Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Red Rocks - NV

Just returned from our first real sport climbing trip to Red Rocks. I can't believe what we have been missing out on all this time just doing bouldering trips to Calico Basin area. The weather was great the whole trip (a balmy 50-60 degrees, compared to Flagstaff in the 30's).

We arrived in Las Vegas at noon on Saturday. We decided to do a luxury climbing trip this time and fork out for a cheap hotel. Apparently we should look at our planner better and make sure we aren't doing our trips over holiday weekends as the cheapest hotel was $155 (which we booked for the next night for $25) and the rest of town was booked for the night. With no camping gear and no options we spent the next 3-4 hours trying to figure out where we were going to even stay for the weekend. In the end, we camped in the Walmart parking lot in the front seats of our car. It got pretty cold at night so we ended up having to walk into Walmart to buy some cheap blankets only to wake up in the morning and return them, have to love the Walmart.

Part of the Calico Hills

The below photo there is a helicopter bringing people up to the top of the ridge all day. It was part of the local police/rescue team and they were doing some training and ferrying around 20-30 people up and off of this ridge 

(Chris, you would have loved watching this guy)


In addition to the hotels being full, so were the climbing areas. If it was this busy at any local area we would have just gone home, but the climbing was so amazing that we had to bear the crowds.

The Gallery: with at least 6 parties not visible.
                                                
The one and only climbing shot; Rachael cleaning an anchor

The Black Corridor (home to the coolest routes I have seen in a while)



Lesson learned....go to Red Rocks on weekdays.

No comments:

Post a Comment