The Sanctuary  Photos:  Recent | Best | Popular Page Views:  1,851. Good page?    Administrators:  Ben Mottinger, Leo Paik, John McNamee, Frances Fierst, Monomaniac, Tom Erickson Submitted By:  Richard M. Wright on Oct 25, 2002 Make this area a Favorite What's New   Print a Mini-Guide with routes Add Route  Add Photo  Add Comment  Add Event  Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri 63° | 37° 75° | 43° 77° | 48° 79° | 48° 86° | 48°

The Sanctuary at Big Elk Meadows.

Description 

The Sancturary is host to some of the best problems at BEM, and what makes The Sanctuary Wall so interesting is the diversity of problems that have been put up. There is a long traverse (hard to link up but probably still low in V scale), some fine straight up edge problems (V2, V3, V4), cracks (did not try), and some crossed link-ups (?V5 to V7?). At 20 feet, the top-outs seemed a bit high for my taste, or hips. If The Sanctuary has any draw-back, it would be the lack of significant angle. I found that even after an hour of on and off bouldering, while it was possible to build up a real forearm burn, I was still looking for a tree limb where I could go and crank off a slew of pull-ups just to finish the upper body pump. However, the landings are nearly perfectly flat, the rock solid, and the problems interesting enough to making the hike in well worth the effort. Now, if we could just get a bulldozer behind the thing and get the angle tipped back a bit more....

Getting There 

Hike along the creek trail for 20 minutes or so passing the turn off for the Dragon's Den and the Traverse Wall. The Sanctuary is five to ten minutes beyond the Traverse Wall.

The Classics

Featured Route For The Sanctuary

Devil's Face V5  CO : Lyons : ... : The Sanctuary

This is a stellar problem following crimpy slashes up an otherwise blank face. Pull on to very thin edges and delicately work up to two perfect small crimps, crank up to big holds in the horizontal crack, and top out on massive horns. The holds and moves on this problem are amazing....[more]   Browse More Classics in CO

Photos of The Sanctuary Slideshow

Add Photo

The Sanctuary, Big Elk Meadows.