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Brian Kalet became the 3rd completer of the Douglas County ranked peaks list on July 9 with a successful ascent of "Big Rock Candy Mountain"!

Congratulations Brian on your successful ascent. That is one big rocky Dome! Let's hear about it....

lp

Thanks Luke!

Here is some background on Douglas County, CO. There are 27 peaks in the county, so it is a relatively small list of peaks. Elevations of the peaks only range from the 6660’ Wildcat Mountain to the 9836’ Thunder Butte. The most difficult peak in the county is “Big Rock Candy Mountain”, which to my knowledge, the least technical ascent has been done by the Petered Out route rated at 5.9. The average difficulty of the list as a whole is 2.5, which is most likely higher than that of the state as a whole.

Below is a list of the completers and their dates of completion. I believe I am the youngest to finish at 31 years of age.

Jeremy Hakes 6/14/2008
Steve Knapp 5/16/2009
Brian Kalet 7/9/2011

Petered Out on “Big Rock Candy Mountain” is an interesting route that I will unlikely repeat. The first two 5.9 OW pitches were straightforward. The third pitch, rated at 5.7, was full of choss. The fourth pitch, rated at 5.7, first required a lean across a 20 foot deep 3+ foot wide crack, then a committing step across followed by some thin slab protected by rusty bolts and recalled hangers. The fifth pitch, also rated at 5.7, involved more thin granite slab, and required about 60 feet of runout above a rusty bolt. The final pitch, rated at 5.6, was also full of choss, but led to the south summit area, where we changed out of our climbing shoes and made the easy walk over to the true summit. Consistent with the bolt placement on the route, the rappel anchors were not in a convenient location, and instead required some easy slab downclimbing to reach. We belayed each other to the anchors and rappelled from there.

Thanks to:

Lists of John: John Kirk (Webmaster), Brad Darnell (Trip report contributor), Doug Shaw (Trip report contributor), Dwight Sunwall (Trip report contributor), Jeremy Hakes (Trip report contributor), Jim Kallemeyn (Trip report contributor), Kevin Baker (Trip report contributor), Patrick Lilly (Trip report contributor) & Steve Knapp (Trip report contributor)

My only partner for the entire list: Simone Nicolò

Congrats Brian! I was wondering when you would get around to climbing Big Rock Candy. Did you lead any of the pitches? How hot was it? Nice job finishing up the county. Big Rock is quite the adventure, one I'll never forget.

Thanks Steve! With a 40% chance of thunderstorms and a 9 am start, we decided it would be best to have Simone lead all the pitches since he is the stronger climber. I was expecting the heat to be a problem, but it wasn't: the first three pitches were shaded, then the winds were high for the remainder of the climb.

Congrat Brian on such a tough list!!

Nice work, Brian. :) This is a good list with good peaks. I really enjoyed some of these peaks. Some others, not so much. I still have 1 soft-ranked peak and 2 named peak I want to do in the county, a few that I'd like to do (named) but not sure because of access, and repeat a few others... :) A few I'll skip.

Thanks, Doug & Jeremy.

Jeremy Hakes wrote:I still have 1 soft-ranked peak and 2 named peak I want to do in the county, a few that I'd like to do (named) but not sure because of access, and repeat a few others... :) A few I'll skip.

It looks like everything you haven't done yet has been climbed...always motivation for me!

Sounds like a great accomplishment! Congratulations!

Rick

If you factor in the Soft-Ranked peaks and named peaks in Douglas, the county's overall difficulty goes up considerably (Turret, Storm, Chimney, 9064, North Noddle, etc.) A good list, too!