Skyland Boulders: Highballs, sunshine, sorority girls, footwear and French accents. Wanna ride bikes?

About ten days ago I drove out of Crested Butte in a full-value, winter’s-here, lock-the-hubs snowstorm. In my mind and heart I surrendered: Okay, no more t-shirts, no more lizard naps in the sun, no more climbing on rocks. Having not had much of a summer, I was bummed (I spent most of my summer months above 11,000 feet, often times on snow, and then up north to Alaska).

Then, after a week-long Outward Bound course in Leadville with a group of Expeditionary Learning high school students from Denver, I drove home to a surprise: dry ground, warm air, bright sun. Except for two days this spring, I hadn’t rock climbed for a year, so I was eager to milk the late Indian Summer for all it had to give. While ski season has officially started (many of my neighbors are already skiing in the backcountry), I, for one, like to pace myself. I have 6 solid months of snow season ahead, so I’m going to snuggle up to the rock while it’s still warm.

I had heard all last winter about the Skyland Boulders in the aspen trees below the west-facing cliffs of Mount Crested Butte. Then the house-sized rocks were well guarded by deep snow drifts (good for high-ball falls, I suppose) and the friction was a little too good (i.e. below-zero temps equals fingers just freeze to the holds regardless of crimp strength equals unfair advantage). On Monday I headed out on the pink-pedaled mountain bike I’ve had since 8^th grade. I met my buddy Mason and we pedaled the 15-minute single-track approach from town, which happened to be the first time either of us had done anything close to mountain biking in years.

Later, as we rested cross-legged in the year’s last short-sleeve sun, I was reminded of why climbing is so much fun for me: The pragmatically pointless pursuit of holding onto tiny things and getting a good scare from gravity illuminates a certain freedom to me – the freedom growing out of the notion that maybe life is one big Cosmic Joke and somewhere Buddha and Jesus are laughing a big-bellied laugh, and play and fun are the key to the lock. And in the light of that freedom, humor just spills out of and all over everything.

I hate to toot my own horn, but toot! toot! I have to admit I was looking good that day. I’m not an avid boulderer, but from what I gleam from the climbing rags (are you taking note, Urban Climber?) fashion counts extra-extra on the short climbs. My fashion gurus these past weeks have been urban teenagers — those remarkable souls brave enough to come to the mountains and actually do all the crazy stuff we Outward Bound instructors ask them to do (like dangle off cliffs from strings the size of their pointer fingers, then sleep on a tiny foam rectangle in the snow).

Before mounting my bike on Monday I tucked my pants into my half-tied, tops-splayed, knee-high Sorel approach boots, per the constructive feedback I got from some of the youngsters last week: “Yo, perro, you gotta tuck that shit in,” they tell me. And “Damn, Cisco, you’d get beat up rolling into my school like that. Why you gotta tie that shit so tight?”

Why, indeed, young friends? Why, indeed?

It’s not just about style, mind you. On the sensible level, the loose fitting boots keep one from going anywhere quickly as well as working too hard (both traits I strive for). And they’re easy to slip off at the door, which I do a lot of. Obviously it keeps my pants cuffs from snagging in the bike gears, and pants-tucked-into-boots also provides specific boundaries as to where one can walk. For example: shall I walk through that field of knee deep snow? Ah hells no. My boots are loose, open, and vulnerable to snowflake penetration.

See how that works? It’s sweet. Never have to walk through a too-snowy field again. Deep down I yearn to own a pair of un-scuffed Timberlands to wear all up in da club. The Sorels will suffice until then.

Pedal pedal pedal, push push push, climb climb climb. The approach to the boulders reminds me of my college days when I’d bike up to the cliffs and boulders at Horsetooth Reservoir on Thursday afternoons to give the intellect a break (holla at you FoCo readers; my goal here is for someone to write “holla back” in the comment board below. Please help my dreams come true. Please?).

Like Horsetooth evenings, the light at the Skyland Boulders was magic: low angle rays that make all the grass yellows, rock reds and sky blues ooze; the kind of light that makes the land go on forever and maybe– just maybe — parallel universes are possible after all.

You know that light? Yeah, that light.

We warmed up on High Times boulder, a highball with V-0 face climbing opportunities on the north side and V-hard overhanging sloper opportunities, like J-Crack, on the south (I don’t like the term boulder “problem,” which implies to me that something is wrong with the rock; I prefer boulder “opportunity”). A mutual friend, Jacob, arrived as Mason and I warmed up and joined us on the sickgnar.

Much to my delight, an aspen tree provides the 5.2 a cheval down climb.

The tree grows close enough to the boulder to provide a chimney/off-width opportunity (hey, give me a break, I don’t live near Vedauwoo any more, so I have to take what I can get). After descending from a warm-up opportunity, I decided to give ‘er a shot. I fist-stacked at the tree-rock constriction, got my feet high, pushed into a chicken wing out of the stacks, wedged my chest in between the tree and the rock, and began the palms-down, road-runner-smears offwidth grunt fest. I find French accents help me in the wide stuff:

Me: “Le fist stack, eh, uum, le chicken wing! Ha hah! Crimpé? Eh! Ya! Crimpé!”

Mason: “Dude, are you okay over there?”

Me: “Ah! Eh! Uh! Sending ze gnar!” (I had made it about two inches up at this point, and was nearly exhausted).

Jacob: “Do you want a spot or a crash pad or anything?”

Me (French Ninja): “Hi ya! Le pelvis jam! Trés bon! Je suis perdue!”

Le Etcétera. (Most real French words I know come from Manu Chao songs).

I took 20 minutes to climb 15 feet, and I topped out completely spent. I laid down on top of the boulder with that sour, stomach acid off-width taste in my mouth.

If this is a FFA, I name the opportunity “My Aspen Jammed.” I say old-school V-0. To get down I went and wrapped my legs around the aspen for a fire-man’s-pole descent. Mason and Jacob were soaking in the sun so I went to sit by them.

“Can you imagine those long offwidths in Yosemite?” I asked, having never been there.

“Yeah,” said Mason. I got scared on one of those this summer. Like, widening 95-degree chimney with no pro.”

“But you survived, eh?

“Yeah, ‘cause I downclimbed and bailed.”

“Better bail by down climb than bail by helicopter,” I said. We stared up at the skeletal aspen branches in silence for a while.

“I’m not ready for snow yet,” Jacob said. “I wish it would just dump 5 feet on the mountain’s opening day, and be just like this until then.”

“That’d be sweet.”

“I’m starting a book club this winter. You guys want to be in a book club? It’s called UNIVERSE book club.”

“Whoa, Universe, huh? Will you have T-shirts?”

“Yeah, It stands for Understanding New Information Via Everybody’s…um…I didn’t make it up. Give me a minute.”

“I’m going to Hawaii in April,” Jacob continued. “April’s like purgatory here. It’d be great if you weren’t here all winter, and just showed up for April.”

“All the big lines would be in,” Mason said.

“Right now I’m reading about show girls and sorority girls,” I said. “A Larry McMurtry novel about showgirls in Las Vegas, and this investigative journalism piece on sorority life – what a bizarre universe, man.”

Jacob stood up and his eyes got really wide: “Totally bizarre. I worked a few challenge course groups of sorority sisters, and they’d show up and be like, ‘…and this is my House Mom and my Big Sister and my little house cousin…’ and I was like, ‘whoa, what is the meaning of all of this?! They have like their own chefs and everything.”

“Yeah, they have this whole hierarchy structure. It’s wild. You and me, we’re GDIs.”

“GDIs?”

“Yep. God Damn Independents.”

Jacob bobbed his head in understanding.

“I rushed for a fraternity,” Mason said. “Then I said, ‘no way,’ and bailed.”

“My brother cooked for a sorority house, I think. He did it to meet girls, I think, then decided it was not worth it.”

We stared at the sky for a few minutes. Jacob stretched. Mason fiddled with his shoes.

“Hawaii will be nice in April,” Jacob said, smiling, lying back down on his back, chalky hands behind his head.

“Understanding New Information Via Every Reader’s Sense of Everything,” I said. “That’s the book club.”

Eventually we mustered up the gumption to go climb more on the south side of the High Times Boulder, then we wandered through aspens, between the lean-to hobbit homes built out of deadfall against mossy boulders to the The Wave boulder. When our forearms were throbbing and refused to soften, we hopped on our bikes. We coasted home through the yellow grasses, purple-topped willows and the infinity light of evening in the upper Gunnison Valley.