Road Trip to Red Rocks, NV

Fresh off the heals of my Moab trip the opportunity came up to bust it out to Red Rocks with my friend Kimberly for a week. Kim was driving west to wrap up some loose ends in Portland before moving back to WV, so I went along for the ride to help with the driving in exchange for some "mock guiding" to pad my guiding resume in preparation for my next AMGA Rock Instructor Exam. Although fairly new to climbing Kim is one strong chick who is way into CrossFit, a badass kayaker, and savvy businesswoman who's not afraid to go for it. AND she has a sweet Sprinter van which made the cross country drive pretty cush. On the agenda: As many pitches of multi-pitch trad climbing as possible in 5 days and I had a hot date with Levitation 29.

We left West Virginia on a Tuesday afternoon and 38 hours later we were rolling into Vegas at sunrise bleary eyed and totally psyched. We alternated driving and sleeping in 8 hour shifts, and pretty much drove straight through, only stopping for gas and Starbucks. In case you were wondering the mid-west is a Starbucks-free wasteland, so truck-stop coffee (inadequate and ineffective for the job at hand) and canned Starbucks Doubleshots (barely adequate, yet effective) fueled our insomia. It was a borderline gruel-fest and so worth it. We rolled into Vegas around 6am in the morning, did our grocery shopping, ate a quick breakfast and headed to our friend Ian's house in Blue Diamond.

After downing another round of coffee (lost track of how many rounds had been consumed by this time) and then went trad cragging in Icebox Canyon with Ian, A-Bomb and crew. We punched laps on Bad Day at Black Rocks, Pit Bull, Mercedes and a sweet fingercrack called Springbreak. Now that we were tuned up to the rock, Kim and I were psyched to go hit some multi-pitch climbing the next day.

We got off to a casual start and hiked in to Birdland a 6 pitch 5.7+. Approaches in the side canyons of Red Rocks can be cruxy at times and by the time we made it to the base of our objective, there were 3 parties on the route ahead of us. We decided to go for it anyway because they were moving at a good pace ahead of us. It only became a tight squeeze when the first party starting descending, a nice British couple who were super cool and talked funny. The whole route was fun climbing, tons of chickenheads and broken crack and super-featured, there was no shortage of holds, and nice fat bolted belays. The second to the last pitch was sweet, a thin fingercrack with pod-like openings, it was fairly low-angle to jamming wasn't really necessary.

The next day we cruised into Black Velvet Canyon. If any of you have ever laid eyes on this stretch of rock, I know you'll agree that it's some of the nicest climbing real estate you could ever come across. Perfect black sandstone, sweeping faces, and some of the best lines I've ever seen. We cruised up the first couple pitches of Refried Brains before the fading daylight forced our descent before the summit. Bummer but in the couple pitches we did do we climbed a total of 450 feet. Not too shabby for the noon start.

By Sunday I was due for a rest day, because I wanted to be fully rested to hit up Levitation 29 with my climbing partner Mark on Monday. So I tagged along with Kim, Ian and Fireman Dan to Calico Basin where Kim was psyched to get on the sharp end. Fireman Dan and I tag teamed up to give Kim a quick refresher course on placing trad gear so she could lead one of her first trad routes. She's a quick learner and very adept at picking up how to place gear and she cruised right up a sweet 5.6, and placed bomber gear the whole way. Then we went down and Kim led up several sport routes, crushing them in her confident style, even when she discovered that some of the bolts were missing. She kept it together and ran it out all the way to the anchors.

That evening my buddy Mark Allen showed up and we got our gear together for the next morning to wage an assault on Levitation 29 (9 pitches, 5.11). Levitation was Lynn Hill's pick for the "50 Classic Climbs in North America". It's 9 pitches of climbing with two back to back 5.11 pitches making up the crux, the climbing is a mix of sport and trad protection with lots of fat anchors. It's an ultra-mega-classic and I was psyched to have a strong partner to climb that rig with. Mark is an alpine guide out of the northwest, a super solid climber and was super fun to hang with. (check out Mark's Blog)

We woke up at 5am, brewed some coffee and drove out to the trailhead of Oak Creek Canyon. The approach to Levitation can take anywhere between 2-5 hours according to the guidebook, it's easy to get lost back in there but luckily Mark had been to the base of the Eagle Wall. Before I knew it we were cruising up the slabs and arrived at the base just as the sunshine hit the wall. I was a little nervous about undertaking this route but a quick little yoga sesh at the base of the route eased my spirit and warmed us up for the send-fest. (Left: Looking up from the base of the route, Levitation takes the line up the center of the photo to the summit)

After a brief discussion Mark insisted that I be the hero and lead the odd pitches (10b, 11a, 5.8, 10b, 11c, 10d, 11a, 5.9, 5.9), which meant that I got to lead pitch 5 aka the money pitch. It's 90 feet of 5.11c climbing up an overhanging wall split by a crack and corner system protected by 13 lovely bolts, which sounds excessive but were much appreciated. That pitch was steep and delivered a pump! I encountered the crux a couple bolts after the belay and Mark was great at encouraging me to breathe through it and keep pushing myself. My nerves were buzzing because I was 430' off the deck with huge exposure to the canyon below and pumping out fast, so I took a deep breath and pushed off and took a nice 10 footer. It was exactly what I needed to calm my nerves and get the jitters out. I was a little bummed about not having climbed the crux pitch clean but I needed to get the butterflies out of my stomach. It had probably been 10 years since I've fallen on multi-pitch so I needed to face the music and see that the reality was much different than my expectation of what that would feel like.

The rest of the climb was cruiser and we topped out with just enough time to rap back down to the base and start our descent down the slabs before darkness set in. Mark had some interesting tactics as far as rope selection went which were new to me. He spends lots of time in the mountains and has stacks of experience with this sort of thing so I fully trusted his system which was the use of an "alpine tagline" It works like this: We climbed on one 60m 8.9mm single rope and trailed an "alpine tagline" which was 60m of 6 mm accessory cord. The idea is that you climb on the single rope and trail the tagline which is used for the descent only. Basically you single line rappel on the "fat rope" by jamming a stopper knot into the rap anchor, and tie the "alpine tagline" to the fat rope to pull and retrieve the "climbing rope."

We would have been as I often say... "Eff-ed in the A" if anything had gotten hung up; so this method can only be applied in the right situation. This system worked out beautifully because the route was overhanging enough, there wasn't a threat of either the rope or tagline getting stuck. The advantage of saving weight and not having to deal with a second full strength rope outweighed the risk in this scenario and it was pretty sweet.

Levitation was an awesome route to end the trip on and I am counting the days till I can get back out there and do some more long routes at Red Rocks, especially the Black Canyon.