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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jer, my lost-cause point is not that the rap anchors should be somewhere else, rather
it's that they changed the whole nature of the route -- making it a no-commitment endeavor.
The FA party placed no bolts, except for one on the Painted Bowl descent. Natural anchors
give fine belays, all the way up.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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I agree with Spartacus. Conga lines of non committal climbing be damned!
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Conga lines of non committal climbing be damned!
Do many other areas have this feature, where the main descent for high-traffic multipitch
routes is the route itself? The crowding this creates in Red Rock seems to be a major
point in most trip reports I see about routes such as Solar Slab, Crimson Chrysalis,
Birdland, Cat in the Hat, etc.
It certainly brings out a different attitude towards long climbs, when people know they
can retreat more or less easily from any point on the route. Fixed anchors provide
obvious safety of one kind, but I wonder if they don't also encourage a dangerous lack
of judgment on the other. Like, a team might think there's no risk in starting up a route
they're not competent to complete in the available light and weather.
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drljefe
climber
Toostoned, AZ
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Chiloe- I agree with you about the retrobolting of Solar Slab. I'm actually shocked to hear about bolted belays there- I don't think there was one bit of fixed pro when I did it in the early 90's. The descent route then was down the massive chasm. My ropes got horribly stuck and an epic ensued. BUT, there was not another soul around. Character building stuff.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Centerfold, III 5.10, FA Scott Woodruff, Larry Hamilton, Joe Herbst, April 1977
A recommended route in Joanne Urioste's red guidebook (probably taking a first
ascentionist's word for it).
"Reportedly not a great route," according to Todd Swain's guidebook.
"Beware of poor rock on the crux pitch (pitch 3)," warns Roxanna Brock's guidebook,
although her written description calls the 3rd pitch 5.8, and rates a higher pitch 5.10.
"The problem is that the rock is poor on the crux pitch, making for a freaky pitch," reports
George Bell on MountainProject.com. Several other posters agree with George's assessment,
noting also various problems with the upper pitches (too easy, not enough protection, etc.).
So why did the FA party like this route? Were they on crack?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Possibly, the FA party confused their own good adventure with a route others might enjoy.
They weren't the only ones confused, however. Looking through various guidebooks,
I was surprised to notice that their topos showed Centerfold in several different places,
none corresponding to the route taken on the FA. That is, the topos in Urioste, Swain and
Brock guidebooks, and also the one posted on MountainProject, all appear to be "wrong"
with respect to the original line (which might not be quite as bad as the lines followed
by later parties, who were following various guidebooks).
I don't blame the guidebook authors for this uncertainty. When I provided a topo photo
myself to "correct" the one on MountainProject.com, I drew in a mistaken line as well.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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The one author who seems to have gotten the route right is Jeremy Handren in [url="http://www.redrocksguidebook.com/"]his 2008
guidebook[/url].
I hope Jerry will forgive my copying his topo below, with green numbers added by me,
as an aid to telling the climb's story.
For comparison: the MountainProject.com topo (rightmost line shown below) appears to
jog left near the crux, around the same place where Jerry's topo (and the FA party)
jogged right to reach better rock.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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When Scott and I reached Red Rock that spring, on our way home from Lovers Leap, Joe
as usual had some projects in mind. The first of these was on a formation he and Betsy
had named Bottle Bill, because it was bottle-shaped and Nevada was debating a recycling
law at the time. Everyone called that law the Bottle Bill.
We ended up climbing his Bottle Bill route in a mass assault with five climbers --
including Tom Kaufman and Steve Allen, as well as Joe, Scott and me.
With five guys and a new route on Bottle Bill, what else could we name it but Five Pack?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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The day after we climbed Five Pack, Scott, Joe and I walked out to Mescalito.
In common with many of Joe's projects, our planned route already had a name: Centerfold,
because it would follow a line like the fold between pages. Or so we hoped.
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Prod
Trad climber
A place w/o Avitars apparently
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Looks like a winner. Adding it to my "Larry H. FA" tick list climbing trip to RR.
Great thread,
Prod.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Prod, Philo, glad you're enjoying this. It's cool that a forum exists now for
sharing historical and not-so-historical stories, before they get lost forever.
I'm posting installments between work on a paper that's due today, and a report
that's due tomorrow -- "task rotation" seems to make it all flow.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Joe started up the first pitch, some 5.8-ish face climbing with nuts for pro. This section
is below the first belay (green "1") marked on the topo photo above.
Scott climbed second; looks like he's carrying most of the rack. Hexes, stoppers and
a few bolts were all we brought.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Scott the led the second pitch, which I described as follows in my notes written that night:
"P2 -- Climb the right-most of two chimney-cracks above to an overhang. Traverse down and
left, around a corner. Difficult climbing up a thin crack leads to another good belay (5.9)"
In the photo below, he is climbing the thin crack just above the short leftwards jag.
The above photo was taken looking upwards from the belay marked "1" on the
topo below. The sharp photo in Jerry's guidebook clearly shows the features of this
pitch, including the angular white overhang that pushes the leader to traverse
down and left.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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I led the third pitch, up to the point marked "3" on the topo.
"P3 -- Follow the vertical gully above, moving right at its top to a comfortable ledge
with a bush (5.8)."
I think it's the bush you can see in the earlier photo of Scott leading P2.
Above that, things began to get a little weird.
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Well I have a start to another RR story which I sincerely hope you all will like. But I got carried away with my last Black Canyon installment before I finished it. Please check it out.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Philo, the nature of Red Rock climbing seems to make for good stories. I'll look
forward to your next one.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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(back to Centerfold)
From the 3rd belay we looked up and didn't like what we saw. I'm guessing the next
bit is what these MountainProject.com posters are describing:
George Bell:
The problem is that the rock is poor on the crux pitch, making for a freaky pitch....
The crux (3rd?) pitch involves white rock, an old bolt, flexy flakes and questionable pro.
Manuel Rangel:
I remember climbing through a slightly overhung face with lotta flakes and gear left behind.
Pete Bresciani:
I remember the crux as coming up to a small roof, then going straight up over this into the
white, chossy, poorly protected (poor rock quality) 5.10 section.
It must have looked unpleasant to us too, because we decided not to go there. Instead, we
headed out for a detour on the highly featured, black-varnished face to our right.
But there was another problem: Joe wasn't feeling so good. Perhaps it was food poisoning
from something he ate the night before; or maybe just some random virus. Whatever was
happening, he gave the fourth lead to Scott. Scott lead up and then traversed well right,
belaying out there on a narrow ledge in the varnish.
This crucial rightwards detour shows up clearly on Handren's topo, but appears missing
from all of the others -- which might have led subsequent parties to engage the
loose crux we avoided. In the photo below, Scott belays at the point I marked "4."
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Reilly
Mountain climber
Monrovia, CA
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First, nicely written Phil!
It would appear that I have a story to relate that may be unique. In 1979, I think, we were four bumpkins from Seattle possessed of some extremely sketchy, actually sketchy prose, beta of an unknown provenance to me. No matter, I set the timeing on Dave's Fiat 131 the night before our departure with the trusty ol' match book cover and we were off!
While well versed in the delights of the Cascades' notorious choad we were a bit awed by this new world spread before us at Pine Creek (I think). At least there weren't any crevasses or mosquitoes! We picked a nice looking line that didn't appear to pose too much likelihood of serious embarassment. I think it was to the right of that 'Negro Blanco' thing a few posts back. We were actually having a pretty good time until I had to surmount a humongous block that was only tenuously, at best, still attached to the main mass. I slithered up it and parked on a nice ledge. When Dave was coming up the most seemingly dangerous part I pleaded with him not to layback it! Just then I caught something in the upper limits of my peripheral vision. I looked out through the canyon's mouth in shock. What appeared to be a good mile of the top of the ridge that parallels the east side of the N to S highway had silently erupted to an elevation of at least 1000'! I shouted the proverbial holy cheese wiz and clamped on the belay fully expecting the worst with the arrival of the shock wave. I'd already been in five avalanches and figured this would be my sixth and last. When the sound wave hit I swear I could hear my ears flapping in the breeze. Of course, nary a pebble stirred to our utter amazement. Nevertheless, for the rest of the climb we fairly held our breath expecting the next wave of incoming. Why hadn't our beta noted the proximity of a B-52 bombing range so close by?
Shaken, not stirred!
Reilly
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philo
Trad climber
boulder, co.
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Bump for another good story.
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Inner City
Trad climber
East Bay
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This thread is so great! I've enjoyed reading all the tales. I have some of my own, but they don't merit mention in this class. If we started a thread called. "Red Rocks mini epics" I could chime in, or 'bad moments at RR' but my stories of bad runout and fear are too distant and minor in comparison. Thanks for the stories...wow.
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