Dog and pony show was a colloquial term used in the United States [Mid-States, Horse and Pony Show] in the in the late-19th and early-20th centuries to refer to small traveling circuses that toured through small towns and rural areas. The name derives from the typical use of performing dogs and ponies as the main attractions of the events.

I’m dangling 500 feet above the deck in a sea of choss. A hammer, crowbar, chalk bag, brushes and ironmongery dangle off my harness. My face is covered in a dust mask and helmet is on tight. With one hand I’m tending to the belay device while the other is feeding the rope out of its coils. I’m kicking multiple couch-sized blocks off their precarious perches and marking bolt spots with dabs of chalk as I descend the rope. After 150ft of tenuous rapping, I reach a three-inch stance at the base of a large, overhanging chimney. I pound in a few pins in a nearby crack, clip in and lock off the rope. Mike follows down, powering in bolts with a hefty Bosch on his way. Waiting at the anchor for Mike, secured by these few pins in unidentifiable rock, I watch the surrounding storm clouds roll in like dark plumes and think about how I got here.

Over the past year of climbing with Mike, I generally pushed for free climbing funky Utah towers and he was always gung ho on Colorado’s western slope obscurities. It was Mike’s turn to choose, so we stayed local and agreed to revisit the Mudwall in Glenwood Canyon. A few weeks prior we’d established the one-pitch route Orangina (11c) on this wall. This mixed bolt and gear FA was headpointed. By traversing off P1 of the old (and unrepeated) Layton Kor line, Bear Paw (5.? A?), and rapping in, we were able to clean holds and gear placements while keeping bolt count to a safe minimum. That day we learned first hand how compact and featured the rock is at the Mudwall. And how varied: White quartz blanketed with toothpaste smears of calcite, limestone monos, cutler grit. Solid horizontal gear placements were often very common. As were time-bomb blocks. We decided the best way to establish a complete route on the steepest part of the wall, was to come in from the top and safely remove the hazards.

Hiking up to the top of the Mudwall is not recommended. Steep, third-class sand climbing is broken up by chunky fifth-class blocks (“When is the this @&ing death gonna end!”). Once we reached the top, two hours after the starting, we had to carefully maneuver to the lip of the wall. Short fixing and rappelling off trees was followed by short sections of traversing and much trundling to get ourselves established on the face.