I had to go to Vegas for work (boo hoo), so I dragged Maddy along so I could attach her to the other end of a rope and put her in stupid situations once again. I bet she missed my antics over the winter.
Saturday we decided to do some single pitch to see how my knee fared. We went to Calico Basin to climb Physical Graffiti, a classic 2 pitch crack that splits the Riding Hood Wall. It's easily visible from the parking lot
There was a group ahead of us that we watched climb the direct start.
After 8 months of inactivity, I had no interest in the direct start. 5.5 hear I come
The first pitch was fun, it took my a little to get into rhythm of leading. Maddy came to join me at the belay. The 2nd pitch was awesome. Pure jamming ecstasy. My knee brace liked to jam itself in the crack too, and it kinda got in the way sometimes, but I figured out ways around it. It was interesting trying to yank my foot out of some of the jams, but everything feels a lot more attached now than it used to.
Maddy had some fun too:
The views here are awesome, here a couple from Colorado comes up after us
Then we drove over to Willow Springs and climbed Crooked Crack
It took us a while to find it, but we're pretty sure we climbed what we had intended to.
On Sunday we wanted to go do some multi-pitch, so since the quantity of moderately rated routes at Red Rocks is insane, we didn't really decide on anything in particular till we had parked and started hiking. We went to go do Olive Oil, 4 pitches, 5.7... sounds perfect for someone recovering not wanting anything super intense. WRONG
Sky had warned me that Red Rocks took some getting used to, and I figured by this point that I was starting to get used to it a little. Not so. I under-estimated this one.
Rose Tower is the lumpy small red-ish one just right of center
We probably didn't start actually climbing till 11am thanks to some confusion on the approach and my general schenanigans. The first pitch was relatively straight forward, one move proved to have some challenges, but it was easily overcome.
We climbed out of an alcove and began up the 2nd pitch.
The crack was steep and sustained for a 5.7, but had lots of positive holds. Just as the positive holds disappeared, I seemed to lack any gear that would fit in anything around me... hmmmm I downclimbed a bit, and traversed 10 feet to a cave-ish thing I figured I could belay from. The belay was uncomfortable, and when Maddy came to join me, she was not so stoked. I lowered her down to a big ledge that was 15m below us, took apart the belay, and traversed back to the crack. With a refreshed supply of mid-sized gear, I continued up the crack on sustained steep climbing. I got to a "semi-hanging" belay and belayed Maddy up.
This is about the point where doubt started to creep into my mind, but we were already too high to do a single rap onto any sort of ledge. We'd have had to rap to the chalky uncomfortable cave (leaving gear), then leave more gear, and rap to the large ledge. In hind-sight, this would have been the smart thing to do. But by this point, I figured I must be at the top of the 2nd pitch (if I broke the 2nd one into 2 with my cave belay), but I was wrong. We had just lost the sun behind the higher mountains around us, and I figured it must only be 2pm at the latest (also wrong), so we better hurry. The next couple pitches were relatively run-out and exposed. Eventhough the climbing was easier it was still in my head. Lots of sections with 30 ft. or more between gear. The bonus was that we were actually finally starting to move quickly.
The beta from the book said to move right onto a BIG ledge. They had also mentioned other ledges on the climb, but I hadn't really seen any, so when I got to a sloping, funky ledge I figured that this was the "big" ledge. It WAS bigger than the others. I looked up, and thought, we can do this (I wasn't actually looking at the route...). When Maddy came up to join me the light was seriously starting to fade, we checked the time, 5:30pm...
wow. I didn't expect that one. I figured 3pm at the latest.
I continued up, there was nothing to rap off of anywhere, and there was nothing to rap down to. The only way off was up.
About 50 ft. later, I encountered a much larger ledge. woops. I had had the wrong one. I had to get Maddy up here, since the last pitch is 200 ft, and our rope is 60m (196 ft.) (every pitch was 200 ft, which is why if you've been counting, we'd done about 6.5 pitches by this point).
Maddy came up to join me as darkness fell.
The End
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
more pictures here
https://picasaweb.google.com/1123490066 ... directlink
