BURL Scouting (Southern Flatirons, Boulder Colorado)

10/21/2018

Trip date: Oct 13, 2018

This was the first outing to scout a route for the BURL: Boulder Ultimate Ridge Link-up. I stole this name from the WURL: Wasatch Ultimate Ridge Linkup. This one won't rise to anywhere near that level of difficulty but looks like a lot of fun. The basic idea is to travel from Eldorado Canyon to Boulder Canyon staying as high as possible. Think of the Boulder Skyline Traverse but replace all the trails with scrambling. This route seems doable but will definitely be a serious project. I've marked some route beta in the Caltopo map.

The southern-most Flatirons near Eldorado Canyon are my favorite. The views from up on the ridges looking west are the best in Boulder. I didn't get any great pictures this time--see this post for a better idea of what the views were like.

Looking back (east) at the hogback.

Enormous chockstone cave.

Near entrance to chockstone cave. I'm pretty sure this is a raptor nest of some kind. This area is closed for nesting in the spring/summer but is open in the fall/winter.

Purple slab NW of cave (Class 3).

The joys of off-trail travel.

I thought this was the final summit ramp to Shirttail Peak due to a nearby cairn. There was another short 5.2 slab encountered before the summit. I'm not sure what the cairn was pointing you towards...