3 Days in CO

My name is Alex Biale.  I'm a Communication Studies student at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California and now a Five Ten Athlete. This past fall my good friend Emett Stone and I traveled to Colorado for a few days to go bouldering with some friends.  Our first day we ventured up to the new hot spot, Lincoln Lake.  As many of you know, Lincoln Lake sits somewhere around 12 or 13,000 feet on Mt. Evans.  We drove to the talus field with no crash pad and no friends to show us problems.  The curiosity and psyche was high.  After a long day of hiking, exploring, and baguette, we made the treacherous hike back to the car where we sat in awe.  We did a lot that day, but the one climb that stands out in my mind that day is Kevin Jorgeson's new classic, Unshackled.  This is a problem I had been wanting to get on for over a year now and I was very happy to send.  It was perfect.  

That night we stayed with Emett's friend Connor Griffith who was kind enough to take us out to Upper Chaos Canyon the following morning.  We got on some good climbs that day, and got close on some amazing lines!  Summertime in Colorado often means that humidity and chances for torrential downpour are high.  However, this did not interfere with my desire to get outside on rock.  I borrowed Connor's one crash pad and headed out to Boulder Canyon.  Once again, with no sense of where the hell I was going.  I ended up driving until I stumbled upon The Game.  It's hard to miss.  I walked up to it with a mind full of wonder and awe.  This climb is so inspiring to me.  After a few minutes of drooling, I wandered around the boulders behind it and ended up arriving at The Hug and The Hug Right.  My buddy Ian Walters and I saw this boulder in one of LT11's videos and immediately got psyched.  So with my one pad and endless supply of psyche, I went to work.  It didn't take me long to complete each individual move on both climbs.  However, the 85 degree weather and HIGH humidity impeded a send.  

Boulder, CO is a hotspot for climbing right now.  There is such a high concentration of hard climbs and hard climbers.  And everybody wants to get strong.  It's hard not to get psyched in a community like this.  After a few days of solo trips to Boulder Canyon, Carlo Traversi and I went out to RMNP to work on one of his projects.  He was working Hypnotized Minds, an unrepeated Daniel Woods climb.  Before he showed me his project, he showed me mine.  Veritas is a Colorado classic.  It zig-zags its way up a gently overhanging wall on perfect pinches and smears.  Throughout the dry(ish) Summer evening, Carlo and I took turns trying both of the climbs.  Watching Carlo figure out some of the sequences he did on this boulder blew my mind.  Right before it got too dark, Carlo rushed the pads downhill to Veritas and said, "Last go.  Give it everything you got."  So that's exactly what I did.  And about 45 seconds later, I was standing on top of the boulder.  I am so happy and thankful to be living this life.