A Rambling Writing on Red Rocks

Featuring: Julian Larsen (me) and Luke Stockall

Day 1: American Dream

After arriving mid afternoon in Vegas, we had but one task: get groceries for the weekend so we can leave the city behind. This task proved more difficult than expected. In all regards, suburban Vegas is a hellscape defined by parking lots and 8 lane roads. First we needed fuel for our stove, so we went to a nearby Bass Pro Shop. We found the fuel, but before leaving we also asked if they happened to have a cheap or disposable cooler to keep some food from going bad during the week. The employee responded: “Walmart would be your best bet. There’s a Target across the street, but they might be too woke.” Luke and I struggled not to laugh for the rest of the day as we pondered what made Target so woke. Now Target was across the street from us, but remember across the street is actually very far away in suburban Vegas, as each store has a kilometre of parking and the roads have gigantic intersections. Despite our mockery Target indeed didn’t have what we were looking for. We wanted to get our food at the Grocery Outlet which was in the same strip mall as Target. Unfortunately that would mean a 15 min walk on no sidewalk so we decided to drive IN THE SAME PARKING LOT. We spent a lot of time trying to find our car and got lost in the rows of identical trucks and SUVs. I will end the story here as it is more of the same nightmare, but in summary it took us 2.5 hours to get the few things we needed.

We drove to find camp in the mountains west of Vegas (further west than Red Rocks) at Lovell canyon. We had no idea what anything looked like as the sun had set during our shopping debacle. We made camp in a pile of sand and prepared for climbing the next day.

Day 2: Frightening Frogland

Our day started at about 4:00am when Luke and I both agreed we had nothing better to do than go climb. It might be more accurate to say that the night before never ended because I personally shivered and didn’t sleep the entire night despite my layers, pad and -9C bag. Our water bottles were frozen solid and this area generally felt like a freezer compared to Vegas or Red Rocks.

We had decided to climb Frogland, a 6p 5.8+ in Black Velvet canyon. When we finally finished the drive and approach, it was still only 5:45am, but another group was ALREADY there. We let them go ahead, but then they had trouble flaking their rope so told us to start anyways. I won’t go over all the details of the climb but we learned a few things about Red Rocks:

1. Cracks exist for protection but most climbs are not crack climbs.
2. Pitches are almost double the length of Squamish pitches
3. PG ratings exist for a reason (we later learned the runouts here weren’t really an outlier though)

The most overhung and sandbagged 5.6 known to man

Day 3: Wide Boyz

I felt much better since I slept in the warm car (with heaters when I got cold) instead of the tent. We decided to do some cool single pitch climbing this day, mainly “The Fox”. This climb was a super cool splitter crack climb starting at fingers and gradually widening to offwidth squeeze chimney. This night we stayed at Red Rocks campground, which was way warmer than Lovell canyon.

Day 4: Luck and Misfortune

Me approaching Juniper Canyon in the morning light

This day we made the long approach to Brownstone wall at the back of Juniper canyon, this was a hot and sweaty 2.5 hr hike to the base. Our plan was to do “The Nightcrawler” a super cool 4 pitch climb with a chimney and a crux pitch in a perfect vertical dihedral. We also thought if all went smoothly and we had enough time we could also tick Armatron (5.9 climbed in the infamous video of Magnus Midtbo free soloing with Alex Honnold). Luke led the first pitch smoothly, but it was nearly a full 70m (I said the pitches were LONG). I led the chimney, which wasn’t too difficult (5.9) but was very slow and laborious to protect. It involved moving deep into the chimney to place pro, and then traversing delicately back to the face to do easy climbing instead of sandbagged chimney. This process repeated itself over and over again as there was no pro on the face. All in all this was the longest I’ve ever spent on a single pitch, I totally zoned out but Luke told me it was over an hour. As Luke followed I saw him knock a rock loose which rocketed down the wall and then bounced across the slab before thudding into the prickly bushes 100+ metres below.

I again led the third pitch which was absolute bliss. A clean vertical corner provided beautifully intricate stemming moves, desperate finger locks with no feet, and powerful laybacks. Once we both got to the top Luke showed me his pocket: “Oh man that sucks” I said as I saw the hole that had formed. He looked at me more seriously and said: “remember the rock that fell on the chimney pitch?”. I looked at him nervously, “Yeah? What about it?”.

Luke: “Those were the rental car keys”.

~silence~

We tried to contact the rental car guy, but we were only able to tell him what happened to the keys before loosing signal and cutting out. Bailing on the last pitch of the climb, we knew we had to sort this out quickly before it got dark and we were stranded with no car. We rappelled down to the ground and prepared to hike out.

Luke moments before misfortune

Luke following on the money pitch

I decided I would spend a few minutes searching for the keys, I had seen exactly where the landed, and gave it about 10% chance they stopped there, and another 10% chance they didn’t explode on impact. Overall 1% chance was worth a couple of minutes right? Luke wasn’t optimistic. I scrambled over to the bushes where I thought they were and spotted something. I reach down and pickup a nice looking offset nut. Free gear? My luck had to be getting better right? I turned around to show Luke and to my absolute astonishment spotted the keys. FULLY INTACT. I started running and yelling to Luke who joined me in jumping, screaming and hugging. It felt like we had won the lottery. We couldn’t believe it. Overall a very lucky day… or maybe very unlucky depending on how you look at it.

Day 5: Heat Stroke in November

We decided today would be a rest day, and by rest day I mean multipitch sport climbing instead of trad. This climb was on a limestone mountain right beside Vegas. We parked on the edge of a suburb and quite literally walked past the end of the sidewalk and into the desert. After 30 mins of toiling in the sand and the sun, we both ducked under a small shrub as there was no other shade in sight. Luke asked what time I thought it was: “It must be at least noon by now right? It’s so hot.” Turns out it was only 9:00am and we were getting heat stroke in mid-November. Since it was only getting hotter and there was no shade or wind, we made the decision to bail and take an actual rest day. I still snuck some cool limestone sport climbs in anyways.

The beautiful limestone sport crag we ended up climbing at looked like it was in the Mediterranean.

Day 6: Alex Honnold?

We did another decently sized approach to climb the ultra popular 9 pitch classic “Crimson Chrysalis”. We saw at least 10 people on the climb last time we trekked to Juniper Canyon, so we expected lines. To our surprise nobody decided to climb that day and we even had trouble finding the base with no crowds to guide us. The climb was super fun but quite runout in sections.

Luke climbing through the transition of three different colours of sandstone and a few hundred metres of exposure

Everything went well until the last pitch when we started to feel raindrops. After sprinting to the finish we started getting ready to rappel, not wanting to get stuck on sandstone in the rain and the dark. As it turns out there were 2 more people who actually DID want to go up in the rain and the dark. As we rappelled we noticed 2 people roping up at the base. The were simul climbing as it started to rain and the sun was setting. For a moment we both thought this could be Honnold himself. Who else would be experienced enough to attempt such a dangerous thing? We soon realized what they lacked in experience they made up for in stupidity. As we passed the lead, Luke asked if he knew what he was getting into. The man explained that his headlamp didn’t seem to be working but he’d be fine. Luke offered his headlamp but the man declined. He also was adamant that the rain would probably stop soon and wouldn’t be an issue (it didn’t really stop, and it probably was an issue). The belayer/follower at the base said he was a fellow British Columbian and he had just met the guy he was climbing with 2 hours prior…

The simul climbers’ headlamps shining on Crimson Chrysalis

Stumbling back in the dark with our lights, we cherished the smell of desert rain, avoiding Cacti and a small herd of wild Donkeys.

Overall an amazing trip, but here’s so much to do in Red Rocks and I’ll be back with bigger goals next time.