Anonymous High School Kids Hijacked My Day at Lumpy

Right now, I should be on my way home from Lumpy Ridge. That was the plan. My climbing compadre and I wanted to tackle as many pitches as we could fit in. We were both psyched to be able to find a day that we could both get out and climb. My buddy Jeff is a school teacher by trade. He’s been unable to do much trad lately because of school responsibilities. I guess school teachers deal with many obligations, like prom, parent/teacher nights, committees, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Needless to say, he’s been pining to climb for weeks. Friday was his last day teaching for the school year. He was stoked.

I, on the other hand, have had the time but haven’t had anyone to climb with. I tried lining up a few partners, but nothing came to fruition. I became so frustrated, I started roped soloing. I started with TR, using the Mini Traxion. Last weekend, I used my CMC trip leader discount at Neptune’s and picked up a Silent Partner—a not-so-cheap device that offers a whole new level of freedom and self-reliance on the rock. Last Sunday, I headed out to christen my new piece of gear by clambering up some easy lines. I quickly found that it’s quite cumbersome to use. Imagine having a something like a #4 Camalot and a bunch of rope clipped to the front of your harness while leading. The manual even warns that many find that climbs feel about one grade harder when using the Silent Partner—yeah, no shit! Needless to say, I had some misadventures, which I considered posting be decided against for the sake of my ego=). Whatever its virtues, roped soloing is a poor substitiute for climbing with another person.

Back to the story… So, given our respective situations, Jeff and I were each pretty amped to get out and fire up many, many pitches. My goal was to come home physically destroyed, but spiritually fulfilled. Hoping for a good night’s rest, I went to bed circa 10 pm last night planning to get up at 5 this morning. I even went for a trail run up the Eldorado Canyon Trail last night to ensure I would be tired enough to fall right to sleep. Usually I sleep with the window open. As it turned out, the people across the street were having a party. You couldn’t find a more direct line from their front door and my bedroom window. Their music and whooping threatened to keep me up. No worries. I closed my window. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. Even when drink-besotted, people usually have the courtesy to quiet things down after a certain point. I was optimistic that I could fall asleep. Every time I almost stretched into the land of unconsciousness, I’d hear some kind of party noise which would rouse me to full consciousness. At about 12:30 am, I opened my window to do a noise check—I wanted to see how bad it really was. Apparently, the offending partiers decided to crank up some Usher (no accounting for taste) and increase the volume of their voices. Things had gotten worse, not better. At about this time, I did something unprecedented for me. I called the cops. Four or five police officers were there emptying the house, carding everyone and handing out tickets until 2 am. It turns out that some high school kids commandeered that house for their partying purposes. Even with my window closed, I could hear everything transpire. Somehow, my wife slept through it all—I need to learn to do that. At this point, I thought, if I slept in an additional 30 minutes and skipped breakfast, I could feel okay on 3 ½ hours of sleep and still enjoy the day. I most certainly wasn’t going to sacrifice a climbing day over a poor night’s sleep. And I definitely wouldn't let the thoughtless indiscretions of some high schoolers ruin my plans.

At 5:30, I was just convincing myself to pull my ass out of bed. My cell phone started chiming. It was Jeff. “All my tires are flat.” Being a teacher, he had been the victim of a high school prank. Someone pulled out the valve stems on all four of his tires. He said he didn’t know what to do. It was too early to call a garage. He couldn’t even jack it up with all four tires being flat, let alone transport his tires somewhere to fix them. His girlfriend was gone for the weekend and he was stranded—he lives an hour and a half away from me. I offered to help, but he declined, saying he’d get his brother, who lives closer, to help. Jeff also mentioned he hoped it wouldn’t cost more than $100 to fix. He’d been scrimping and saving his ducats to pay for gas needed for his summer-time climbing excursions.

It's like they had some kind of collective unconscious thing going, intending to wreck our day at Lumpy. I'm sad to say, they succeeded. Damn kids!