Monkey Shots

Monkey Shots starts on the left arete of the Buddha Boulder and ends with some dynamic moves to top-out. The first moves start on a large hole and move to a left-hand crimp on the arete, which are relatively easy. The next moves are the difficult part moving into a few desperate holds on a bulge and then moving to a slopey top-out.

This is located on the Buddha Boulder, which is the boulder in between the Berthoud Cave and the Buddha Cave. To find this problem, go to the East Entrance of Castlewood (the one with the visitor center), and hike in on the Inner-Canyon trail for 15 minutes to the large field towards the end of the canyon (the one with the creekside boulders, a few bridges, and a couple huge boulders). At the end of this area, the trail turns into sand, and at this point, there will be a small trail heading directly up the hillside. Follow this trail until you reach the boulder. If you go left from the boulder, you will head up to the Berthoud Cave. If you head right from the boulder, you will be at the Buddha Cave. Note: you can also take the Lake Gulch trail to get to this same area.

You can also reference this map and the boulder is labeled as the Berthoud/Buddha area:

mountainproject.com/images/…

.

The top-out is dicey, so a fall from there is likely to a sloping ground a a few rocks. 1-2 spotters would add a lot of ease to your mind.