Red Rocks Recap
There’s a reason that climbers flock to Red Rocks. It contains multitudes. Demanding sport climbing on beautiful, red sandstone brings the strong in droves. The canyons that soar into the sky entice adventurous trad climbers, thirsty for endless moderates and challenging routes that seemingly ascend into the heavens. Two of the world’s V17 boulders find their home here— one of which (Return of the Sleepwalker) was recently sent by Pennsylvania native, Noah Wheeler. The park, small by comparison to other climbing destinations, punches well above its weight class.
We flew into LAS around 2 AM. It was the cheapest flight we could find. A quick stay in a small motel saw us hitting Denny’s at 7 AM. Grand Slam with French toast. We took an Uber with an enthusiastic local to pick up Chromatic, our van that would be home for the next week.
We went with a rental campervan so that we could be mobile. We figured that having food, sleep, and transport in the same package would allow maximal sending. Connor took the wheel, and we set off for Juniper Canyon. We started hiking at around 10:30 AM and were on the money pitch of Amartron 5.9- at 1:30 PM. We ended up doing the route car to car in 6 hours and 15 minutes. It felt good to stretch the legs, but we were exhausted. A couple of hours' sleep and a long plane ride do not make for optimal body conditioning.
Day two only had one objective: Atman 5.10. It’s a fabulous hand crack that arcs to the right. It starts at #1 camalots and ends at #3s, with a kind of awkward finish, bad feet, and some crimps for your non-jamming hand. Still gassed from yesterday, Michael took a whip onto a #2. It would go, but we needed to dial in our jamming. A few top rope burns later, both of us sent. We were slightly discouraged by our inability to flash, but after meeting a couple of other parties who had the same experience, we felt vindicated and proud of our climbing. Climbing doesn’t usually consist of flashes, and is rarely pretty. We dropped ropes on Atman’s beautiful neighbor, Yin and Yang 5.11. It was fun to work the moves, and we both felt that on another day it would also go down with similar effort to Atman. Our pictures of this day were all of other folks, but man were they good!
We finished day 2 with a quick romp up Soulshine, a 3-pitch 5.9 sport route. It’s always fun to clip bolts after pulling hard above gear.
On day 3, we met up with our friend Ted from Reach. Ted was psyched to get out and romp some moderates, so we did Physical Graffiti and The Woodsman. Both are short classics in Calico Basin. The world is so tiny, and in the climbing microcosm, we are practically adjacent even across the world.
Day 3 was a rest day, so naturally, we hiked 6 miles to a hot spring. It was not entirely restful, but it was not entirely strenuous. Perfect.
Epinephrine was the objective of the trip. It has been the site of many epics. We also know several strong climbers who have been shut down on this route. We were feeling cautiously optimistic that we could make it happen, but we took every precaution we could.
Day 4: The Big Day!
The night before was spent packing, eating (a lot), and harvesting beta. We screenshot all of the Mountain Project posts we needed and went to bed. The alarm went off at 3:00 AM. We both agree that we’d rather approach in the dark than hike out in the dark. We snagged a quick photo when we passed Return of the Sleepwalker at 4:25 AM. We made it to the base (after walking right past it) around 5:20 to see a party roping up. They were obviously prepared and had done the route many times. The leader only had a single rack up to #3. Once they left the ground, we barely kept up with them until pitch 3. We lost them as we flailed in the chimneys.
The route went well enough. We felt that the Chimneys were burly and for sure the crux of the route. It’s rare to do that kind of movement for more than a few moves, let alone for 400’. It absolutely sapped us both.
The weak high-five we gave at the top of Black Tower was evidence of our fatigue, but we were psyched; it was 9:19 AM and we were through the squeeze. The face climbing above us was “easy” according to everyone online. While it certainly wasn’t hard, it wasn’t trivial. Sustained vertical face climbing through endless dihedrals keeps you on your toes. After lots of hanging belays, we reached the top of pitch 10 (the end of the harder pitches). It was 12:30 PM. We took our time eating and pitched out the next two pitches. They turned out to be 5.4 or easier, so we just transitioned into simuling and sent the last 500’ of ramps in one big push. I can’t remember when I was more excited to see a pine tree.
We only had about half a liter of water at the top. With a three-hour hike ahead of us, we decided to check the cache at the top for a bit more water. We took a deer park bottle and left some bars and crackers in its place. I don’t think we needed the water, but man, it made the hike less miserable.
We completed the route Car to Car in just about 12 hours, and the hike down took us three hours. We were immensely proud. A bottle of Coke and four tacos from Maria’s Taco Shop in Mountain Springs capped the day nicely.
Waking up on day 6, we decided we should do something. We romped up Cat in the Hat, a mega classic 5.6 that we made short work of. We only saw one other party that day. It was magical.
Our last day came, and we decided to try our hand at Solar Slab. We approached it via Johnny Vegas 5.7 and summited at 12:25 PM. The raps took us about 1.5 hours, and we got back to the car at 2:30ish. The climbing was fairly straightforward, and the dihedral finger crack was the only time I was truly glad I had my climbing shoes on. Otherwise, it would have been an approach shoe climb through and through.
Overall, Red Rocks delivered the goods. We did 53 pitches, depending on how you divide up the upper pitches of Epinephrine. It was a fantastic trip to an amazing place. It can’t be understated that this is one of the gems of the United States climbing scene. We’ll be back!
