Grand Junction Bouldering and the Arctic Front

After leaving the Dirty South my little family hopped over to Colorado to spend Thanksgiving in Grand Junction with my family.  I'd been through Grand Junction a couple times over the years and explored a bit of the climbing.  There is tons of local bouldering which is unfortunately mostly choss but if you are willing to explore there is gold in them hills.  Between stuffing my face, hanging with family and tending to a vomiting princess I managed to get out for some quick local sessions and also found a serious gold mine (I'll post more on that later).  Unfortunately any further attempts to climb were shut down as an arctic front moved in, dumped snow and lowered temperatures to below freezing for the foreseeable future.  Dawn the weather gods.

We're planning on escaping the snow and embarking toward St George/Las Vegas in the next day or two as the gold mining in Colorado will have to wait.  Here are a few pictures of some local Grand Junction bouldering.

Grand Junction at first glance looks like a bouldering mecca, until you realize most of the rock is choss.  But it sure is fun hiking around looking for the rare gems.

Amongst all the local choss a handful of decent climbs can be found.  We spent a few hours at one of the local spots called the Dynamite Shacks and not only enjoyed ourselves but found a couple climbs worth doing.  Here Matty on a slopey arete.

Another fun little arete that took more effort than anticipated.  

This slab was actually super cool.  Notice Matty using a mono.

A fun problem with a crux dyno at the end.  Matty tried to use his height to reach but still came up short.

This problem wasn't anything special but still fun to climb on despite the soft rock  The nice thing is that next year it'll be a different problem as the holds are ever so slightly crumbling with every attempt.  Got to find the upside to choss