Red Rocks Climbing

36 hours of driving, 5 days of continuous climbing, one night in Las Vegas and a huge setting full moon (apparently it was the closest its been to the earth in a long time right when we were driving home) and I'm finally ready to take a little break from adventuring.


We made it down to Red Rocks Navada with little incident, other than the 18ish hour drive through the night.  It was wonderful to finally be back to the red sandstone cliff faces that first gave me such a passion for outdoor climbing.  Caitlin, Everett and I made camp on Sunday and immediately set out to concur a few walls before the exhaustion set in.  We headed over to the Calico Basin climbing area which is outside the Red Rocks park itself and hopped on a few easy climbs get our blood flowing.  The climbs were fairly straightforward although one gave me a little bit of a scare when I had to scramble 20ft between the last bolt and the anchors.  After the warm up I thought that we should try one hard climb and I proceeded to test my skill on Caustic, a three star 11b that climbs this very exposed arete facing out into the mesas beyond Las Vegas.  It was a fun climb with lots of very good hand holds, but it did push my leading abilities to the extreme and I had to take two breaks before completing it.  I got a little bit of a scare on the rout as I attempted to clip my rope to the anchors at the same time as my right hand slid perilously along the sandstone ridge I was holding.  I was able to maintain my composure long enough to clip the anchors, but it really gave me the excitement chills to be so close to a ten foot wipper on the first day.

The week continued to be good, with excellent weather and Caitlin and Everett doing some superb leading and top rope climbing, we even got Ben Cook to leave his Las Vegas haven and come out for two days to explore the sand stone mountains with us.

One particularly eventful day was the day we hiked back behind Kraft Mountain so I could show Everett and Caitlin their first taste of chimney climbing.  The day was very hot and we finished most of our water on the hike in, but we still had enough energy and liquids to have a climb or two.  The rout that I took them back to see is a particularly nice one because it allows novice climbers to get safe experience on climbing chimney cracks.  Many climbers never face a chimney crack, unless they are trad climbers, which puts them at a great disadvantage since there is a very different technique to climbing chimney as apposed to an open wall.  This particular chimney crack had bolts placed in it which made it possible for me to lead up to the anchors and allow Everett and Caitlin the opportunity to play around twenty feet off the ground without the fear of falling from the crack if they made a mistake.  It was a lot of fun and both Caitlin and Everett showed great aptitude for it although it took Everett a few minuets to get over his desire to face climb the crack and instead practice stemming.  After finishing the chimney we knew we had to walk out in order to get more water, but instead of heading out over the high pass and just killing ourselves we decided to walk down the seasonal riverbed that lead back to the parking lot.

The walk was longer, but also had much more shade and variety of trail textures.  We had to scramble down dried up waterfalls and around large boulders the size of houses all the while marveling at the wonderful rose and cream patterns on the canyon walls.  Maybe it was my interest in the fanciful wall patterns or possibly the fifteen pound sandstone slab I was carrying in the climbing pad (for some reason Caitlin and I decided we wanted to take some sand stone rocks that looked really nice... maybe it was the lack of water), but at one point in our decent I slipped on the stones in the river bead and smashed open my big toe on my right foot.

Picture taken by Everett

It immediately began oozing a bright red blood that covered my Chacos and "needed to be taken care of right now", as medic Caitlin said.  After a sanitary wipe and four small band-aids, also provided by Caitlin, I was able to walk again and we made our way back the mile or so to the car and some fresh water.  Luckily for me the break in my toe skin was in such a place that it did not affect my climbing for the rest of the trip and it healed remarkably quick after cleaning it at camp.

On our final day we decided to get in as much new and interesting climbing that we could.  We started out on Kraft Mountain again playing around on a really fun 5.8 jug hall.  Part of the reason that Red Rocks is so amazing is the geological varnishing that has occurred to much of the sandstone exposed to the elements.  Almost everywhere you go you can see this dark brown and slightly shiny varnish over parts of the rock.  This varnish is extremely hard and causes, what is usually brittle sand stone, to become extremely strong.  This varnish also resists erosion much better than the regular sand stone, so you tend to find large chunks of it that have been partially eroded behind in order to make very large climbing holds.

Photo from Caitlin Sanchez

After everyone had done a warm up lap on the 5.8 we proceeded over to an over hung 5.11a called Drilling Miss Daisy.  I chose this as my last rout of the trip so that I could test my nerves against its over hanging clipping positions and its over all pump factor.  Every hold on the rout was pretty good, but combining the moves was draining and again it left me clipping the anchors with barely enough grip to stay on the wall.  I felt really accomplished after leading that rout with only one fall at the third bolt, and we proceeded to round off our day with some bouldering on the wonderful Kraft boulders leading back to the car park.

Photo from Caitlin Sanchez

The first bolder we came to called the Monkey Bar boulder.  This was a very fun bolder with a large over hung cave section that Everett, Caitlin and Ben Cook all crushed.

Photo from Caitlin Sanchez

I was especially proud of Caitlin who got so close to finishing a long V2ish rout that spent half its time horizontal to the ground with a difficult pull out from under the roof.  I know that if we had one more day of bouldering she would have had that rout in the bag.  We also made a little bit of time as the sun went down to experience some high ball chimney bouldering.  The rock I took them too was about as big as a house and probably 20ft tall at its peak.  When the boulder came  crashing down some time in the distant past it split in half leaving a crack with two almost perfectly smooth sides.  If you have a little gumption you can climb this split in the rock, but it can sure reek havoc on your confidence when you are sitting 15ft off the ground with your palms and shoulder blades being the only thing holding you up.

Photo from Caitlin Sanchez

Photo from Caitlin Sanchez

After all the climbing and four nights of camping we were really happy that Ben and John let us crash at their place for the last night.  It made it possible for us to go explore Las Vegas without having to spend a lot of money on a hotel and food.  It was Caitlin's first time in Las Vegas and I think she had a good time.  She seemed to have fun seeing all the crazy casinos and gambling away here first dollar.  It wasn't Everett or I's first time there, but it is still a shocker every time we go.  It's a great place with some awesome people, especially Craig Solum who is a great friend from AKL that works and lives in Las Vegas, but I think one day a year is enough time for me.  I'll spend my time down the road climbing in the calico hills of Red Rocks.

see all the pictures on my picasa page.