Red Rocks 2007
A thursday night in January 2007, Vlad and Joel drow 7.5 hours from Berkeley
to the Red Rocks. In the back seat myself and Alex enjoyed a good nights
sleep.
Red Rocks is a 15 minutes drive out from Las Vegas, and we actually went in to
the Red Rock Casino one night to watch a movie (hours of daylight is limited
during the winter). Lots of photos were taken, if you do not want to suffer my
commentary and see even more pics, be sure to check out Vlad's gallery.
Many of the over 2000 climbs are very accesible. First day we drove in on the
scenic route and hit the Gallery.
The Gallery, yeah, the rocks are red in Red Rocks. There is at least one
climber in the picture...
Characteristic rock with the red stripe through it.
The routes cover only a marginal part of the face. Joel and Vlad got 15
pitches in the first day of climbing.
Vlad clipping it on a delicate 11.
Fear and Loathing 3 (5.12a) was located close to the Gallery. It was great to
just watch that stuff being climbed, next five shows Joel leading it.
It was fantastic to climb in the sun, but a place that is probably more
enjoyable in summer was a corridor. It had plenty of great routes, but
I ended up breaking my glasses on one of them so I got grumpy.
Temperature in the shade got as
low as 5C (40F), a very good incentive to climb.
Prince of Darkness 10c
Our second day was planned for doing a six pitch climb named Prince of
Darkness. We left camp at 7, just as the sun was starting to warm the
chilly desert. Unfortunatly we took the wrong turnout and spend a lot
of time hiking.
Nice hike towards the wrong canyon.
Right canyon in the background.
Right Canyon. The water is frozen.
Someone was too eager to get to the wall.;-) Good to travel with rope for
repelling harder sections of the trek.
Finally, at noon, we got to the crag, and it was well worth it!
Black Velvet wall. As usually a photo does not do it justice.
Alex on the second pitch (third if you count the first short 5.6). Me and Joel
hanging out at the anchor below.
By this time I was really cold, and we turned back and got out just as the
sun was setting.
Moderate Mecca
Monday morning (until 2pm) was spent in an area called Moderate Mecca. The
first 10a that hits you is amazing:
The roof is probably 10a. Amazing, but it looks like the head will topple
forward (which it wont).
A short hike in the Valley was nice.
We got to an nice place with several nice faces.
Traversing under the roof looked cool.
One face was extraordinarily crumbly.
Notice the bolt on the block where the rope is... Did the block fall
down?
But the coolest route (only 10a) was an overhaning crack with a roof in the
beginning.
Fist*2 and a foot jam, to a jug.
The mantle afterwards was moderate.
So, lots of fun in a four day weekend. One of my absentminded mistakes was to
say that I would be back at work on monday (which was wrong). Fortunatly noone
missed me. :)
And as they say in Caucasus:
