It was another early Saturday for me. I met Jason and Chelsea at their campsite in Red Rock Canyon just west of Las Vegas around 7:30. We hiked for about 30 minutes to arrive at a formation called the Brass Wall and climbed. I had never been rock climbing before so it was a really good experience. I’ve uploaded the photos as a Flickr set.
We started with a route called Heavy Spider Karma which is rated 5.6. Jason and Chelsea do traditional lead climbing. One person ascends placing protection devices as they climb till they reach the anchor point. The second person up “cleans” by removing the devices. I, the third person, just had to figure out how to get myself up. I did okay, but lack of sleep, altitude, and minimal breakfast made me a little queasy… that and I’ve never done this. Since the rope was already in place they were able to climb the 5.9 Topless Twins route without much trouble. It’s two parallel cracks.
We moved to a different area next where they took on Straight Shooter a 5.9+. Jason and Chels mainly do crack climbing instead of face climbing. This involves placing your appendages in the crack and then creating tension to keep it stuck there. There isn’t really a lot of room to work with; sometimes to the point of not being able to get your feet in. Once the rope was set Chels did the 5.11a Sidewinder face climb. This route does have bolts available for sport climbers to anchor to. We were back at camp around 3pm and I was asleep on the floor at home by 6.
Aside: Flickr supports adding notes, but I wonder when they will add freeform sketching so you could illustrate landscape features. I guess you could draw mustaches too.
This is great! Mom can quit worrying about you being stuck at home not getting enough fresh air and sunshine….
On another climb you could do and time-lapse movie…. already thought of that didn’t you
[...] Chelsea just sent me some pictures from when we went rock climbing. I chose this one specifically because I believe her exact instructions for advancing at this point were “hump the shit out of that rock”. Needless to say, I gave it the old college try. [...]
[...] (This video is 19 minutes long so you’re probably best downloading the 640×480 original file)Jai from the Buell Riders Meetup and I rode the 13 mile route through Red Rock Canyon the other day. It’s the same area I went climbing with Chelsea. All of the Creative Commons music I’ve used in my projects has come from Diesel-U-Music. [...]