Prince of Darkness 5.10c

Had a fantastic weekend in Red Rocks climbing with Kyle Linebarger. Two highlights were Prince of Darkness (POD) and Johnny Vegas/Solar Slab (JV/SS). POD is a 6 pitch, heavily bolted sport line up the center of the steep and tall Black Velvet wall. While I’ve heard folks criticize POD for being monotonous, painful on the toes, and over bolted, I found it to be very fun and engaging with great exposure and an easy descent.

The Handren guidebook describes POD as the most popular on the Black Velvet wall. So we knew an early start would be the key to success….


Kyle gearing up at the base.

Kyle heading up P1.

Following P2 with 4 parties at the base. Awwww yeah….

We saw these guys while descending the route. Here, Fred from France leads P3. Notice no one at the base now at 11am… we could have slept in after all….

Starting to feel the pain in the toes…

Kyle leading P3.

Kyle arriving at the belay and ready to rest those feet!

The first rap.

We rapped using two 60m ropes. Our first two raps descended Yellow Brick road and then the final raps used the P2 and 3 anchors of the Gobbler. Here’s Kyle on the final rappel.

Friendly couple from Wyoming and Colorado (?) goofing around on Dream of Wild Turkeys.


After a day of cragging in the Hidden Falls and Ragged Edges areas (very fun!) we set our sights on Johnny Vegas/Solar Slab.

Walgreens is a great place to rack up. There’s free light and you can make color scanned print outs of your guidebook for 33 cents!

JV/SS is a ~14 pitch 5.7 that ascends a broad white face on the North side of Oak Creek Canyon. The route is steep, sunny, and full of solid jugs making for an enjoyable romp up ~2000 vertical feet. Once again, beating the crowds would be key to success. We got up at 3:30am and were the first ones on the route. Win!
Solar slab ascends the broad white face in the center of the photo. Johnny Vegas goes up discontinuous cracks and jugs up the lower half of the wall.

Sunrise from P1 of JV.

Leading P2 of JV.

Looking down the amazing crimps and jugs of P2 JV.

Kyle linking P3/4 of JV.

Top of JV.

Kyle following P1/2 of SS.

Kyle leads P2 SS

Me belaying atop P1/2

Starting up P3/4. More gorgeous climbing on desert patina…

Arriving at P4 anchors.

Starting P5/6

Me belaying Kyle up the last technical pitch.

The last 5.5 technical pitch with ~500’ of 4th class to the shoulder of the formation.

Summit time!

We chose the rappel/walk-off descent through Painted Bowl which took us ~2 hours from the summit to the car through incredible scenery. Highly recommended! It also avoids the crowds and other potential rappel shenanigans if rapping the route.

Kyle follows cairns to the first rappel. It’s about a hundred feet past that bush down 4th class terrain.

4th classing it to the first rappel.

There are two sets of rappel anchors visible from the first rappel. Here the arrow indicates the higher of the two, the second is at the edge of the red rock behind my left hand. We believed these to be for the double rope rappels and instead followed the instructions in the Handren guidebook for the descent “with one rope”. This worked out great and we rapped to the ledge marked X.

I wonder if anyone has rapped with a single rope using the bolted anchors?

Me at the bottom of the first rappel.

Arrow pointing to the second rappel anchors at the end of the ledge.

Rap #2.

After the 3rd rap from a tree it’s a casual walk off through amazing terrain.

Kyle approaching the “IBM boulder”.

Final 20 foot butt slide on super slick rock into the wash…it’s about another hour to the car from here.

Hitching a ride. Thanks Jason!