Red Rocks, Nevada: April 10-15, 2005

I have hit Red Rocks twice a year (winter & spring) for four consecutive years, and I wasn't about to break my streak!

For this trip, Yuko and I decided to take a somewhat lazy approach: we would only climb half of the days.  But, we would climb twice as much as normal each day.  This seemed to work out well--lots of climbing, with a reasonable amount of relaxing in between.

The synopsis:

Sunday: Ginger Cracks (7p 5.9) and Power Failure (3p 5.10)

Monday: Rest.

Tuesday: Black Orpheus (11p 5.10-) and Chicken Lips (7p 5.10-)

Wednesday: Rest.

Thursday: Rest.

Friday: Inti Watana (12p 5.10+) and the Resolution Arete finish (8p 5.9)

The detailed version:

On the first day, we checked out Ginger Cracks. The route climbs the green line; the descent involves rappelling the red line...which also corresponds to the route Power Failure! The close proximity makes for an obvious link-up.

Yuko starts up pitch 1 of Ginger Cracks; the route follows the obvious crack system pretty much straight to the summit.

We started out simul-climbing, but we weren't feeling completely solid on the sandstone moves (we had both been climbing granite almost exclusively for the past year) so we switched to fixed pitches until we had a chance to get used to the rock.

Yuko following pitch 3:

Leading pitch 4: bolted face climbing next to a crack (most of the bolts were completely unnecessary, but we clipped 'em anyway!)

For the final pitch (p7), the guidebook said to climb the dihedral visible on the right side of this photo. However a line of bolts was visible to the left that followed a nice arete all the way to the summit, so we gave that a try.  It was fun, and looked better than the original route.  This pitch was probably 5.8 or so, ~160', and reasonably safe.

Ginger Cracks was reasonably cool, but we weren't feeling totally solid yet, plus it was kind of cold and windy, there were some creaky edges on the route, and there was a bit of slightly unaesthetic chimneying (awkward with a pack).  I would give it 6 thumbs up on a 10-thumb scale. But I should probably climb it again on a warmer day when I'm more dialed-in on sandstone.  We then rapped the descent route (very straightforward, two ropes required) and started up Power Failure.

Leading pitch 1: a fun pitch.

Following pitch 2: 160' of incredible 5.10 crack and face climbing.

Leading pitch 3: 160' of face climbing along a very thin crack. The 5.10- crux of the pitch occurs at the black rectangle of varnish visible directly above (thin face climbing).

This route was awesome! We were finally getting used to the rock, and every pitch had cool climbing.  After the easy rappel descent, we headed back to the car.

Monday

In accordance with the plan, we didn't climb at all the next day (and we were a bit tired from all the hiking & climbing)--instead we saw David Copperfield's magic show at the MGM Grand (sort of cool, but David Copperfield can also be sort of annoying--lots of grade-school-type jokes were incorporated into his show.).

Tuesday

Black Orpheus is a popular classic route, and the lesser-known classic Chicken Lips starts almost immediately above it...sounds like another obvious link-up!!

Black Orpheus (green line in second photo) climbs one dihedral system, traverses up and left, then climbs another dihedral system. The route has long easier sections with a couple of short crux sections, so we simul-climbed much of it (doing 4 pitches total).

Avoiding a huge cactus on the approach.

Leading pitch 1 (combined with pitch 2).

Following pitch 3 (combined with pitch 4,5,6)

Kicking back on an awesome ledge on top of pitch 6.

Following pitch 9 (combined with pitch 7 & 8)

We then linked pitches 10 & 11, which actually had some climbing that felt more difficult--probably because my feet were starting to hurt due to the continuous climbing and the hot sun.  The 5.6 lieback pitch felt more like 5.9, and the runout 5.5 face was a bit intimidating, although not particularly difficult.  We topped out, relaxed for a bit, and started the short walk over to Chicken Lips.

Scrambling under a cool arch en route to Chicken Lips. 

One piece of beta: the start of Chicken Lips is a fair bit to the right of Eagle Wall and Rainbow Buttress.  There is an obvious, huge white oval-shaped feature on the wall in a section of red rock: the route climbs the corner system just to the right of this oval.  The oval can be seen from a couple of miles away if you're standing in the right place!

The start of Chicken Lips (green line=the first 4 pitches; the next three pitches climb a right-facing corner higher up.)

Due to the hot weather, we were almost completely out of water when we got to Chicken Lips.  However it would be a bummer to miss out on another 7 pitches of climbing. Fortunately I found a small trickle near the route where we were able to replenish our water supply.

Pitch 1 of Chicken Lips: balancy, slabby face climbing (5.10).

Pitch two climbed a nice right-facing corner, then detoured around a triangular point of rock with a cool, well-protected friction/face move (5.10-).

 Leading pitch 3 (5.8).  After climbing the corner for a while, a really improbable traverse leads to face climbing around the arete,

Reaching a nice ledge atop pitch 4 (5.10-).  This pitch had sweet bolted face climbing next to an arete.  The bolts were mostly 1/4" but there were a lot of them, and they were in reasonably good shape.

Leading pitch 5 (5.10-): A very strenuous lieback move right off the ledge leads to this nice dihedral.

Following pitch 6 (5.8): A somewhat weird, wide chimney system.

Pitch 7 (5.6): More chimneying leads to the unroping point.

Scrambling about on the summit ridge on our way to the Oak Creek Canyon descent.

A crazy forest on the ridge, not something you expect to see in the middle of the desert!

I found this lovely flower, which I gave to Yuko.

The descent down Oak Creek Canyon took a long time because parts of the canyon were filled with water! Simple downclimbs became impassible waterfalls, and flat sections of gravel became deep pools that we had to scramble around.  After several tedious hours we made it back to the car, ready for...a couple of rest days!

Wednesday: rest.

Thursday: rest.

Friday:

Inti Watana is a 12-pitch route that is mostly bolted.  The line that it follows is spectacular.  Since it climbs 2/3 the height of Mt Wilson, we decided to tack on the last bit of the Resolution Arete so that we could make it to the summit, again making for a link-up of sorts (plus hiking down First Creek Canyon sounded preferable to the hassle of ~12 2-rope rappels!!)

The route follows the green line, and goes straight up a vertical pillar of rock for 1,500 feet before joining the Resolution Arete near the top (photo borrowed from www.ericandlucie.com).  In the second image, I photoshopped in the skyline of Chicago-- to scale--so that my relatives in Chicago can get a better sense of perspective.  That's the Sears Tower in the center of the photo, the world's tallest building (in terms of highest occupied floor) at 110 stories, 1,454 feet.

The approach is reasonable if you stay on track: it takes 1.5-2 hours, and excellent beta is available at www.ericandlucie.com.

After a slightly mossy first pitch, the route was steep and spectacular for the remaining 11 pitches! And the climbing tended to be slightly easy for the grade, which helped us to move along quickly.  This, plus the lack of commitment induced by the nice bolted anchors on every pitch, made the route quite stress-free.  Note: we had a 60m rope and 17 quickdraws, and were able to link pitch 9+10, and 11+12.

Yuko follows pitch 2.

Following pitch 3.

An awesome belay cave atop pitch 8.

Starting up a big, juggy overhang on pitch 9 (linked with pitch 10).

Higher on the same pitch.

Yuko follows pitch 11 & 12 (linked). The exposure on this section is absolutely ridiculous; there's a 5.10 roof section right at the top where there is nothing but air below you for well over 1,000 feet!!!

Looking up towards the summit of Mt Wilson from the end of Inti Watana.

The remaining pitches of Resolution Arete were mostly pretty fun, although not nearly as spectacular as Inti Watana.  The route wanders around, and you never go "up" for more than a pitch or two before traversing around to reach the next section.  We got off route near the end by failing to follow a really obvious gully, but we were able to backtrack and get back on the route.

The view from Mt Wilson's summit of the Las Vegas strip, where ~99.99% of Vegas Vacationers spend their time/money. Check out the second photo to get a sense of the scale!

Inti Watana is a spectacular route, I can't believe that it is not more popular.  The route is extremely well-protected (a light rack to 2 inches is required to supplement the bolts, & 2 ropes to rappel the route), with fun and easy-for-the grade climbing in an incredible position.  The final pitches to the summit of Mt Wilson aren't particularly cool, but they are sort of fun and they do lead to the summit.  For this part bring a medium rack to 3.5" (#4 camalot optional for a very short wide section).

We ended up doing 48 pitches in 6 days total (with 3 climbing days).  That's 8 pitches per total day, and 16 pitches per climbing day.  This was cool. After eating a bunch of pasta to refuel, we were ready for our next climbing trip! err, I mean, ready to head back to work for a while...