My friend Claudia climbing Whisper to a Scream, one of her first 11+ leads.

Too much fun the previous night at Shelf Road - the setting of a dangerous precedent. Photo taken by America's Hat.

wanted to give this route a go during my visit to shelf last year, but it didn't happen. nice movement with a crux up high. photo by the ski queen, nextascent.

Steve leading the Opportunist 5.9, great for it's grade.

Wahine at the base of 27 Tons... watch out Wahine!

This photo really doesn't show how cool this feature was- Relampagos (5.10c) takes its name from the "lightning bolt" arete between a junky block/ledge and a short headwall. You look at it and go "I wanna climb that," so you do. That's zozo stylin' on a crowd-free weekday at Cactus Cliffs.

zozo guns for the anchors on Relampagos (5.10c) while playing hooky on a beautiful Colorado day.

Steve geting going on this nice 5.9 at the Contest Wall.

Robert (8) tackles his first sport lead. Route is Alexi's Route (5.5) on Cactus Cliff at Shelf Road.

Beautiful day at the Shelf. My last lead of the day and Mark was generous enough to clean it. It doesn't get any better than this.

Matt moving through the thin reachy crux of this route. The route is relatively easy to this point with some fine jug pulling. Then the business starts - it's what you came for! This photo was taken by Kate Thayer-Clader.

A picture of my wife and I at the base of Cactus Cliffs. Photo by Kate Thayer-Calder.

This photo was taken on 1/07/05 of Scott Peterson halfway up Period Piece. This was a Flash on top rope. Cleaned to anchor and rapped off. This was my seventh week of climbing. Feeling good about it. Awesome holds. Fairly easy. Could have lead it if I wasn't so fried from Lick My Love Pump.

This is my husband rappelling down after cleaning the anchors on the last climb of the day. Gotta love sunny Colorado -- this was November!

I love morning light in the mountains and the last warm rays of sun in the desert. Here I am on Quaterback at Shelf Rd soaking up some of those rays. Photo by Randy Wong.

Here I am climbing Chunky Monkey. To the photo bomber who votes my photos with 1, here is another 1 for you. Photo by Randy Wong.

Me on some 10 a next that is next to some 5.9. Yeah, I'm the beta master, or is that master beta? Knuck knuck. . .Photo by zozo.

kcrag on sunday morning of our shelf gathering. standing on her car, looking for her dog. a great climber and an even greater person.

i think this was the nineteenth route squeezed into 48 hours at shelf. pretty mellow but a good end to the trip. thanks to fanederhand for the photo.

it's tough to get him to put down his beer or his camera, but we managed. sandbag on turbo charged intercooled meat machine at our september shelf gathering.

David on a route on shelf road. I can't remember the name. I was just messing around with the color but it came out pretty good.

turbo charged intercooled meat machine -- a real fun route at menses prow. a fingery crux at the fourth bolt and a long throw at the anchors. shelf gathering sept. 2004. photo by sandbag.

After back-to-back 19 hour days (one at work, and one doing a new route on Quandry Peak with Sharpie,) I was tired. Finally made it to camp around 11pm. One beer, and I was ready for bed. So I slept in my bag, under the stars. This is me, the next morning, still asleep. (Not sure who took the photo, as I was asleep, but probably redpointron or sandbag.)

Leading up some route with the word meat in it??? Rated 10c I believe? Photo by sandbag.

Here I am working my way up some 10c at Shelf. I forgot the name of the route. Meat Cleaver or something like that??? Thanks sandbag for the photo and thanks cologman for the beta and route suggestion.