Astrodog

The North Chasm View Wall from Astrodog.

Told mostly in photos, here is the story of Astrodog, one of Colorado's sweetest long free routes.  Luke Rasmussen, Brett Baekey, and I went to the south rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison for the first time, and before dawn we began our first rappel. 

The first of 11 double rope rappels.

The sun rose a couple of raps in.  Yes, those are down booties.

once it got warm, Luke revealed his Pizza Slut shirt.  Mid length sleeves provide adequate offwidth protection,
while an exposed midriff is both dashing and well ventilated.  We believe this is the future.

A perfect corner just above the 2-boulder bivy.

Pitch 8, Brett leading a 5.11 corner.

Pitch 10: Luke leads the thin corner just before the crux.

We were pretty worked.  The route took us about 11 hrs from bottom to top.  No-one ended up sending the crux, a blank stemming book where the 'good' piece is a 000 C3.  Later, we decided to get worked in a venue which, while still plenty difficult, is a polar opposite to the Black.

O-Town on Simply Read in Rifle.