Rockin' Red Rocks

From March 20-27 Katy Van Dis and myself ventured south to the Desert of Nevada to find some warm rock in this seemingly never-ending winter (My New England crew knows what I'm getting at... Spring is coming, hang in there). The climbing at home is good, but still somewhat unreliable in terms of temps.

In the past three years I've been to Red Rocks three times. This is partially because of the ease of getting there (flights into Las Vegas are always pretty cheap) and there is a veritable lifetime of climbing down there. The sandstone canyons have thousands of routes to challenge one's self... and after almost a month of my life spent there I feel as though I've barely scratched the surface.

If you're reading this entry to search for hard sends and groundbreaking ascents, read no further. This trip was more of a "get in shape again without hurting your knee" kind of trip. The days were long, but mellow. As sweet as the trip was, no 12's or 13's were sent, and no grade IV routes were completed. Just quantity and quality in the name of getting strong for the warm season. A handful of 11c sport climbs and 5.6-5.9 trad climbs.

The trip started out with a night slept in our Ford Edge rental car, as the Spring Breakers had staked their claim to all of the campsites. I awoke at 5:00 am the next morning and pushed our reservation paperwork into its proper place, successfully acquiring a 15x15 plot of desert to explode our gear on. A few hours later, we were dipping our hands in our chalkbags and stretching our weary ligaments on the warm, incut sandstone. After 6 pitches, we retired to Albertson's for amenities and shortly thereafter crashed hard onto our Thermarests.

Every morning we awoke to bright, hot sun and cool breezes. Hot enough to be wary of the sunburn that looms just outside of every shadow, but cool enough to still don insulated jackets and wool hats. I absolutely love the desert for its smells, its toughness and its incredible ecosystem. It seems as though everything is attempting to poke you.

My goal on the trip was to climb a lot and to climb at new crags that I'd never been to before. One specific wall was the Necromancer wall, which was recommended to me by a New England climbing partner, Chris Duca last year when we traveled to Red Rocks. The wall sits in the shade most of the day, and offers a nice moderate assortment of steep cracks. We did two routes here, both two pitches in length.

After completing "Fold Out" (5.8), we had to rap through a gully in order to get back to earth. Three mellow raps were all that separated us from the horizontal world. Starting the raps, I had a strange edginess about the decent. I wasn't scared, I wasn't nervous for our safety... I was just super thorough and extremely attentive. This isn't unlike my usual persona in the mountains, but in this specific instance I was "hyper" aware.

The first rap went smoothly, as did the second. Pulling the rope after the second rap, I made sure to pull slowly and make sure that I untied the knot in the end, which protected us from the all-too common climber error of rapping off the end of the rope into clean space. I then proceeded to tug the rope, which whipped through the webbing and quick-link at the top. The rope stopped. I gently tugged more.... nothing.

Swearing and pulling on the rope, I must have looked like an enraged gorilla trying to reach a Banana tied to the end of a rope. Yanking this way and that... that rope was stuck. We were one rap from the ground, our rope stuck about 50 feet above our heads, and no trail line to use. Not wanting to cut the rope, I then free soloed the 50 feet up (5.4) to get to the rope. A fall would have landed me scratched and bruised in a holly bush, no more.

Arriving at the stuck rope, I immediately swore as I gazed at a perfectly tied overhand knot that had lodged into a crack. I've only had two other times in my climbing career when I've had my ropes stuck, and none of them were instances when the rope tied itself into a knot. Something told me that the decent wouldn't be smooth... whatever it was, I'm glad that it didn't turn out worse. We continued the descent with no other abnormalities... although I gave our rope the hairy-eyeball for the next few days.

We climbed for 5 days, taking one rest day. We totaled two trad days and three sport days. Katy and I usually seem to travel with a large climbing crew, however this time it was just us. This gave us the opportunity to meet other climbers; some great and some complete assholes. It's my opinion that a climbing trip is more than the climbing; its the people, the place, and the experiences.

One such experience is when we met a group of climbers at the "Sweet Pain Wall" who had their ropes up on two climbs... but they weren't climbing. We asked if we could pull their rope and climb. One of them then yelled at us, "Our ropes 'er on the climbs... their ours!" Shaking my head, we moved onto another climb, and met a nice group of guys from Montana. After sharing a few routes with them, we all decided to head to Baja Fresh in town.

After arriving there, we quickly filled up six tables with a bunch of people, some we had met during the day, others that had arrived that knew the Montana crew. After a delicious taco dinner, a few of the guys left, and one guy (The Pharmacist, as we refer to him) told us that the guy that was sitting across from me was none other than Andy the Gladiator from the recent TV show American Gladiators. It was hilarious, seeing as the show is ridiculous and fantastic. He is apparently dating one of the female gladiators from the show as well. Helga maybe?

Other run-ins included at least six people from Bend, including Larry and Greg from PodClimber.com who were filming the Red Rock Rendezvous. Check out the website for the fantastic videos that they made from the trip.

The rest of the trip was filled with great sport climbing, long crack climbing, and lots of sunshine. Red rocks will continue to inspire; it's so close, so warm... and I am beginning to feel as though it's almost more of a home climbing crag than Smith Rocks! Ah... back to Smith we go.

Check out the small video below... we're talking about the color green and Kermit the Frog on one of the descents.