RMNP! (Once again)

I finally got climb in RMNP (Rocky Mountain National Park) for the first time this season! It was good to be back. It was the usual Dan Squared (Dan Baker and I) and one other. Emmy Voigt! It was her first time going to RMNP and she was super stoked! But unfortunately, she was sick. :( We got into the park probably around 12 or 1 at night. We luckily found a nice campsite in Moraine Park, even though a sign said the camping area was full. We woke up pretty early and drove up to the parking lot at Bear Lake and began our hike. For some reason, I was really exhausted when we got to the boulders even though I have done the hike before. It was like I was hiking there for the first time again. We warmed up on the usual warmups, nothing special. Emmy got on Potato Chip (V7) and gave it a few tries. After we were done warming up, we headed over to the Gang Bang boulder. Baker, Emmy, and I tried it a few times, but no sends. There were some guys from Boulder working on The Marble V10. It looked really cool and I wanted to try it, but when nobody else was there. Emmy wanted to see Autobot (a really long V5 with a deep/scary landing) so we talus hopped to the boulder. But not without skipping rocks on the gorgeous Lake Haiyaha first. We got to Autobot and looked at it for a second but didn't get on it. Instead, I tried Pistol Grip V8. It has a pretty hard start and an awkward landing. Theres this weird rectangular block that you kind of undercling, then a slopey pinch with a decent thumb catch. You throw up in a space between boulders, then throw out to a huge sloper. Baker got on it (sending it the trip before) and sent after two tries. Then I got on it. The block had really sharp edges that dug into my palm, and after a few tries, cut a small chunk of skin out of my palm! :( Then to add insult to not-sending-injury, it started to rain/snow/sleet. So we decided to head back to town. Before we departed Lower Chaos, we stopped by Geeks Of The Industry V7 to show Emmy. We got back into town and ate at Ed's Cantina. I had an amazing cheeseburger!! I suggest if you're ever in Estes Park, you eat there. After Ed's we had to find a new campsite, and we luckily got one in Glacier Bend (or something like that) .So we went back to camp, hung out, and went to bed. Nothing special there, either. Next morning, we woke up, and went bouldering.

We warmed up, Emmy tried Geeks, and we decided to try to find our way to Upper Chaos. We had no idea where the trail to get up to it was and no prior knowledge of where the boulders were. We went on anyway. We did a bunch of talus hopping, and finally found a huge boulder with a gnarly high-ball with a super sketchy landing. To the right, was a pretty decent looking problem. I decided to hike up a little bit more to see if I could see if I could find some more boulders. I did. It was a really hard problem that was wayyyyy cool! I yelled at Baker to come check it out, and moved up a little more. I found the most amazing thing ever. A giant raspberry bush. Anyway, I went back down and convinced Baker to try the problem I found. He got on it and sent in three tries like a super boss! You go girl!!! After he sent, I got on. I'm not going to go into details, but I got shut down times a million. Fast forward: hike down, dinner, camp, sleep, wake up, camp tear down, leave for Wyoming. All in all, it was a pretty unsuccessful trip for me. But I did come out with one awesome thing. This;

Probably my most favorite photo yet.