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A room on the wall

Estes Park guides lead overnight trip on cliff face
Climbing guide TJ Sanford, left, and client Dave Ciani hang on a wall just outside of Estes Park. Harry Kent’s Kent Mountain Adventure Center offers clients the opportunity to live like a big-wall climber for a night. The technically demanding outing requires skilled guides who can teach a newcomer strategies used by elite rock climbers.

ESTES PARK – Brett Bloxom and TJ Sanford typically deploy a tent-like tarp over their guests’ beds before arrival. It has little to do with weather.

The view from the bunk is spectacular – one of the best in all of Colorado – but most newcomers need some time in closed quarters to gather themselves after they arrive at their fabric-and-steel camping portaledge suspended 170 feet up a sheer rock wall.

“They need a place to chill for a few minutes,” said Bloxom, a guide with Kent Mountain Adventure Center in Estes Park. “Just to calm themselves a bit.”

David Ciani didn’t need the tarp. He plopped down giddily on the portaledge, huffing from the strenuous ascent.

“So awesome,” he said, repeating the nerve-calming mantra over and over.

Harry Kent’s Kent Mountain Adventure Center is probably the only outfit in the world offering clients a chance to live like a big-wall rock climber for a night, offering dinner, drink and a sleep under the stars on a 4-by-7-foot platform clipped to cliff.

“We are inventing this as we go,” said Kent, an accomplished climber who hasn’t lost his Boston accent, despite nearly 30 years in Colorado. “No one else is doing this. We are breaking new ground here.”

Kent and his longtime climbing partner Keith Lober weren’t sure the cliff-camping thing would take off.

Last summer, they fielded a call from Charley Boorman, a British travel adventurer who was looking to spend the night suspended by ropes on a cliff for a television show.

After Boorman left, Kent tacked the offering onto his website’s list of adventures and printed a handful of brochures pitching the opportunity to sleep tied to a rock for $1,200 a night. (If two people sign up, the price drops to $800 each.)

“It’s really taken off,” Kent said. “Turns out this is kind of a bucket-list item for a lot of people.”

Overlooked crag will do

The ballyhooed Dawn Wall ascent in January by Estes Park’s own Tommy Caldwell and his partner Kevin Jorgeson definitely fanned the cliff-camping flames. Images splashed around the world for weeks, showing the duo huddling on portaledges in Yosemite National Park while they tackled the first free ascent of what many consider the world’s most difficult big-wall climb left Kent’s phones ringing.

Despite the interest – including trips from media outlets in Great Britain after Boorman’s video – it was not a no-brainer for Kent. The hurdles to establishing a cliff-camping program were high.

First there was finding a location. Kent, with 20 years of guiding experience, knew he’d need a big wall. Something easily accessible, maybe within a 30-minute hike from the car. Phone service would be key. The steep cliff would require quality rock, not a face filled with loose flakes that become missiles when inadvertently loosed from the wall by a climber.

Kent didn’t have to look far from his adventure center headquarters on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. Across the valley, above the venerable Cheley Colorado Camp, is an isolated, overlooked granite crag known as Deville III. It was first explored by the legendary climber Layton Kor in the 1950s and pretty much left alone since. It’s steep, close and part of the Roosevelt National Forest, where Kent has had a permit for many years.

And most important for Ciani, Deville III has network phone reception.

The Ohio native spent part of his Sunday night on the portaledge watching both the spectacular sunset and his iPad as his beloved Cleveland Cavaliers fell to the Golden State Warriors. (He also ate chicken and quinoa with sautéed vegetables and sipped a little Johnny Walker Red, his feet dangling over the darkened abyss below. Breakfast was pepperoni omelets and coffee.)

“It was definitely the most authentic and adventurous guided experience I’ve ever had,” Ciani said. “It was a legit experience.”

Top guides required

Kent acknowledges cliff camping couldn’t happen without the right guides. He needs at least two, and often three or four, for just two clients. Cliff camping is technically demanding, requiring seriously skilled guides who can teach a newcomer strategies typically used only by elite rock climbers.

“You can’t be a regular guide and be ready for this,” said Kent, who puts his cliff-camping guides through specialized training. “They are always up there in their head, thinking about what’s next, what’s backing up what. It’s a big deal up there. Everything is carefully planned.”

Sanford, one of Kent’s lead guides, was skeptical when his boss proposed a regular cliff-camping program.

“I didn’t think it would be smart to bring people with no experience into something like this,” Sanford said. “Now, I’m into it. I think the lack of experience actually helps. It forces people to trust in the guide a little more. No one is saying ‘Well, so-and-so taught me this way,’ or ‘This is how I’ve always done it.’”

Newbies dangling from thin ropes tend to be good listeners. Even so, cliff-camping clients are carefully groomed with an intense survey before booking their trip, answering questions about their health and any previous bouts with vertigo.

They also go through a morning training session at the Kent Mountain Adventure Center headquarters, where they learn a few knots, how to ascend a fixed rope, how to haul gear bags and how to rappel. (They are also urged to make use of the facilities at the headquarters before beginning the approach to the cliff, especially if they are not planning to use the not-quite convenient Waste Alleviation & Gelling packets, or WAG bags.)

Guides grill their clients on proper communication, like yelling “rock!” when stones come loose and “off belay” and “climbing” when dealing with ropes. At the base of the cliff, Sanford suspended the easily deployed Metolius portaledge a few feet from the ground for a dry-run.

The ledge makes an ominous scraping sound as it settles against the rock wall. It wobbles and shifts with the changing weight of shifting bodies.

“But don’t worry, you are always clipped in,” Sanford said.

Ciani, a Colorado State University graduate, is an outdoorsy guy. If he was nervous, he wasn’t showing it. But he did ask questions about the reliability of bolts that Kent’s team has drilled into the rock. They are half-inch bolts and Kent was quick to point out that is the diameter – not the length. The anchoring bolts expand when screwed into the granite. They are rated to hold several thousand pounds, exponentially more than needed for cliff camping.

Seeing a partnership

Ciani, the Stanley Hotel’s general manager since February, sees a big upside to Kent’s cliff camping adventures. He’s imagining a three-day package that melds his hotel’s signature pampering with a substantial dose of adrenaline.

Guests would spend a night at his hotel – built in Estes Park by businessman F.O. Stanley in 1909 as a healthy respite in the hills – before joining the guides for a suspended night. They’d have a champagne brunch and spend another night at the Stanley to decompress.

“We think there’s a lot of opportunity with this,” Ciani said.

The cliffside adventure fits into Estes Park’s renewed focus on health and wellness tourism. The Stanley Hotel and the Estes Park Medical Center are developing a sweeping, $30 million wellness center at the hotel, with a fitness facility, a conference center for seminars and retreats and a residential hotel to accommodate longer stays.

The public-private wellness project at the Stanley Hotel – and really a swath of wellness initiatives in Estes Park – is a return to the days a century ago, when visitors flocked to the Estes Park Valley for the health benefits of mountain air and clean living.

Adventure travel and guided trips like cliff camping can spark a deeper pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.

“Offering such guided excursions in Estes Park means many more of our guests will experiment with new forms of recreation and discover new wellness interests,” said Brooke Burnham, spokeswoman for the destination marketing group Visit Estes Park. “Cliff camping is largely a mental feat, similar to adopting a wellness lifestyle, that begins with a shift in how we think about ourselves and our perceived limitations.”



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