Despite Colorado's reputation as a climber's paradise, I haven't climbed much in Colorado (only two short trips while passing through, in 2007 and in 2014). It's a long way from home in Bellingham, Washington. Finally, in Summer 2018, I planned a 3-week climbing trip to Colorado (objectives involving
Black Canyon of Gunnison,
Eldorado Canyon,
Mt. Evans Black Wall, and Rocky Mountain National Park). The Diamond—a world famous wall of alpine granite on the East Face of Long's Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park—was high on the list of objectives. There are several awesome routes on The Diamond. I had climbed
Ariana (5.12a, 6p) in 2014, thought it was fabulous, which only inspired me to want to climb other routes on the towering wall.
George Foster joined me for my second week of climbing in Colorado. He also wanted to climb the Diamond. We decided to climb Yellow Wall + Forrest Finish, which sounded like an awesome route. The
Yellow Wall is reputed to be one of the best routes on the wall. It can be kept at 5.10b with a few variations (a 5.7 bypass to the 5.11 start to Pitch 1, and taking the
Forrest Finish directly to the top for Pitches 5-6).
During my trip, Colorado was experiencing its "summer monsoon season", which means nearly daily afternoon thundershowers. These can be particularly fearsome at higher elevations. And The Diamond happens to be on the high point in RMNP. But luck was with George and me, and the second day of our trip together we got our one-day weather window: a day with no forecasted thundershowers sandwiched between days forecasting 40% afternoon showers. So we decided to go for it and climb The Diamond!
Apparently so did everyone else. By my best count, there were 16 parties climbing on The Diamond that day (3 on
Yellow Wall, 1 on
D7, 2 on
Pervertical Sanctuary, 1 on
Curving Vine, 6-8 on
Casual Route, 1 high up above the
Casual Route on some route I don't know). There could have even been a couple of more parties that I missed! The crag-like atmosphere resulted in about 3 hours of waiting at belays for the pitch above us to clear out, but with the bluebird skies the waiting was just part of the experience and didn't add any real worry to the day, just some chilly semi-hanging belays. George and I found the climbing on the route to be excellent: consistently steep and sustained at the 5.10 level, with an amazing position up the center of the towering Diamond.
Photos from our climb below. Enjoy!
(Update: The Diamond is so awesome I had to climb it again before I left Colorado. Two weeks later, at the end of my Colorado road trip, I returned to the Diamond and did a two-route 13-pitch link-up of
Pervertical Sanctuary (5.10d) and Casual Route (5.10a).)