Red Rocks climbing
Did some climbing in Red Rocks, Nevada last weekend. This is more of a record and reminder for myself. Last time I was there was in 2005 back when I was a strong 5.11 climber. I don’t climb very often right now, and I felt rather nervous about doing much of anything.
Costanza and her dog Douglas came with me. The first day we arrived around noon and stopped at the first pullout. I didn’t bring a guidebook (mistake) hoping I could piece it together from the Mountain Project website. I was targeting Panty Wall, but it was way too busy. We walked/hiked around a lot, which was a ton of fun in itself. We hiked towards the left (second pullout area) and saw some people climbing at Tsunami Wall:
A young guy was doing the 5.12s. I debated doing the 5.7 trad climb…but I was just too nervous and wanted to work with Costanza on lead belaying first. We headed back towards Panty Wall and stumbled upon Amusement Park; I didn’t know what it was at the time, since we lacked a book, but it didn’t look too hard and I could setup a top rope on one of the last routes on the right to give me confidence:
I set it up as a top and it was super easy for me. After Costanza gave it a good try I pulled the rope and led all of them for fun and practice.
The next day (Thanksgiving) it was again packed. We stopped at the first pullout again briefly; packed as usual at about 11am. We went to the second pullout and got out to hike around. I wanted to go to Magic Bus, as I recall doing routes there in 2005 with Jason. Unfortunately Douglass couldn’t make it up there, or the scrambling back behind it to check out other routes. No problem, so we went on to the Sandstone Quarry parking lot area. We hiked the short walk into the gap that I think is Front Corridor; it was packed, and two dogs where there off leash, so we looked for some more areas. The Wake Up Wall, which is to the left of the wash and a bit north west was recommended. We saw it from a short distance, and it looked packed. Plus, the easiest was 5.9..and I wasn’t sure I wanted to lead 9’s yet. We hiked in the wash “Turtlehead Peak” trail (according to the map) and found some routes on a wall. It clearly hasn’t been climbed in a while (or not much at all), and I setup a top rope pretty easily. The rope dragged over the edge because I forgot my webbing to extend it, but it was lots of fun! I’d say 10d to 11ish in rating. I can’t seem to find this area on the Mountain Project; I see the rock on the map, but nothing marked. I’d say it is the rock to the west and slightly south of Bull Market. Here’s a picture I took;
The day after Thanksgiving we got up early and got there about 10am. This was early enough to get any parking (although it got super busy again later in the day). Panty Wall was already busy, but The Hamlet was empty and seemed easy to top rope for the “Lower Tier”:
I don’t know what routes we really did; they were all 5.7 to 5.8, although I picked out some 5.10 variation moves that were pretty fun on the flat face like portion seem in the middle of the above photo (to the left of the large crack).
After this..it got busy, so we left and went to a later pullout by Willow Springs…TODO: look up the name of this area (I have it on my phone but can’t find it on Mountain Project):
I did the easy 5.7? trad lead. One bolt on the bottom, and some old slings on top tied off a rock for rappelling.
