Justen Sjong on Gropius (5.13d), Bauhaus Wall. Photo by Celin Serbo — serbophoto.com.

THE BIG D

How Rifle Mountain Park Became the “Land of 5.13d”

Something terrible dwells in the East. Eyes sharper than flints, a back rippling with veins and muscle, its arms long and sinewy, knees covered in a thick, black carapace, this horror is, as we speak, hurtling through the icy maw of the mountains. The beast has rolled the stoutest cord of 60 meters into a black bag, the line coiled like an angry cobra. This creature quickly sends the hardest routes at Rifle Mountain Park, Colorado, and it loves to downrate. It is coming for you; it is coming to downgrade your route.

They call the creature “George Squibb.”

If you haven’t spent much time at Rifle Mountain Park, America’s preeminent limestone sport area, then know this: Squibb has climbed most of Rifle’s 25 5.13d’s, establishing a few himself. And Squibb, today an environmental engineer, has been in the game since 1991, when Rifle’s first bolts went in. Now 42, he still climbs at Rifle and still sends 5.13d; last summer he redpointed the 5.13d’s Tomb Raider and The Gayness. So what up with 5.13d? you ask. Isn’t it just another number?

Well . . . back in the early 1990s, a motivated crew began tapping Rifle’s abundant limestone, walls up to 300 feet lining a 2.5-mile canyon. Far more popular then were American Fork, Utah, and Smith Rock, Oregon, the crème de la crème of American sport climbing. It was to Smith that France’s Jean-Baptiste Tribout imported the States’ first 5.14a — To Bolt or Not to Be — in 1986, rubbing salt in the wounds of inferiority that festered among America’s top climbers. Perhaps the future of hard climbing could be found at an obscure, blocky pile in western Colorado, they reasoned. And so, the race for Rifle’s first 5.14 was on . . . sort of.

Ironically, Rifle climbers’ egos played a key role in preventing 5.14 from becoming well-established on home soil. (As Squibb asks, “Who wanted to rate something 14a just to have some Euro flash it?”) Thus, you had a bumper crop of severely sandbagged 5.13d’s. On the other hand, Rifle’s blocky stone lends itself to ultra-tech kneescum trickery (aka “jessery”), meaning some 5.14s have become easier over time. And even though Chris Knuth, Tommy Caldwell, and most recently Andy Raether imported 5.14b-on-beyond, it’s primarily Squibb and other strong-sters — many from the hyper-talented Boulder sport-climbing scene, which relocates to Rifle each weekend — who have turned Rifle into the “Land of 5.13d.”

Here, we’ve pulled together Rifle’s best and biggest “Ds,” from easiest to hardest. In this quiet canyon, 5.13d still spans from 5.13b to 5.14b, depending on whom you ask (and don’t ask “The Squibb”). And that, for the grade-obsessed, might be scariest of all.

Editor’s Note: Check out Wolverine Publishing’s (wolverinepublishing.com) new guidebook to Rifle Mountain Park to find your new project in the land of 13d.

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