Mike and I were planning a 24 hour climbing challenge; Basically, an attempt to keep moving (hiking from one climb to the next) and climbing for 24 hours straight.

These photos are from way back in July 2014 when I was rock climbing in Colorado with Mike Bowyer. I’m only just now getting back to going through the rest of my photographs.

Aspen Glenn campground — where we were camping — is tucked into the trees at the base of this mountain.

Our plan was to get up before dawn (4:30 to be exact), hike the 1,500 vertical feet through the forrest (starting at about 7,000 feet above sea level mind you.) There’s no trail to the base of the climb; The plan is to just go straight from our campsite to the climb, and arrive at the base of the climb at dawn — a test of our planning and navigation in the dark. Climb the nose — that prominent line between the sunny and shady faces of the big beautiful hunk of rock. Then hike down (there’s a trail from the top that curves around the right shoulder) and back through our campsite for water and food.

At the campsite, we’d pick up a pre-stuffed extra gear bag and hike across the valley floor. On the north side of the valley is MacGregor slab; It’s just this big ‘ol gently sloped blob of granite with about 12 different climbable lines. We planned to stash our gear bag at the base of the slab, and then start doing laps of: climb-up, and walk-off around the shoulder, all day and night. Again, there are no trails that lead to the climbing on MacGregor. It’s just a bush-wack “that way”. If everything went perfect, we hoped to get the last climb to end on the top of the slab at the next sunrise.

 

As the sun set on our day of planning, I set up my camera to take a long, time-lapse of the first thing we planned to climb the next day. This isn’t a “fade to black” at the end, it’s a “sun went down, it got pitch dark” end. (6 seconds of video.)

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