Discovering Fremont County

Marlys and I discovered a whole new part of Fremont County as part of the monthly Search and Rescue team training...Shelf Road. This area in northern Fremont County, on the way to Cripple Creek, is a nationally known rock climbing area with over 1500 documented routes. It is a pretty incredible area.

We got to spend Friday night at "The Banks" area doing night time high angle retrieval system (mainline, belay and pig rig) practice on the limestone ledges and then we did more of it during the day on Saturday. I even got to rappel down a 80' cliff. Marlys is going to wait on that fun, since she is only 7 days removed from having her gall bladder removed.

We bivouaced in the back of the pickup, under the tonneau cover, for the night and got to use our new Jetboil stove on Saturday morning for coffee and oatmeal. I give the Jetboil a big thumbs up. One of the team members even made a boil in the bag omelet (See Tom and Joy Julkowski's recipe in the 2008 Anniversary post) in his, pretty versatile.

Walking through the parking lot there were people from all over the county, as witnessed by their license plates. It was also different being out in a remote area and hearing voices bouncing off the walls from climbers in different parts of the area.

By 4pm we were beat and headed home, but the training wasn't over as we were scheduled to get "lift ticket" training with the Flight for Life folks on Sunday to certify us to ride in a helicopter into and out of a search area during a mission. Alas, when we showed up at Canon City Fire Station 1 the training was cancelled because the chopper was needed. We are re-scheduled to take the training in October.

Busy weekend, but next weekend is Oktoberfest in Breckenridge!