After surviving the freezing conditions of Red Rocks earlier this month, a return trip during warmer weather was necessary in order to climb some of the long multipitch routes in the canyons. This trip was smaller than the previous with just myself and one of colleagues, Laurent, partaking. With only a few weeks notice we secured cheap (~100 bucks) return flights to Vegas from San Fransisco heading out last Thursday and returning unpleasantly early on Monday morning giving us three full days of climbing.The weather was greatly improved this time, with low temperatures higher than the warmest temperatures last time. Still we spent little time, other than sleeping, at the campsite because of the restrictions on flying with stove fuel meant we could not cook. Still good cheap food is a plenty in Vegas so starvation or poverty were not likely.
Las Vegas airport is like a zoo (a weird human zoo), huge numbers of people and a farcical number of slot machines or one arm bandits. They are often referred to as the "crack cocaine of gambling" and when you see people barely able to pull themselves away from them you begin to understand why. Apparently, there are over 50,000 slot machines in Vegas (1 for every 10 residents) and some 45 million visitors a year. A frightening number considering that Vegas is primarily selling gambling and vice - hardly a moral living. Even more frightening are the numbers of people who bring their children to Vegas on holiday - not what I would call responsible parenting.
Of course, it was the climbing at Red Rocks (photo 1) that we were here for. On the first day we climbed "Cat in the Hat" (a Red Rocks classic, photo2 Laurent at the start) on the south face of the Mescalito in Pine Creek Canyon. This climb turned in something of an epic. Starting with getting lost on the approach and almost climbing a crack on a different face that we thought was the right climb, whoops! The route had 5 pitches, 3 good long (50m) ones with good protection and fun moves and two traverse pitches, the later of which had no protection and was pretty sketchy. The views from the summit were excellent, unfortunately the light got the better of us and we had to descend quickly in order to beat the sunset. The descent was 5 double rope rappels and the rope drag at each rappel station made pulling the ropes through really hard work. We were both done in by the time we reached the base of the route and so was the sun - so we had to return to the car in the dark.
On the second day, we opted for short sport routes for a little variety and to avoid any epic rappels. We climbed at two spots - the gallery and the black corridoor, the later being a very popular summer spot due to the protection from the sun. In the evening we went boozing in Vegas - at the Mirage and the Venetian and took the time to laugh at the Venice Grand Canal (photo 6) complete with Gondolas inside the Venetian (note: the clouds painted on the ceiling)!
On the last day we climbed another multipitch route called "solar slab gully" in Oak Creek Canyon (photo 3 to the south of the Canyon) this was another 5 pitches (photo 4 - me leading pitch 2 and no I didn't place any gear on this pitch; photo 5 - me and Laurent at the top of pitch 5) which gives access to more routes higher up the face. In all you could climb around 1500 vertical feet of rock and I'm sure we'd have a go if we hadn't both got up to late and then got stuck behind some slow climbers. I very much look forward to returning later in the spring to try one of these routes in hopefully even more hospitable weather.
Laters
Dave
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