Durango Climbing Trip

Finally...a post about the Durango trip. Wish I would have posted when it was more fresh so I wouldn't miss all the little fun details for my post. Oh well, I'll give the fast and light version (well maybe not that fast and light).

Susan and I went to Durango a couple weeks ago to get in one last trip before she started student teaching in the Fall (they start the first week of August! Way to early in the summer I think). We were excited to climb at The Golf Wall and Cascade Canyon, two limestone sport climbing areas.

The first day we went to Cascade Canyon, which was a beautiful setting. It is a deep gorge that is lined with vertical and overhanging limestone walls and picture perfect mini waterfalls. The climbing ended up being chossy and not that much fun but we didn't really care too much as the setting made up for it. For more information about climbing at Cascade Canyon go here.

Our favorite camping, of the trip, was a short drive up Lime Creek Road (about 15 minutes from the climbing area). This is free camping at it's best. Note: For added adventure on any trip to the Durango area, definitely drive the whole distance of Lime Creek Road. It follows a beautiful canyon with some extremely tight, windy and very exposed sections. There is some really sweet free camping down by the creek, half way out the road, too. We drove this road as an alternate on our way back from visiting the historic mining town, Silverton (info here and here), one evening.

Cascade Canyon.

Nice waterfall and pool right next to the climbing.

That dude is hot!

The climbing was in a perfect setting.

Flowers were everywhere!

The second day we went climbing at the Golf Wall. Susan and I have been to this wall before and we were psyched to come back and climb more of the routes. This place is really fun! Big jugs on steep walls-one of my favorite styles of climbing and something we have been doing a lot of lately. We were able to work our way up some really nice 5.9's through 12a before a big thunderstorm ran us out. Good day though. We still got a good bit of climbing in.

Golf wall (looks like choss but climbs really well.). Photo is from mountainproject.com. To get more information about the Golf Wall go here.

After climbing at the Golf Wall we had a lot of the day left so we went to a sweet bread shop in Durango that we had heard about called Bread (tricky name), get directions here, and we went to a brewery and grabbed some food before hitting the road.

The best thing about the drive home was witnessing one of the best sunsets I have seen in quite a while. It was set over the sandstone of the Navajo Nation, east of Kayanta. Beautiful in it's own right. But there was more...there was a thundershower right in front of it and the rain was a beautiful pink, orange color as it came down in a thick curtain and in the opposite end of the sky (to the east) there was a double rainbow. Unbelievable sunset. No photo to show for it but it will always be one of my favorites.