Climbing the Third Flatiron in Roller Skates
This a famous legend around Colorado. Recently, while flipping through a new collection I bought, I came across the full story in Dale Johnson's book "Calculated Risks".
Dale died in 2012 and his book is out of print, so I don't think anyone will mind me reproducing the story in full here.
(If you are unfamiliar with Boulder's Flatirons, they are numbered from right-to-left: the leftmost large slab in the feature image is the Third Flatiron)
Roller Skates on Rock by Dale L. Johnson
It is interesting what people bring up at social gatherings, often things one would rather not be reminded of, like painting the C on the Third Flatiron. Not infrequently, at get-togethers with climbers, usually the younger generation. I'm asked if it's true that I climbed the Third Flatiron on roller skates. This stunt has been mentioned in a couple of books about climbing around Boulder. I find also that younger climbers think in terms of roller blades, roller skates not being part of their experience. When I reply in the affirmative, the follow-up question is invariably, "Did you lock the wheels?"
In 1953, bored with school, my buddy Phil Robertson and I were looking for a diversion. We brainstormed and rejected several schemes, then one of us volunteered, "I've got it! Let's climb the Third Flatiron on roller skates." The other instantly recognized the worth of this idea. and the stunt was born.
We visited the local Goodwill store and found two pairs of skates we thought would work. Roller skates came in two styles then: shoe skates with the wheels fastened to the soles of high-topped, lace-up shoes: and clamp-on skates, which could be clamped onto the soles of ordinary shoes with a little wrench called a key. Ours were clamp-ons.
When we tried to clamp them onto our climbing boots, however, we found they wouldn't adjust wide enough for our boot soles, so we had to remove the side clamps and tie them on with nylon alpine cord. A few trips up and down the sidewalk satisfied us they would probably work.
Not being complete fools, we decided we should safeguard the climb by belaying. Our usual practice when climbing the Third was just to climb it, without rope and without belaying. Belaying was too time-consuming for such a simple climb — never mind that the face of the Third Flatiron was 1100 feet long and was inclined 47 degrees. Climbers, in fact, had died on it. But we were immortal in those days, or at least totally confident in our abilities.
Buying the skates and adapting them to our boots had taken much of the day. It had, indeed, diverted us from studying for a while, and not until several days later did our class schedules allow us to test our plan. On that morning we stuffed a climbing rope, some snacks, and water into our packs and hiked up to the base of the Third Flatiron.
Sitting in the warm sun under a blue spring sky, we tied the skates to our boots and roped up. I led off, finding the rock warm to the touch, the familiar smell of lichens and the tree-scented air putting me at ease. I put the inside wheel of my right foot into a small pocket in the rock and stood up on it. No problem so far. The wheel was going nowhere in that pocket. Stepping up, I hung the left skate over a projection so that the wheels weren't even touching the rock; they certainly weren't "skating" anywhere. With each succeeding step I found some hole, projection, or narrow ledge that supported the wheels, yet prevented them from rolling. With care, the climb was turning out to be quite straightforward.
I climbed up about 30 feet to a tree growing improbably from an invisible crack, passed behind it, and stepped into the prominent gully that runs down the center of the face. The gully is considerably smoother than the rock on either side, but fortuitously it has an uneven, two-inch ledge running across it just at the required height. Putting both outside rollers of my right foot on the ledge, I was able to safely step across and plant the two inside rollers of my left foot farther along the ledge. The rock was turning out to be rough enough and broken up enough that a roller placed nearly anywhere wouldn't move. Piece of cake!
I climbed the length of the rope, found a suitable place to belay, and brought Phil up. Phil then continued past me, and in about an hour and a half we reached what turned out to be the "crux" pitch-the final 40 or so feet to the top. This pitch is in part quite smooth, and with free-rolling wheels, we were ignominiously forced to climb part of it on our hands and knees.
No, we didn't skate down, although it might have been quick. We rappelled down the back with the skates in our packs.
Two photos are from the book, the third is from the Carnegie Library for local history.