Adventures with Rob Kepley
Four years ago in October 2015 Rob Kepley photographed Gobright’s scary free solo of the 5.12b/c Hairstyles and Attitudes on the north face of the Bastille in Eldorado Canyon, Colorado. Here Kepley recalled, “he had a rope fixed and was going up and down it, rehearsing it. Then I saw him go back over and I thought, ‘you’re not gonna solo that are you?’ My palms were sweating when I saw it.”
“After the solo he pushed it even harder on scary trad; most people would be like ‘I’m done for the day and go home.’” With his ropeless ascent of Hairstyles behind him, Gobright, with Kepley along to take photos, made the one-hour uphill hike to reach Cheating Reality, a steep route on Devil’s Thumb above Boulder. The rarely climbed route rated 5.14a R comes “With a dynamic V7 final crux five feet above marginal gear, and with your next reliable pro seven feet below that,” wrote Matt Samet in Climbing Magazine. Kepley recalled Gobright “taking these huge falls on it,” before he made an early repeat of the line.
After ticking that route, “there was nothing for him to come back to on the Front Range,” continued Kepley. “He left Boulder and moved back to California to spend the winters in Red Rock near Vegas and go back to Yosemite Valley and Squamish in the spring. That became his circuit for two to three years.”