Week 21: Red Rocks Part 1 Nov 21

With some apprehension I begin my yearly long climbing trip. In this case our collective has chosen that most accessible and frequently unscathed by the winter weather: Red Rocks.

Located just outside of Las Vegas, with its drug and addiction addled neon haze a blight on the desert, Red Rocks manages to preserve a modicum of wildness. The transformation is at once startling and immediate. Traveling west from the loop highway you pass strip mall after strip mall, Walmarts, Barnes and Nobles, Potter Pier and Barrel, countless others all competing for that valuable purchase on your retinas, and suddenly... nothing.

Cliche as it may be, there seems to be a line in the sand. The road narrows from 3 lanes to one, the lights stop, the building subsides not slowly, but immediately as if the ground 1 foot further along is completely uninhabitable.

It is in fact this transition that illuminates the whole town. All the land was like this once, wrestled into submission by the human presence. A corrupt alchemy turns sand into asphalt, the prickly pear into a 30 story neon theme park ride.

Now all cities make their mark on the landscape, and lest i seem a Luddite, let me clarify. New York, or Baltimore for example have by no means left their environments unsullied. Far from it in fact, but there seems a purposefulness to building a port for trading goods. Or locating next to a river or lake or at the base of a mountain. It is more the arbitrary nature of a city in the middle of the desert that riles me more than its environmental impact. Although surely the desert being one of the more delicate of environments particularly displays the harsh hand of human development.

Red Rocks, located not ten miles from the city may seem an escape, but the constant glow of the city, and the steady march towards the canyon make clear that the wildness preserved here is only temporary.

Sunset of the Red Rocks massif from Pine Creek Canyon

The apprehension I felt arriving stems from two sources. Predominantly city bound for the last few months I feel trapped, away from the lonely mountains where I can usually find some peace. And having been away for so long, particularly technical climbing, do I still have the technical skills to be safe and enjoy myself.

Because if I climb scared, the joy, and revitalization I normally glean from a trip like this is lost. Climbing with little confidence, always thinking about going down, not committing is the antecedent of why I am here.

I have arrived second, just barely. Gil Moss, the younger brother of my good college friend Jeff, has driven maniacally across the country from NY beating me to the airport by about 5 minutes. On the way to camp we devise a simple plan that should frame my mind nicely for the beginning of the trip.

Gil and I around camp some days later.

We wake around 4:30am, the days are short here in the winter, barely 10 hours of light, and with time restrictions around the access road, long routes hold significant threat of becoming night-time epics. Furthermore, we have a commitment to pick up Dora at the airport at 3:30.

So clearly we have chosen Solar Slab, a 2000 foot romp up easy terrain in the sun. We park outside the loop road so we can get an early start. This adds an extra mile or so to the hike, but the time gained clearly makes up for the extra distance.

There is a horrible scale about the desert and Red Rocks in particular. It is nearly impossible to get truly lost. The 2000 foot walls tower above you and the lack of foliage makes macro knowledge of your general position relatively easy to ascertain. But the small scale is quite elusive. Braided trails, terrain that lets you walk pretty much anywhere, gullies and washes that appear from nowhere, all conspire to make your route the most inefficient one.

And the whole time the scale of the place conspires against you. The boulder in the distance that seems maybe 200 yards away and 10 feet tall takes 20 minutes to reach and ends up being 50 feet tall. The mountains at once appear close enough to touch and yet the further you walk they don't get any closer.

We do manage to reach the bottom of our route just around daybreak. Given the length of the route and our time constraints we employ a technique called simul-climbing. Gil leads off just as normal with myself belaying him, prepared to catch his fall. When he has gone the full rope length (200 feet) instead of stopping and him bringing me to his position we begin climbing at the same time, keeping the rope taught between this. This allows the motion to continue upwards and can drastically reduce the time needed to climb a route. Clearly this is reserved for locations where a fall is most unlikely. The system however still works and a fall would not result in any injury.

Using this technique we climb the first 500 feet in under an hour linking together the 4 pitches into 2. This puts at the base of the main slab. The climbing is easy but enjoyable. The sun baked cliff lets us climb comfortably and confidently. The highlights of the upper slab include a variation corner the Gil leads, a bit harder than the rest but the best climbing, and a massive pitch at the end to finish off the climb. I linked the last 3 or 4 pitches, probably 500-600 feet of climbing into one long continuous piece of movement.

We reach the last rappel anchor and it is not even 11am yet. The climb goes up another 500 feet of scrambling... but the long descent from this finish can not be afforded given our schedule. The rappels go cleanly, the only hangup is the we drag our rope through a cactus halfway down, and suffer the consequences as my hands find every needle on the 200 foot cord.

Back at the car and driving to pick the next member of our team, Dora of QC fame, and the transition back to the city seems more bearable. I am less angry than thoughtful about what I see. It is truly amazing what confidently climbing a long moderate route can do for the psyche.