Nov 24, Day 4 in Red Rocks

Sandy:

Our bodies were a bit sore from the accumulated acute load over last five days (one rest day where we walked in downtown and went to Cesar’s palace) and lack of proper sleep. Therefore, the motivation for another multi-pitch on the fourth day of climbing was a bit low. We got to the parking lot at about 8am and I was assessing how I felt when I heard “Is it Sandy?”. I turned around and saw that it was the same guide who was behind us on Birdland. He had asked me my name at the base of Birdland because he had seen my links posted on Mountain Project. I had been waiting to meet someone while climbing who would recognize me from my website. So, he asked me what we were up to, and they were going to Cookie Monster. That little interaction revived my energy, and I was stoked on block leading Dark Shadows. Finding the trail that goes to the base of the route is a bit tricky and we have GPX tracks for all the routes we did which we can share upon request. We started at 8:21am hiked 1.82 miles with 321 feet of elevation gain in 1 hour 3 minutes. I got off route a bit when I followed an obvious trail that goes up from the river bed. The key is to stay on the river bed until you see the beautiful line of Dark Shadows as shown in the pictures below. This is by far my favorite multi-pitch in Red Rocks. It has bolted anchors on all four pitches. The climbing is sustained at the grade but the route protects very well. Try to save some gear on pitch 3 for upper sections, I placed too many pieces down low and was forced to run out the upper section. Pitch 3 is the trickiest to protect. The rest of the experience is expressed in image captions.

Pitch 1 : I linked both pitch 1 and 2. The first pitch has two bolts on the face section and then some easy scrambling to bolted anchors.

Pitch 2 : The corner on pitch 2 looks daunting but protects very well. The tricky part is to avoid all the polished varnish stuff. The traverse to the left can be protected with a piece in the crack to the right and extending it with a single runner. Traverse also looks daunting but its very friendly. The crux was the protect the rope from the pool on top of pitch 2 while belaying Rick up and while lead belaying.

Pitch 3 Start: It starts with a bulge and a bit of strenuous move. Once I got the point shown the picture, I yelled at Rick to focus on taking pictures rather than talking to the party that was rappelling. My Shahrukh Khan ( a Bollywood super star in India) pose on the rocks.

Pitch 3: Upper sections. I had only one #.2 and probably a #.5 cam left for the second bulge section. This pitch is longer than it looks.

Final section of pitch 3.

Pitch 4: This pitch is short and quite bouldery. I think the crux of the route was the second offwidth/chimney section visible on the right image. There are crimps to the left of the offwidth which I did not use. I lie backed the whole crack while smearing on a couple thin edges on the varnish on the right wall. That was scary but I had very good pro and it would have been clean fall which is a far superior situation than the final pitch of Frogland. Keep traversing right to the lower anchor if you have a 60 m rope to rappel. The upper anchors will work with a 70m.

We hiked back in 45 minutes and were at the car by 2:30pm. After that we drove straight to our favorite hot tub in Palm Springs. I had a phenomenal time at Red Rocks and its a fantastic training ground for alpine climbing which involves longer approaches on rough, treacherous terrains, higher elevation gain during the hikes, run out climbing and moving fast on the routes. In fact I started looking at properties in Summerlin which are currently available at very affordable prices but then I realized that I dont have enough time to travel and climb frequently while I am working a full time job and on my PhD. Hopefully after PhD I get to buy multiple properties by awesome climbing and running destinations.