Rocking Red Rock

I was in Red Rock for a week, climbing, teaching at the Red Rock Rendezvous, and working on some product design sessions for Outdoor Research.



I climbed a bunch of excellent routes:

• Cloud Tower
• Rainbow Wall
• Ancient Futures
• Adventure Punks
• Spring Break / Tarantula / Gotham City
• Texas Hold 'Em
• Velvet Tongue (some of)
• Cactus Flower Tower
• Mt. Wilson

In Red Rock, it seems to make the most sense to basically ignore 70% of the routes there (anything on light-colored rock, most of the single pitching) and focus on the swaths of amazing stone, where every route is good.

Black Velvet Canyon, Brownstone Wall, South Side of Juniper Canyon, South Side of Pine Creek, and a few other smaller areas seem to house the best concentrations of good routes. Almost all of the good multipitch climbing faces north, but we did spend one colder day climbing some amazing overhung trad routes (Spring Break area) in Icebox Canyon.

Ancient Futures was really really good- definitely worth a lot more traffic than it gets, which isn't much. We also rapped the route with 1 70m rope (from atop the Elephant's Trunk on Epinephrine) and I posted some beta here. 

Velvet Tongue - I'm definitely going to be back for this one. The climbing is unforgettable, the wall is shady and quickly approached, and there are lots of new bolts! Now I just need to practice uncontrolled falls into and out of a corner. 

Cloud Tower

Panhandle Crack on Texas Hold 'Em

Cloud Tower P4

Bryan Gilmore Crushes Rainbow Wall

Cruxy moves on Texas Hold 'Em - Black Velvet Wall

More Rainbow Wall

Bryan on Ancient Futures - Black Velvet Wall

Chris Weidner amid overhanging hand jams atop the Black Velvet Wall

Gilmore pre-cruxing on Ancient Futures

This surly Scottish fellow tried to feed me tinned fish.

Adventure Punks with a couple fellow PNWers and an OR employee

Dialing in our Easter Egg skills

More Ancient Futures (the last pitch) - this belays atop the Elephant's Trunk on Epinephrine

Texas Hold 'Em delivered lots of fun again - Both of the 5.10+ pitches are among the best of their grade in the park. But I really want to know the story with that wildly overhung bolted arete to the right of the final pitch on Hold 'Em.