In August, Brandon Thau invited me out to the southeast face of Locke Rock, northeast of Courtright Reservoir, to climb a line he had his eye on. We started climbing to the right of the rarely-done runout classic Best of the West (1,000’, 5.11c R) and climbed several sustained pitches of face climbing before I was able to execute some improbable moves and gain a steep splitter.

On the second day, we were joined by Brian Prince, who boosted morale and helped divide the load of difficult leads on improbable-looking terrain. We topped out after seven pitches, five of which included sustained 5.11a-ish climbing on perfect rock—Locked & Loaded (1,100’ climbing distance, 5.11a). During this trip, we also climbed and replaced all of the bolts on Best of the West.

— Vitaliy Musiyenko