So after Maddy and I were sitting on that ledge, we threw our jackets on to stay warm. Our anticipation was that we were going to spend the night on the ledge and have to climb out the next morning. We still had 2 sandwiches and a liter of water.
Since we were parked in the Red Rocks loop, we figured that any cars left there would be reported as missing hikers to S&R, which is exactly what they do up in Canadia in parking lots that monitor cars. Since we didn't want anyone wandering around trying to find us all night, we called the emergency number to let them know we were OK, but were going to spend the night 200 ft from the top of Rose Tower. We filled them in on the fact that we had food, water, and relatively warm jackets, but had failed to bring a light source. They told us they were going to send in an air unit to locate us... uuuh. ok.
I was naive, and assumed that they wanted to make sure we were safe, and not being more idiotic than we had already been. We used our camera flash to give them our location and a helicopter hovered around us for a while, then it flew off. I waited for another phone call from the emergency services (none came).
30 minutes later, we saw the helicopter returning. As it got closer we could see that there was something (someone) dangling below the helicopter. As they approached it was obvious that we were getting picked up. They flew in and hovered above us, slowly dropping in elevation till the guy dangling beneath the helicopter was on the ledge with us. He was far enough under them that the helicopter was almost above the top of the tower and the rotors were well clear of anything. That was still some very impressive flying though. Maddy un-tied from the rope, and clipped into a prussik cord from the rescue line, and off she went.
They returned for me 20 minutes later. I pulled out the gear I had put in and shoved the rope into our back-pack. I crouched low on the rock as the helicopter hovered over me to avoid being blown off the exposed ledge. I clipped on to the prussik cord and we flew off. When we touched down, I was a little confused. I had only called S&R to let them know that we were safe and to not search for us. They never really gave us a choice or asked us if we needed to be picked up. I guess they figured that if we were calling them, then we needed to be picked up. Anyway you look at it, I wasn't happy that other people had risked their lives for me, and I also wasn't so excited about the potential cost of the whole operation. I was quite shocked when they told me that it was free, but it doesn't take away from the fact that I fucked up and didn't have to deal with the consequences. It being free actually almost makes me feel like more of a cop-out. If we were hurt, or our rope had gotten stuck somewhere, it would have made more sense to pick us up. But 2 healthy people with food and water? I probably would have let us suffer if I was the one making the decision.
I spoke with the S&R officer the next day when he called with some follow up questions, and I asked him about this. He said that they don't want people getting themselves into more trouble by trying to move in the dark and either killing themselves or seriously injuring themselves.
This makes sense, but I definitely don't think we would have moved from that ledge.
So... we had to get rescued from a 4 pitch 5.7. I don't think I'll ever under-estimate Red Rocks again (I hope). I've also learnt how to translate pitch length from feet to meters and make sense of it. And I have a very good impression of the Nevada state police department. They were also very nice and professional people. A lot of the officers involved were climbers themselves, and had gotten themselves into their own stupid situations.
I'm just the tourist that under-estimated the desert and the spank it could lay out.
a picture of the route taken on Monday. We were 300 feet straight above the tree in the center of the picture, and 200 feet straight down from the summit. The route comes up from the bottom left of the photo.
