and I rapped down to clean loose rock and start planning on the lines the climb would take.  Once back on the ground, I tied in and started climbing on a toprope.  I looked for gear placements and marked bolt locations with chalk.  I rapped back down with the drill and put in the one bolt needed to protect a move down towards the bottom.  Finally, we all gathered at the bottom of the route and I tied in for the first ascent.  The route took the one bolt and a few pieces of gear with a little bit of runout near the top.  It is not a classic line but was still fun to go through the process.

The rest of the story is that I almost put myself in a really bad situation as I started one of the rappels.  It was probably right at the start of the day because I think I was just putting my shoes on.  As with most climbing shoes, these were extremely tight and I would keep the laces loose right up to the last minute.  I wouldn't tie them until I was ready to start a climb.  Anyway, I had put my shoes on and was starting to setup my rappel device.  Right about then someone mentioned that I still needed to tie my shoes.  I sat on a rock, tied my shoes and then walked over to start my rappel.  The anchor was a long one and difficult to rappel from.  The edge of the rock was rounded and the anchor ended 2 or 3 feet below the edge.  Since it is hard to climb down that sort of anchor we had also added a pair of aiders that allowed us to step down to where we could start the rap.  So, I step up to the edge, turn around and start climbing down the aiders.  At the bottom I reached over to grab the rope and started to step out of the aiders and start rappelling.  At this point my brother or Vino asked if I didn't want to actually run the rope through my Tuber (rappel device) before leaving the aiders.  I looked down and realized that had I left the aiders, the only thing holding me up would have been my hands.  I climbed back up to the top and took a few moments to calm down before trying again.  I realized that the mistake was made when I was reminded to tie my laces.  My mind shifted it's focus to the shoes and never went back to making sure I was ready to rappel.  I knew I started to run the rope through my Tuber but didn't recall that I never finished the process.  It just goes to show that it is worth the time to stop just before a dangerous activity and do one final safety check. 

Z, I don't think I've embellished too much.  Let me know if you remember it differently.


Next time... A couple quartz crystals keep me from taking a big dive off a classic granite dome on the Sierra Mountains.