Bits from Boulder

Three true stories from the People's Republic

Aug 05, 2024

Photos by Andrew Pinkham.

Mr. Voyzey on the grill, my backyard, Central Boulder

I’m eating a sandwich outside of Lolita’s, a convenience store with an attached deli, after a morning mountain bike from Sunshine Canyon, up through Betasso Reserve, and back to town via the Link and Boulder Canyon.

The front stoop of Lolita’s often hosts an eclectic cast of characters. Today was no different; a middle-aged man with a huge mastiff on a chain collar finishes chatting with some friends who had just exited the store. Once they are out of earshot, he begins ranting. “I can’t believe they bought fucking sandwiches here. It’s all GMO garbage.” He continues for a few minutes, expressing his disbelief at his friends’ culinary choices. “Disgusting crisco-shit. Horrible.”

I look at my own sandwich with a raised eyebrow but continue eating it. He finally finishes his diatribe, declaring, “GMOs, man, this is Wal-Mart in Commerce City type-shit. Who would eat this trash?” As I toss the wrapper of my sandwich into the garbage can next to him, the man proceeds to light up and angrily puff at a cigarette, shaking his head and blowing smoke at me. I almost point out the irony to him, but I swallow my comment along with the last bite of my sandwich and bike home.

*Gateway Park Fun Center Driving Range, North Boulder*

Walking around the corner of Sanitas Brewing Company’s outdoor patio I’m greeted by my new roommate, Ross. He has invited me to Portal, a sauna-cold plunge club (their website calls it “thermaculture”) that has been open since the start of this year. We enter and a shirtless guy at the front desk greets Ross by name.

Large metal tubs line the walkway between two wooden sauna structures. The ceiling is open to the air and ferns sway gently in the afternoon’s summer breeze. Remain in Light by the Talking Heads plays from a speaker stashed behind a plant.

Ross and I enter one of the saunas. A wood stove glows at the end of the room, and friendly faces smile at us from the benches against the wall. We make small talk with our fellow sauna-ers. After fifteen minutes in the heat, we sit for three minutes in the 42 degree water tub before doing it again. Returning to the sauna, a man and woman are engaged in earnest conversation.

With less than 10% body fat and veins popping out of his arms like ropes, the guy is clearly a climber. The girl looks to be maybe ten years younger than him and is enthralled with the conversation. As Ross and I take our seats, he’s describing what he does for work. It sounds like the two are on a first date.

“You see, we’d been in stealth mode for almost 18 months before we even built a website,” the man says, leaning cooly against the wall in the 200-degree heat. “This isn’t like your usual startup, though. We had almost thirty engineers from the beginning. Everyone was coding.” Another sauna resident dumps a scoop of water on the rocks, the hiss of the flash-boiled water masking their conversation just as the steam fogs over my vision. The two move on to discussing the man’s latest big wall climbing efforts. “It was at least ten pitches. Pretty easy climbing but still a big day from the volume alone.”

The pair go to take their plunges, and Ross and I resume chatting with a girl we met in the sauna, who we realized is our neighbor. A few minutes later, as I’m sitting in my final cold plunge before leaving, the nascent couple is rinsing off next to my tub. The girl sprays the guy with a hose, laughing, and I’m caught in the crossfire, not laughing. She doesn’t seem to notice.

I focus on my numb toes instead and soon enough, the duo departs in what I assume is a Tesla for what I assume is the guy’s sick bachelor pad. Ross leans over from his tub and tells me that he sees the guy here often, always with different girls, all of them unbelievably beautiful. I sink lower into the frigid water.

The Diving Board, Second Flatiron, Boulder

I’m climbing at the Boulder Rock Club gym with friends Andrew and Phoebe. One of their friends strikes up a conversation with Andrew while I’m belaying Phoebe. Half-listening, I hear something about a triathlon and Longs Peak. “Are you going to swim Chasm Lake?” I ask the new friend. “Like the Grand Teton Picnic?” [or perhaps the Sopris Soirée?]

His eyes light up. “No. We were just going to bike there and climb the Diamond. But what if we biked from Boulder, ran to Chasm Lake, swam across it, THEN climbed the Diamond?”

Some context for the unacquainted: the Diamond is one of the most notable alpine big walls in North America. A nearly thousand-foot granite face climbs into the sky to the summit of Longs Peak at 14,259 of elevation, overlooking Chasm Lake and the rest of Rocky Mountain National Park. The easiest route up the Diamond, the Casual Route (5.10a), is no easy outing, despite the name.

The round trip bike from Boulder to the Longs Peak trailhead is roughly 120 miles and 10k feet of elevation gain. The hike just to get to the base of the climb is 4.5 miles with a few thousand feet of vertical gain. The climb is numerous pitches at high altitude. Thinking about it now, the lake swim at 12,000 ft of elevation would perhaps be the most simple part of this herculean proposal.

The friend walked away, hopping onto a 5.13 climb while muttering to himself about whether stashing gear beforehand was cheating or if he should instead tow dry bags full of climbing gear across the lake during the swim. I lower Phoebe, who just finished her climb. My turn to tie in.