sexual_chocolate Posted October 22, 2001 Share Posted October 22, 2001 Matt went to Red Rocks for four friggin' days! Tell us about your trip, damnit! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt_Anderson Posted October 22, 2001 Share Posted October 22, 2001 Trip report: Red Rocks. Should probably be merged with the "Who Did What this Weekend", "Top Ten Tick List" and "It's gone to far" threads. Todd and I hooked up this weekend for a free attempt on the Rainbow Wall. We've been dreaming about this wall for years. We were fully prepared. I showed up with gourmet Salami and TEN HANDWARMERS (It's gone to far - But Todd is 5'11" and only weighs @140 lbs - keeping that boy warm is a priority for me.) expecting cold weather and a need for salt. As it turned out the weather in Vegas was 85 and the weather on the wall (@4000 feet higher and north facing) was absolutely primo. We climbed in thin pants and a long sleeved shirts both days, sharing a belay jacket. For anyone hoping to do Rainbow wall, 80 - 85 in Vegas makes for perfect climbing weather on The Rainbow Wall. The Salami, of course, made for a pleasant wall diet. We flew in to Vegas, arriving at about 1:30 on Thursday afternoon. Glacier (from this BB), who was on a month long trip, picked us up, drove our lame asses out to the trail head and actually HIKED TO THE WALL carrying 2/3 of our water (Todd and I do not deserve our friends. . .). The guide book says 3-6 hours for the approach. It took us 2, thanks to glacier. The approach is very straightforward, just steep. An hour before dark, Glacier bid us goodby, electing not to bivy at the base. There are a number of bivy's at the base. We chose the first one we saw, a choice spot just before the last ramp; surrounding oak trees made for a quite and intimate setting. A nice spot, but missed the best one, which is a short scramble up and right from the base of the route. If you choose to bivy at the base, search around for that one. It's big enough for two, has a beautiful view of Vegas and sits 20 feet above the surrounding ground on varnished sandstone. A leisurely wake up the next morning and we started climbing the slabs before the start of the climb. Whoops! What should have been an 80 foot approach pitch of 5.6, turned out to be about 2-300 feet, a good amount of it unprotected. We figured out our gumby mistake, Todd downclimbed and we hiked up and right, then up and left a second class ramps that deposited us at the now obvious base of the route. What was already a leisurely approach got us actually climbing on the route at 10:30! The proper approach slab was done and Todd avoided the horrendous looking .12b direct variation for the variation out left. The direct variation looked sick. Iron glazed sandstone with nary a hold in dihedral. The .11d variation out left was far more moderate, with good protection when you needed it. Todd onsighted it despite a fair amount of intimidation he was surely feeling at having to pull that hard on the first pitch of his (to date . . .) hardest long climb. I followed and headed up the second pitch. It was beautiful: It started with a layback up a 10 inch crack, a number three camalot sized camming unit protected at its top the hard laybacking on thin gear and maybe a bolt. I got to a section with no feet and tempting face holds out right. I tried the face holds but felt like I needed to get back into the crack after the pendulum got to long for me. Back in the crack, the feet were nonexistent, the rock varnished and the side clings somewhat miserly. Falling! Rats. After clipping a fixed cam hook (yikes!) I got through the section and finished out the pitch. Todd made me feel better by popping off at the same spot. Pitch three was beautiful, steep climbing on good gear. Same for pitch four. Both seemed way overrated, difficulty wise. That was the end of the "hard" climbing for the day. Todd combined the next two pitches. They were beautiful: a gorgeous 5.10 layback with holds everywhere, followed by a 5.8 pitch with a move that both of us thought was 5.10. Combing the two pitches made for an easy, primarily overhanging haul. Low fifth-class pitches led to the over the rainbow ledge. Hauling on these pitches turned out to be the crux of the climb for Todd. At his listed weight, he despises wrestling with the pig even more than unprotected chimneys. For both pitches, the second belayed himself on a gri gri, helping the pig along as the leader hauled. Over the rainbow ledge is gorgeous. As the guide book says - 70 feet long, 7 feet wide and sleeps three comfortably (actually - luxuriously). It would also sleep 15 in a pinch. Smoked mussels, pepper and garlic salami, 15 year old Tamnavulin single malt, cheese and trail mix made for a luxurious evening watching the lights of Las Vegas. The last Bivy Todd and I shared was on Slesse's NE Buttress. This was obviously not a wilderness experience like that one, but still very, very nice. It (and our own weakness/cowardice) was the main reason we didn't try to bust out the route in a day and was well worth it. The light pollution from Las Vegas was astounding. Even without any direct moonlight, you could actually climb sans headlamp. As this was so far from a wilderness experience, I embraced the urban nature of the ascent and called my honey on the cell. A bit surreal, but quite nice. The next day started with a 5.7 approach pitch for the red dihedral. The next pitch, rated .11d, was humbling. The crux was 20 feet off the belay and limited you to iron varnished rock with no hand holds. After a bit of levitation, I imagine you would then grab the most miserly of holds, lock off at your knee in hope of grabbing a decent hold at the end of the sequence. I imagine this because neither Todd nor I were able to pull the sequence. Both stuck our foot in a sling and yarded past. While the falls on the second pitch obviously tarnished the style, this sequence stopped us actually being able to free the route. It was astounding that anyone would climb that thing and think that it was .11d. The rest of the pitch followed brilliant climbing on great protection. The second pitch of the red dihedral was beautiful. It starts with a chimney move in the dihedral (No hand holds and only one foot hold at chest level - A bit of stretching enabled one to get the foot up. Shimmying your ass up the opposing wall of the 90 degree dihedral allowed you to stand on it.) From there, sustained laybacking and stemming on perfect rock finished out the dihedral. I missed a knob for a stem that would have enabled a less strenous placement and had to slump onto my piece, exhuasted. After exiting the red dihedral, the pitch ascended less varnished rock on sparser protection with thought provoking moves. A gorgeous pitch. Todd fired it after me - no falls. He was so on. The last hard pitch allowed a second choice between .12b and .11d. We chose the easier of the two. Brilliant climbing through a series of roofs. Todd had no problems with the pitch and it seemed soft to me as well. After that, overhanging jams took us out the belay cave and fourth class terrain deposited us on the summit. Not a soul on the wall the whole weekend. The summit regster didn't have an entry since April. One of the entries was Jared Ogden onsighting the route car to car in a day. Oh my. We rapped the route on a single 60 meter line (our haul line was 7 mil and we decided to stick with the fat one). It took 2.5 hourss and seemed slow at the time, but the short rope probably saved us a lot of grief. Somebody installed a very nice rap route, but our rope got stuck two times. We got lucky both times, once it stuck only about 10 feet above us, so we were easily able to get it. The second time, we were able to rip it out of the crack with a concerted effort and a great deal of body weight. As we were climbing the first day, we cleared a portion of a rope that appeared to have been cut by a different party rappelling the route. The culprit pitches appear to be three and four, so beware. We hiked out, I turned my ankle and we got back to the parking lot at 7:00. Vance picked us up at 7:30 and we stayed at a mutual friend's place who lived in Vegas. Sport climbing on Sunday provided a leisurely way to spend the day with friends. We arrived home at about 12:15 this morning and I'm now to tired to do much at work, hence the trip report. Re gear: The guides we looked at said that you should bring cams up to 3.5 inches or a #4 camalot. We left the big stuff at home and never really needed it. I'd suggest micro nuts, 12 draws/slings, a double set of cams from as small as you got up to a .75 camalot, and singles on the #1, 2 and 3 camalots.) Re ratings. The ratings seemed all over the board on this climb - almost meaningless. We climbed .11d's and .11c's that felt like hard .10/easy .11. On the other hand, we couldn't even pull the move on the first part of the red dihedral. Apart from that move, the hardest pitch was probably the second pitch of the red dihedral and seemed like honest .12a (sustained hard .11 moves). By and large, the pro is bomber, the rock exquisite and the moves fantastic. There is a huge amount of enjoyable .11 climbing for the price of one pull on a draw. If anyone has ever climbed the sequence that stumped us, please respond and give me the beta! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dru Posted October 22, 2001 Share Posted October 22, 2001 That is pretty cocky of J.O. signing the summit register as a "car to car in a day" trip when he was half way done -on the summit with the descent left to do - some of those Red Rocks routes take longer to descend than they do to climb... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sexual_chocolate Posted October 22, 2001 Author Share Posted October 22, 2001 Nice one, Matt Anderson. You're a lucky pup, hangin' in Red Rocks, 85 degrees. Here, it rained all weekend, didn't have a chance to get on anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpt.Caveman Posted October 22, 2001 Share Posted October 22, 2001 quote: Originally posted by sexual chocolate: Nice one, Matt Anderson. You're a lucky pup, hangin' in Red Rocks, 85 degrees. Here, it rained all weekend, didn't have a chance to get on anything. Didn't get on nothing? Ida swore I saw you and Lambone doin' the moondance on top of Mt Si this saturday. I had my camera and will post the evidence once I get my photos developed and scanned! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.