Now this weather I can handle

Sorry for the delay in posts these past few days. Jeremy, Ben and I have been in Vegas since Saturday night. The early retreat from Indian Creek was well worth it, since it has been 70 and sunny in Vegas, and in Red Rock Canyon it has been anywhere from 50-65 and breezy, which is perfect conditions for dry, grippy rock.


Photo of me looking up at the day's objective: Schaeffer's Delight.

On Sunday Jeremy thought it would be a good idea to get our system down for our three person team, so we tried a 3 pitch 5.7 called Schaeffer's Delight. We each took a pitch and it went pretty well during belay change overs, we estimated that we could do 1 pitch in an hour and 15 minutes.

Ben belays Jeremy up pitch 2 of Schaeffer's. Ben had an exciting lead on this pitch as he had some insecure moves 15 feet to the right of his last piece of protection.

This practice run boosted our confidence, and I suggested that on Monday we attempt Crimson Chrysalis, a 9 pitch 5.8+ route that ascends a 950 foot tower on Rainbow Mountain. We underestimated the popularity of this classic route, and even on a Monday we were the 6th team to arrive at the base at 8:00. Even though team 5 left to do another route we didn't get on Crimson until 11:30. Ben lead the first pitch and after getting the entire team up pitch 1 at 1:00. So we re-evaluated the time it would take for us to get back to the car, which would be somewhere around 10-11pm. This might be a long night but doable at most climbing places. But the one downside to Red Rock is that it is managed by the BLM and the road is closed and cars must be out of the park by 10 or 11 pm (we still aren't sure what time is the correct time) or be on the receiving end of a $120 ticket. Woody Guthrie and John Muir are rolling in their graves at this restrictive and seemingly needless rule. So we decided to pack up and out and try again the next day on Tunnel Vision.

Tunnel Vision is a grade easier and three pitches less than Crimson, and this was a much better match for our party. We didn't make the same mistake on this classic, and arrived at the gate to the park as early as the road opened at 6 am, we were the first party on Tunnel at 7. Ben decided he didn't want to lead any more, so I ended up taking his leads and really enjoyed the climb. Two of my pitches were runout (scarce protection where you are run out above your gear) including the crux pitch but most of the climbing was enjoyable. Jeremy lead the routes namesake pitch, an actual tunnel into the mountain, where a headlamp can be handy. This pitch was also quite runout with bad fall potential (worse fall potential than my leads). Fortunately this is all on fairly easy terrain for Jeremy, and he kept his head level the whole time.


Jeremy trying to find the route in the tunnel pitch of Tunnel Vison.

After two attempts of long multipitch climbing with long approaches, we decided to take a half day of rest on Wednesday to rest our hiking legs. So we went sport climbing at Calico Hills. I will post some pictures of Calico later.

You can see more photos of the trip on my Picasso Album