Climbing in Red Rocks - day 2 of 3
I woke up three minutes before 5 am, before my cellphone had the chance to go "beep beep beep!" Today Megan and I were to climb this easy classic trad route called Cat in the Hat, which is 6 pitches high and goes at 5.6. I got up from the living room floor of Terence's condo (feeling a bit stiff because I didn't bring a sleeping pad), cracked open the door to the room Megan was sharing with Tammy and five others (spread around the floor like a human body mine field), and whispered into the darkness, "Megan, it's time." She bounced out of the bed and was ready before I turned around. Man, that girl likes to climb!
We loaded up the rental car with our packs and a rack big enough to aid up the Nose in Yosemite, and took off for Red Rocks. We got to the gate with 5 minutes to spare before the opening of the park, and there were already eight cars lined up outside the gate.
The race is on! Lucky for us, only one of the eight cars ended up at the Pine Creek Canyon parking lot. But still, I was silently trying to get the gear out of the trunk as fast as possible while eyeing the other party in the parking lot with suspicion. Megan, being a nicer person than I am, simply asked them, "What are you guys climbing today?" "Dark Shadows. What about you?" "Cat in the Hat." Both parties visibly relaxed. I decorated myself like a climber's Christmas Tree, with every conceivable piece of climbing gear except for Big Bros (but only because I do not own any Big Bros... I'm sure if I do own them, they'd on my rack somewhere), and we started down the trail toward the easily recognizable formation called Mescalito, complete with sound effects as I stepped: clink, clunk, clink, clunk.
The approach, Mescalito in the background
I've been looking forward to climbing in Red Rocks for two months, constantly scouring the web for any related trip reports. Now a typical Red Rocks trip report goes something like this:
"We woke up at 5 am to beat the traffic on this easy classic route called 'Wheelchair Accessible' in U-B Lost Canyon. We were the first one in the park when the gate opened at 6 am, then we spent 3 hours on the approach getting hopelessly lost, bushwacking through cactus jungle and fighting off the Desert Stripe Squirrel of DEATH. We finally found the route at 9 am, and there were ten parties already in line before us. Six of the ten parties were three-person teams, three were four-person teams, and one was actually an elementary school field trip that also got lost. Some of the these teams were very experienced, fast moving climbers... but most were really off-duty traffic cops practicing building road blocks in a vertical fashion. After waiting for 2 hours and taking a nap, we got on the route, and spent 5 hours climbing the first half of the first pitch, because one of the climbers decided to give a slide show for the elementary school field trip at the next belay station. At 4 pm we finally decided to bail, leaving behind five cams since that was the only way we could build an anchor in soft sandstone we would trust our bodyweight on. We started the hike back, and proceeded to get hopelessly lost for another 3 hours in a totally different direction. It seemed that as the sun is setting, all the plants and rocks in the desert grow legs spontaneously and suddenly, walk around, and randomly relocate themselves. We got back to our car at precisely 8:01 pm, and there was already a ticket on our windshield for staying past the park closing. We were so disheartened we shaved our heads and became monks in a Tibetan monastery."
You know, your typical trip report with a slightly tragic ending. In all the TRs, everything seemed to go wrong after the protagonists got lost, so I was a bit wary of getting ourselves lost, checking the guidebook every two minutes. Our guidebook, being totally accurate and very user friendly like all guidebooks are, essentially said this about the approach: "Hike. Turn left. Scramble." With such detailed instruction, along with my superior sense of direction (just a week prior to this trip I was showing Megan how to find the North Star by searching the southern night sky and proclaiming the stars were too numerous to see the Big Dipper), we managed to get to the base of Cat in the Hat with minimum sightseeing.
I started my pre climb ritual: racking up, putting on sun block, change out of my approach shoes, go to the bathroom, eat a snack, take a nap... "Hurry up!" Megan had already flaked the rope and tied into the ends, with belay device in hand. Geez, that girl REALLY likes to climb. I started up on the first pitch of Cat in the Hat, which follows a left leaning crack on a broken face. The moves were easy, and there were plenty of gear placements. The rock was still a bit strange to me, juggy holds and big huecos everywhere, but all the knobs and flakes seemed a bit... fragile. So I stepped up gingerly.
Soon I was passing the belay ledge for the first pitch. After reading the guidebooks and talking to people who have done this route, it seemed logical to combine the first two pitches. Above the first pitch, the angle of the route lessened even more, and even though I put long slings on every piece of gear, I was starting to experience a lot of rope drag.
I got to a big ledge where I thought the P2 belay should be, but I didn't see any bolts. Hmmmm. I took the topo out from my pocket and tried to match up squiggle lines with rock features, and it seemed like the anchor should be just around the corner. I tried to walk around the big corner to my right, nothing. I tried to climb up a low angle crack/corner to the next ledge, the rope drag was pulling me back down. Hmmmm. Megan radioed up, "Boer, how's it going?" which was our unspoken code word for "what are you doing up there? Hurry up!" I radioed back, "It's going ok. I'm trying to find the anchor." I lifted a small rock nearby to see if the anchor was hiding under there. Nope. I was a bit disappointed. Finally, I decided to climb up to the next ledge, and if the anchor is not there, set up a gear belay. Fighting terrible rope drag, I hauled myself up onto the next ledge, and to my great relief saw the rumored three-bolt anchor to my right. But much time was wasted looking for it.
I set up a belay and brought up Megan, who dispatched the first two pitches with speed and ease because 1) she is a very good climber and 2) she had become very cold standing in the shade. We coiled the ropes, made a short 3rd class scramble up and right to the base of the next pitch, which was Megan's lead. It was a short pitch, Megan was at the next belay station in no time. I seconded up the third pitch, it was a good lead on Megan's part, there were some awkward moves. but the pitch itself was too short. I felt a little bad for Megan as I took the lead for the next pitch, which was suppose to be one of the two best pitches on the whole route.
And it was excellent. The pitch followed a crack up to a small roof, but you traverse left before the roof, and climb around it to a low angle gully. The belay was a big block with slings around it, I backed it up with a #5 Metolius cam in a crack, and brought Megan up. There was a shiny looking yellow DMM cam stuck in a crack just around the small roof, Megan wanted it very bad. She spent a while working it, wiggling it, probing it, singing to it, and finally had to leave it behind. I thought we could try to get it again on rap, but unfortunately we didn't get the chance.
Megan again ended up with a short and fairly uninteresting pitch: a short traverse down and to the right on some low angle rock. She climbed it quickly, brought me over to the belay, and to repay her for all the crappy pitches she had to lead, I gave her the lead on the last pitch, which along with the 4th pitch were the best pitches on the whole route. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that there was a bit of 5.6 slab runout near the top of this pitch, and since I'm super hardcore, of course I should let my partner take the crux pitch.
Megan on P6 of Cat in the Hat
Even with suicidal sparrows that were dive bombing Megan, she calmly led the last pitch, which was a near vertical face with a crack running down the center that ate up pro like me in a buffet. She then fought some rope drag on the runout bit, getting to the anchor with ease. I seconded and cleaned, enjoying her excellent lead with the safety of a toprope, and we were soon both at the top. The view was great, we were only half way up the Mescalito formation, but it already felt pretty high. We sat at the top for a while, enjoying the sun and the view, but remembering the horror stories of stuck rope and epic rappelling we've been hearing, we soon decided to start our descent.
It was a bit windy that day, so I tried a trick I knew but never used: I coiled the rope in two slings attached to my harness, and rapped with the rope hanging below me to prevent wind-blown snags. But we soon abandoned this practice because 1) it really wasn't THAT windy, and 2) the rope was kinky and like to get themselves into a tangling mess.
We rapped the 5.10b arete variation to prevent rope snag, and we were back at the P4 belay when we met the only other party on the route the entire day. It was our lucky day, we should have played the slot machine that night or something. I chatted with the leader of the other party as Megan rapped down to the tree anchor on pitch 3. The other party was a two-person team from British Columbia. They just got in to Red Rocks that same day and decided to run up an easy multi-pitch route.
Megan rappelling the 5.10b variation
We rapped from the tree anchor (while Megan commenting all the time how dodgy it was), down scrambled the big ledge between P2 and P3, and then two more rappels we were back on the ground. We stopped at every single rap station to lessen the chance of our rope getting stuck, and apparently it worked. My watch read 2:30 pm, we still had a lot of time before it gets dark. Our options were: 1) to go climb as much of Dark Shadow (5.8, 4 pitches) as we can; or 2) to soak our sore muscles in a creek nearby and lounge lazily under the sun. Being hardcore climbers, of course we had to pick option 2)... the water in the creek was icy cold, it would be good for Megan's injured finger... yeah... that's it. So we sat on warm boulders near Pine Creek, watched the other party climbing Cat in the Hat, said "hi" to passing hikers, and basically just relaxed and enjoyed the good weather.
Two hours later, we hiked back to the car, congratulated ourselves on a good day of non-epic climbing, and went back to the condo to meet up with other hardcore climbers (who climbed till much later than us) for all-you-can-eat buffet.
I had a huge plate piled high with assorted sushi. Life was good.
Cooling off in the stream
We loaded up the rental car with our packs and a rack big enough to aid up the Nose in Yosemite, and took off for Red Rocks. We got to the gate with 5 minutes to spare before the opening of the park, and there were already eight cars lined up outside the gate.
The race is on! Lucky for us, only one of the eight cars ended up at the Pine Creek Canyon parking lot. But still, I was silently trying to get the gear out of the trunk as fast as possible while eyeing the other party in the parking lot with suspicion. Megan, being a nicer person than I am, simply asked them, "What are you guys climbing today?" "Dark Shadows. What about you?" "Cat in the Hat." Both parties visibly relaxed. I decorated myself like a climber's Christmas Tree, with every conceivable piece of climbing gear except for Big Bros (but only because I do not own any Big Bros... I'm sure if I do own them, they'd on my rack somewhere), and we started down the trail toward the easily recognizable formation called Mescalito, complete with sound effects as I stepped: clink, clunk, clink, clunk.
I've been looking forward to climbing in Red Rocks for two months, constantly scouring the web for any related trip reports. Now a typical Red Rocks trip report goes something like this:
"We woke up at 5 am to beat the traffic on this easy classic route called 'Wheelchair Accessible' in U-B Lost Canyon. We were the first one in the park when the gate opened at 6 am, then we spent 3 hours on the approach getting hopelessly lost, bushwacking through cactus jungle and fighting off the Desert Stripe Squirrel of DEATH. We finally found the route at 9 am, and there were ten parties already in line before us. Six of the ten parties were three-person teams, three were four-person teams, and one was actually an elementary school field trip that also got lost. Some of the these teams were very experienced, fast moving climbers... but most were really off-duty traffic cops practicing building road blocks in a vertical fashion. After waiting for 2 hours and taking a nap, we got on the route, and spent 5 hours climbing the first half of the first pitch, because one of the climbers decided to give a slide show for the elementary school field trip at the next belay station. At 4 pm we finally decided to bail, leaving behind five cams since that was the only way we could build an anchor in soft sandstone we would trust our bodyweight on. We started the hike back, and proceeded to get hopelessly lost for another 3 hours in a totally different direction. It seemed that as the sun is setting, all the plants and rocks in the desert grow legs spontaneously and suddenly, walk around, and randomly relocate themselves. We got back to our car at precisely 8:01 pm, and there was already a ticket on our windshield for staying past the park closing. We were so disheartened we shaved our heads and became monks in a Tibetan monastery."
You know, your typical trip report with a slightly tragic ending. In all the TRs, everything seemed to go wrong after the protagonists got lost, so I was a bit wary of getting ourselves lost, checking the guidebook every two minutes. Our guidebook, being totally accurate and very user friendly like all guidebooks are, essentially said this about the approach: "Hike. Turn left. Scramble." With such detailed instruction, along with my superior sense of direction (just a week prior to this trip I was showing Megan how to find the North Star by searching the southern night sky and proclaiming the stars were too numerous to see the Big Dipper), we managed to get to the base of Cat in the Hat with minimum sightseeing.
I started my pre climb ritual: racking up, putting on sun block, change out of my approach shoes, go to the bathroom, eat a snack, take a nap... "Hurry up!" Megan had already flaked the rope and tied into the ends, with belay device in hand. Geez, that girl REALLY likes to climb. I started up on the first pitch of Cat in the Hat, which follows a left leaning crack on a broken face. The moves were easy, and there were plenty of gear placements. The rock was still a bit strange to me, juggy holds and big huecos everywhere, but all the knobs and flakes seemed a bit... fragile. So I stepped up gingerly.
Soon I was passing the belay ledge for the first pitch. After reading the guidebooks and talking to people who have done this route, it seemed logical to combine the first two pitches. Above the first pitch, the angle of the route lessened even more, and even though I put long slings on every piece of gear, I was starting to experience a lot of rope drag.
I got to a big ledge where I thought the P2 belay should be, but I didn't see any bolts. Hmmmm. I took the topo out from my pocket and tried to match up squiggle lines with rock features, and it seemed like the anchor should be just around the corner. I tried to walk around the big corner to my right, nothing. I tried to climb up a low angle crack/corner to the next ledge, the rope drag was pulling me back down. Hmmmm. Megan radioed up, "Boer, how's it going?" which was our unspoken code word for "what are you doing up there? Hurry up!" I radioed back, "It's going ok. I'm trying to find the anchor." I lifted a small rock nearby to see if the anchor was hiding under there. Nope. I was a bit disappointed. Finally, I decided to climb up to the next ledge, and if the anchor is not there, set up a gear belay. Fighting terrible rope drag, I hauled myself up onto the next ledge, and to my great relief saw the rumored three-bolt anchor to my right. But much time was wasted looking for it.
I set up a belay and brought up Megan, who dispatched the first two pitches with speed and ease because 1) she is a very good climber and 2) she had become very cold standing in the shade. We coiled the ropes, made a short 3rd class scramble up and right to the base of the next pitch, which was Megan's lead. It was a short pitch, Megan was at the next belay station in no time. I seconded up the third pitch, it was a good lead on Megan's part, there were some awkward moves. but the pitch itself was too short. I felt a little bad for Megan as I took the lead for the next pitch, which was suppose to be one of the two best pitches on the whole route.
And it was excellent. The pitch followed a crack up to a small roof, but you traverse left before the roof, and climb around it to a low angle gully. The belay was a big block with slings around it, I backed it up with a #5 Metolius cam in a crack, and brought Megan up. There was a shiny looking yellow DMM cam stuck in a crack just around the small roof, Megan wanted it very bad. She spent a while working it, wiggling it, probing it, singing to it, and finally had to leave it behind. I thought we could try to get it again on rap, but unfortunately we didn't get the chance.
Megan again ended up with a short and fairly uninteresting pitch: a short traverse down and to the right on some low angle rock. She climbed it quickly, brought me over to the belay, and to repay her for all the crappy pitches she had to lead, I gave her the lead on the last pitch, which along with the 4th pitch were the best pitches on the whole route. In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that there was a bit of 5.6 slab runout near the top of this pitch, and since I'm super hardcore, of course I should let my partner take the crux pitch.
Even with suicidal sparrows that were dive bombing Megan, she calmly led the last pitch, which was a near vertical face with a crack running down the center that ate up pro like me in a buffet. She then fought some rope drag on the runout bit, getting to the anchor with ease. I seconded and cleaned, enjoying her excellent lead with the safety of a toprope, and we were soon both at the top. The view was great, we were only half way up the Mescalito formation, but it already felt pretty high. We sat at the top for a while, enjoying the sun and the view, but remembering the horror stories of stuck rope and epic rappelling we've been hearing, we soon decided to start our descent.
It was a bit windy that day, so I tried a trick I knew but never used: I coiled the rope in two slings attached to my harness, and rapped with the rope hanging below me to prevent wind-blown snags. But we soon abandoned this practice because 1) it really wasn't THAT windy, and 2) the rope was kinky and like to get themselves into a tangling mess.
We rapped the 5.10b arete variation to prevent rope snag, and we were back at the P4 belay when we met the only other party on the route the entire day. It was our lucky day, we should have played the slot machine that night or something. I chatted with the leader of the other party as Megan rapped down to the tree anchor on pitch 3. The other party was a two-person team from British Columbia. They just got in to Red Rocks that same day and decided to run up an easy multi-pitch route.
We rapped from the tree anchor (while Megan commenting all the time how dodgy it was), down scrambled the big ledge between P2 and P3, and then two more rappels we were back on the ground. We stopped at every single rap station to lessen the chance of our rope getting stuck, and apparently it worked. My watch read 2:30 pm, we still had a lot of time before it gets dark. Our options were: 1) to go climb as much of Dark Shadow (5.8, 4 pitches) as we can; or 2) to soak our sore muscles in a creek nearby and lounge lazily under the sun. Being hardcore climbers, of course we had to pick option 2)... the water in the creek was icy cold, it would be good for Megan's injured finger... yeah... that's it. So we sat on warm boulders near Pine Creek, watched the other party climbing Cat in the Hat, said "hi" to passing hikers, and basically just relaxed and enjoyed the good weather.
Two hours later, we hiked back to the car, congratulated ourselves on a good day of non-epic climbing, and went back to the condo to meet up with other hardcore climbers (who climbed till much later than us) for all-you-can-eat buffet.
I had a huge plate piled high with assorted sushi. Life was good.
posted by Boer @ 4/17/2005
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