High Altitude Adventures

I think it should be called Batman Forever

I met a few friends last weekend to go fix and climb a route that they had found in the Big Thompson Canyon in the Glen Haven picnic area. It can be found under a variety of names, in some guidebooks it is referred to as Slip and Splash and on Mountain Project it is called Bosh Fire, rated a 5.12C. I think the variation that we did, or the Top Rope route should be called Batman Forever because you have to do this sweet Batman swing onto the rock across the river and quickly grab the rock, and the rappel is just as exciting.

When we arrived there were no hangers on the bolts, instead there were chains that had just been screwed onto bolts, finger tight bolts at that.  So a few people walked around to the top and rapped down onto the climb to put up some hangers and attach quick links to the chains.  Although this has been fixed the entire route cannot yet be led because at least one bolt on the traverse section is missing a hanger and the bolt may have even been chopped.  Also you will need to wait for the river to drop a lot, as a fall at this point would certainly be near death, but I would imagine that these bolts will be fixed by the fall.

For our route we backed up the belay onto a pickup truck bed in the parking lot and then the climber would swing off the bank onto the rock and then start to climb.  This was really good 12c climbing, it was more like 3 or 4 boulder problems stacked on top of each other and overhanging all the way to the top.  Our groups vote was that the crux off the climb was in the middle of the overhanging slab and that the best section of the climb was the initial first 3 moves once you swung in.

I would certainly suggest going to check out this route; it is very easy access and although it is next to the road it is still relatively quite from cars. Also be careful with the river, we had no problem swinging into it but if not done carefully it could be very dangerous and a concern with getting caught on the rope and drowning. But non-the-less it made for a fun afternoon.

Cheers!