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Saturday, October 29, 2005

Mt. Taylor Photoshop Practice


I just got Photoshop Elements and have begun learning to use it—hence this route line. This is the East Face of Mt. Taylor in Rocky Mountain National Park in late winter of 2004. Greg Sievers and I climbed this line in early April that year. It's pretty big: It took us eight stretcher pitches plus a shorter crux pitch through the summit headwall. Very poor snow conditions (deep and warm); we really shouldn't have been up there. Minimal ice and some sketchy mixed climbing. The approach took two hours longer than expected, we didn't top out until around 10 p.m., and the ski out through disintegrating snow with a malfunctioning headlamp nearly broke my will. All in all, it took us nearly 23 hours car-to-car. This face doesn't get many ascents, but in the right conditions it would be magnificent—certainly one of the biggest and most "alpine" mixed faces in the southern Rockies.

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