How hard is the Diamond?

She has followed her dad up Eldorado Canyon's The Naked Edge.

Forrest said he waited until the end of the climbing season on the Diamond, when Longs usually has the least amount of snow and ice melting off the top.

They started out for the climb at 4 a.m. [after a bivouac in the boulder field] and met five or six other parties rappelling in to get on the route that day.

Though the wall was wet, Stella's climbing was solid, he said, as was her attitude.

The weather held just long enough for the team of three to complete the climb and descend Longs' north face -- then the skies opened.

There's no official record of people who have climbed the Diamond. But the Nobles are pretty confident that Stella is the youngest because they received a phone call from the previous record holder. Tommy Caldwell, of Estes Park, called to congratulate her on the new record, saying he'd held it for 21 years.

In August most of the snow and ice is gone so there's less chance of ice or rock coming down on top of you ... It's a pretty amazing thing for a 10-year-old. She was actually nine at the time because her birthday was this month.

Interviewer: So you mentioned the Casual Route, you got the first ascent on that which is probably one of the most sought after high alpine routes in the country, maybe even in the world. What was that like?

Chris Reveley: Duncan had been up there before, maybe more than once. And the climb starts off of Broadway with a couple of pitches of relatively easy stuff. Then there’s this sort of sea of gray rock out to the left, and his intention was to connect that little crack system which actually continues up D-l with those grand traverse dihedrals that come down over here. And that turned out to be the key to the whole thing. He had gone high, higher than we ended up going and had backed off of it, cause there wasn’t any protection out there. So the day we went up, he ever the optimist, he said, “Well I tried up high so why don’t you try traversing somewhere else.”

[laughter] One thing led to another and I got across the traverse with one lovely little nut as protection. That was the frightening part of the climb. Not technically hard of course, but basically it was a 300’ death fall if you came off. Of course after you get over there, then the climbing is classic and clean and gorgeous the rest of the way.

Interviewer: What time of the year was this?

Chris Reveley: It was, boy a good question, probably in July. One feature of that section of rock was that, of course nobody had climbed out there ever, so there were lots of wobbly little flakes and what not. I did the climb again a couple of years ago, Harry Kent and I went back and did the climb for the first time in 30 years, and it’s much cleaner. People have, the traverse is just boom, boom, boom. All the rocks there are solid. They’ve pounded lost arrow pitons to some of those things, so it’s quite well protected now and it was just a pleasure. I’d gone up there with a lot of trepidation, cause I remembered what it was like, and I didn’t want to go out there. I said, “Harry I have to lead this pitch.” It turns out to be quite pleasant now, whereas then it was not very pleasant.

Interviewer: You did the first assent of the Casual Route and then you’ve only done it one other time?

Chris Reveley: I think that’s right. Oh no, I take it back, I take it back. Chris Wood and I one day in 1985 when I was back in Colorado, ’86 back in Colorado after my first year of medical school, we got on our bikes in Boulder with all of our gear in packs, rode up to Longs Peak in the middle of the night, trotted in and climbed the Casual Route and rode back to Boulder. So that would have been ’86, so that was the first time since then that I’d [repeated the route].

Interviewer: Is that called the “Longs Peak triathlon?” [laughter] I think there’s like a record about that. Like there’s people that are l ik e setting time records, from Boulder. Were you guys the first ones to do that?

Chris Reveley: Probably, yeah, 21 hours I think round trip.

Interviewer: Twenty one hours round trip from Boulder.

Chris Reveley: It would make a great triathlon. You would have to swim across Chasm Lake.

Interviewer: There you go.

Chris Reveley: That would weed them out. [laughter]

Interviewer: So why did you call it the Casual Route?

Chris Reveley: We didn’t. We didn’t call it anything. The way it got that name was that a couple weeks later, three weeks later, four weeks later, Charlie Fowler, a very much up and coming and super talented climber from Boulder, went up and climbed it without a rope. I think that’s the story, yeah. He may have, somebody said that he had clipped into some piece of protection on Mouththat last pitch of that crux move. But anyway he climbed it without a rope and he trotted in there, did it, came back and was back by noon or something. I’m sure the story is better told in other places. And somebody said, “Well Charlie, what did you do today?” “I did the route that Reveley and Ferguson had done on the Diamond.” “Oh yeah, who did you do it with?” “I did it by myself.” “Did you have a rope?” “No.” “Oh, how was it?” He goes, “Eh, casual.” [laughter]

Interviewer: So that’s how it got the named, The Casual Route. So the Casual Route is one of the more, it’s probably the most well-known route on the Diamond.

That winter shot looks knarly.....you’ll avoid the crowds as well!