November 2016
I came to Red Rock for the first time in October 2015, and now I was back 13 months later for round two! Three days and three types of climbing! Trad, sport and bouldering in that order-- what a luxury!
It's actually pretty interesting-- this was my first time flying somewhere to go climbing for such a short time. I've always stayed local unless going somewhere for at least a week. =
To be honest, I'm pretty frugal (read: cheap as fuck), and as far as I'm concerned, between Bishop, Yosemite and Tahoe, I've got world class bouldering and trad within driving distance, so unless I can go for an extended period of time, I make it a point not to travel for climbing.
However, the lures of friendship pulled me in, and the community stoke pulled me out of my loner shell.
Day 1 is not pictured in this set of photos but it was definitely a day for me to remember!
We attempted to do Epinephrine, an ultra-classic multipitch in Red Rock, but ended up bailing because of the crowds! It turns out waking up at 4:30am and getting to the parking lot at 5:15 only gets you 4th in line.
4th in line for a route which involves several chimney pitches. making it impossible to safely pass parties.
The keyword here is 'safely'.
On the 3rd pitch, the crux chimney pitch, I could literally count 12 people within 1 rope length of me. 3 people were climbing the same stretch of chimney at the same time, two seconding and one leading.
I don't want to imagine how horrible a fall would have been in this situation!
I thought Korea had tons of sketchy situations, but this might've actually taken the cake for shenanigans and ridiculousness!
Needless to say, we bailed after the 3rd pitch. At that point, it was already 12:30, and we'd started climbing the first pitch at 6:30am.
And there were still 10 more pitches to go.
And the descent is supposed to be long and somewhat hard to see in the dark if you haven't done it before.
Well. We made a lot of friends anyway and they were mostly very nice so that was cool. It'd also been a while since I last bailed off a multipitch so that was a good experience too. Luckily we didn't have any shenanigans of ropes getting stucked, so it really worked out in the end!
I'd definitely love to come back to Epinephrine in the future, but it will have to wait until a random Tuesday or Wednesday for me to try this again.
I like to think that since I sent the crux pitch, it's like I sent the whole thing, right?
Day 2 we canceled our previous plans for more multipitching, not wanting to risk the crazy crowds!, and opted for some sport climbing instead!
Sport climbing is a lot more convenient than trad in terms of gear and accessibility, but I think I actually like trad more than sport these days! I'm in a better headspace for it and honestly haven't been training enough in my strength to send hard in sport.
Sport climbing was still tons of fun though, and I still definitely want to return to it one day! One day when I live somewhere with accessible quality sport.
Living in the Bay though, it strikes me as a waste to not just go hard in the trad and even bouldering game!
Yaak Crack!
Such an amazing climb! I've toproped it twice now, once last year and once this year, but honestly, I don't know if I'll be able to do it without some serious training!
Both times I couldn't figure out how to get off the ground. The rest of the climb is super amazing with tons of fun, powerful moves but the beginning is difficult for me-- I can't reach the slopers off the ground!
Someone give me the short girl beta for getting off the ground on this one...!
It's definitely on my list of "To Do"s in the (maybe not so near) future!
Day 3: Bouldering at the Kraft boulders! The epitome of climbing convenience!
I used to hate bouldering-- no matter how hard I tried to like it, I just couldn't. There was a half year period where all I did was boulder after work, and it wouldn't click. I gave it up for a while because I was so disheartened-- what's the point trying so hard for something you don't love?
But these past twelve months have been a great journey, made so much better with good friends.
It's been pretty successful, I'd say-- I'm super stoked for bouldering in December! At this point, I've been bouldering for a year now, and am still excited about improving at it!
Now just some other pictures.