top roping « a journey to Index

Our last day at Red Rocks we climbed at the Winter Heat Wall, a crag on the backside of Kraft Mountain.

On the other side of the canyon was another crag we had hoped to climb at but didn’t because of the heavy traffic that was there all day. It was called the Sunny and Steep Wall. Like the name implies it’s both ‘sunny’ and ‘steep’, all sport climbing, and one of the most popular areas around Kraft Mountain. Here’s a view from where we were.

That day we started with a thin seam that arched up the and right. It was one of the best 5.9′s we had climbed so far; a beautiful climb with a lot of different types of moves that all flowed very well together. I protected the climb entirely with nuts except for one cam. The irregular and shallow seam would not take cams well. It made me climb it a little slower, but all the protection was solid. Both Kristine and I thought it was a great climb. Very memorable for one of our last climbs at Red Rocks.

Next was a 5.11c on top rope, which also followed a thin seam up to a scooped out, steep finish at the top. The moves required balance and finesse, and then some delicate stemming and powerful moves at the top. It may have been one of my favorite climbs at Red Rocks. It would have been a difficult climb to protect on lead, but it’s on my list for when I return.

We finished on a 10a that started off in a short finger crack, passed a roof, and had delicate and hard to protect moves up a scooped face. I ended up running it out about 20′ between protection. I didn’t actually intend to, but I kept climbing thinking I’d have a good place to protect just a bit further up. I continued until I was way too far above my last piece. It was scaring Kristine, but she kept quiet as I had my own mental struggle about the best place to protect. I dropped a cam and a nut in, equalized them, and kept climbing. I didn’t want to take any chances with my last piece so far below. I think the climb would have been a lot nicer if I had done a better job protecting it, but in retrospect it wasn’t such a bad climb.

We’ll miss Red Rocks as much as we won’t miss Las Vegas. We’re happy to drive on to another place and are certainly taking all of our experience from climbing at Red Rocks with us.*

Note: These posts are about a week delayed. We’ve since been to Tucson, visited friends, climbed a bit, and left. We’re now in New Mexico somewhere near the Mexican border. More on that soon…

Our first day at Smith Rock was Beautiful. I’d almost say it was magical. Blue skies and perfect weather greeted our descent into the Park.

We had the gumption to climb. The night before we had driven into the night through Portland and spent the night at a rest area at the top of Mt. Hood. We completed the drive to Smith Rock in the morning.
In the Park, Kristine was taking pictures of ladybugs, going goo goo over purple rocks, the geology of the park, the fact that the rock there is called ‘tuff’, and that it’s purple from iron that’s oxidized. We had to rally from sitting, which looks something like this:

To actually finding a route to climb, which looks more like this:

Aha! We found it. A three star 5.7 called Spiderman Buttress. It was a two pitch climb of which only did the first pitch. Here’s a glimpse from the top looking down: