After a poor weather start, Terry & Everett were soon facing the 30+ °C temperatures of the Nevada desert.
Here you see Terry posing at the entrance, finishing his early morning McDonalds breakfast coffee (as good as any in town, we thought).
Everett sets the pace and knows the way through the tricky canyon approach, thankfully short, to ‘The Great Red Book’.
Happy rappel to well earned drinks…
Olive Oil
Different day, place and atrocious approach bring us to ‘Olive Oil’
Note the text book belay!
Dark Shadows
We both agree that our last day route, ‘Dark Shadows’ was the hight point, possibly the best route either had climbed here.
Look at this deceptively easy start. Its smoother than a baby’s bottom – to make up for the thuggishness on rest of climb.
After this start, it follows ugly strenuous and technical cracks…
But then it came to my bit – a nasty flaring crack with a peapod bulge in it. Then guide book said ‘good protection just below crux and a good place to fall’
Well, I was half ready to back off but Everett kindly talked my in to it – he’s good like that. He even took my picture, getting in to position. Well, it doesn’t look that impressive or scary from that position, but when you view it later from below on telephoto, you can see a guy just below my move – yes, its exposed alright!
Taking Pete’s cue of the more expleteves the easier it became, I made the move and felt elated, mindfull also of Everett’s impeccable ‘feel for the rope’ on such occasions.
The rappell is adjacent to the route and I managed to get this impressive shot looking down the full extent of the Queen pitch, showing its magnitude, steepness and ferocity (different party).
The last picture looking down the Queen pitch of Dark Shadows looks awesome! What is the grade? It looks fearsomely steep!
Red Rocks is a brilliant place – and one we will certainly go back to … soon! I’m surprised really that it isn’t a more celebrated/visited venue for UK climbers, all of those Peak District sandstone devotees would love it! Although I think mid to late April is at a bit of a risk of being too hot isn’t it? We went just before Xmas and the temperatures were perfect (except for the unexpected snow on day 1! :freeze: ). Plus, Vegas was in special festive spirit with all sorts of stuff in the US Holiday vibe! 😛
Yeah, the climb is bit of a sandbagger at 5.8 😈
That pitch looks impossible from below and above but you get some clue to the solution by looking closely at the right wall – there are enough in-cuts in the ‘desert-varnished’ rock to see you through 😎
Yes, Red Rocks is brilliant and I’d go back tomorrow. Apparently, we went about the best time of year. Easter might have been touch cooler but would have been crowded – it was crowded enough anyway 😐 But it did hit 35C just as we left.
Vegas too was a treat and eye-opener. Whereas our longest mountain day was 9 hrs car to car, I spent 11 hrs walking around Vegas on day off, although that did include going to see ‘The Beatles’ at Planet Holywood :love:
Our longest day was mostly night! We started in the dark with 1.5 hours of off-road driving to get to the parking described. We finished at nearly midnight having descended in pitch dark with only a single mini-maglite between us to see with! We used the distant vertical beam of light emanating from the top of the Luxor pyramid as a beacon to orient ourselves towards where we thought we had left the car! 😯 We were guided by Egyptian gods you might say… The route was worth it though!
A fantastic adventure! 😛
Let me guess – you were headed up Black Velvet canyon ❓
Do you know I have no idea where we were! I can’t recall the name – and we were using a guidebook borrowed from Niall Grimes so I don’t even have that anymore to reference. Sorry.
Magnificent place! 😯
Congratulations, to the climbing! 😉