Vegas and Red Rocks
Last weekend became a small Alice Lloyd Hall reunion when I met up with my fellow Michigan alum in Vegas. We spent two days on the strip and yet I managed to pry a couple of the partiers away from the bright lights to climb in Red Rocks. The soft sandstone is red from banded iron formations. The red seems to accentuate the heat of the dry desert air.
We climbed at Panty Wall, a vertical wall with a variety of ratings. Ezra managed to find a belay station in the shade. I lead a 5.8 and then a 5.7. The routes are heavily bolted and I felt confident on the hand and foot holds. It amazed me that such gorgeous, alien landscape exists naturally, so close to the artificial playland of the strip.
Tahquitz and Suicide Rocks in Idyllwild, CA
Wow! No better way to spend Labor Day weekend than hiking up the hills to the most amazing rocks I've climbed yet. Our large party could have made for a logistics nightmare, but Jeremy took the lead and everything went smoothly. The first day, we set up a top rope garden on the right face of the Buttress of Cracks on Suicide. We did a good range of climbs from a 5.7 to 5.10a, and even attempted a 5.11 on a toprope.
The next day we broke up into teams and managed to get all seven of us up three pitches of 5.3 Fingertip Traverse. It was an easy climb but the exposure made my heart leap! For the third pitch, we moved onto a 5.6 slab to finish. The fourth and final pitch was easy and so Jeremy actually let me lead it.
We were having too much fun at the summit and suddenly noticed the sun was setting. The walk through the woods seemed to be leading us nowhere. I got ahead and luckily found a stack of rocks that seemed to indicated a trial... an hour and a half of stumbling later we found the main trial back to our cars. Back at the camp, marshmallows never tasted so good...
