View from the Crest Tram
Sherry and Mike - you guys are amazing, thanks for everything!
After Seth finished his skiing and Chelsea got back to Albuquerque, we headed straight to Tucson AZ to visit another one of Chelsea's graduate schools and to sample the local climbing. Overall we liked Tucson, especially the cheap food/drinks. We particularly liked Sky Bar, a local pub run on solar energy, which featured great beer at the standard cheap Tucson prices.
We also scoped out the climbing gym (a critical part of Chelsea's grad school visit). There, we ran into Chelsea's friend Eric and made plans for climbing later in the week.
Once all of our school related business was completed in Tucson, we spent a few days climbing on Mt. Lemmon. The crags were hard for us to find as out-of-towners, but luckily Eric was able to help put us on the right track, and we had a great day of climbing with his AZ crew (thanks again for the directions!). The camping on Lemmon was pretty convenient, and the San Catalinas were a beautiful place to stay.
Cochise Stronghold was next on our AZ destination list, where we met up with some U of Arizona graduate students that Chelsea met during her visit. Our drive from Tucson to Cochise was our first long drive in Arizona, and it proved to be an odd one. Alongside the freeway we were amused by a number of gas stations who advertised the change to shoot various assault rifles and even a fifty-caliber machine gun, in addition the normal gas station services.
The adventure didn't stop once we finally found our way into the Stronghold, where we ran into the Rainbow Gathering - an enormous group of modern day hippies doing all kinds of crazy stuff in the Arizona desert. When we pulled up to a crew of people to check whether our friend was at the camp fire, a tye-dyed man named Leif stuck his head in the car, welcome us home, told us he loved us, and then offered "free food from the woods!" ....which we respectfully declined. These Rainbow Gathering hippies were definitely friendly, but maybe not the kind of folks we'd trust not to "borrow" some of the stuff in our car, so we high-tailed it away and luckily found our friends soon after.
We were a bit nervous about the reputation Cochise has as an "adventurous" (read: terrifying and committing) climbing spot, but we spent our day there climbing single pitch sport with our new U of AZ friends and had an awesome time. Our highlights include Seth's accidental 10a onsight, which we thought was a 5.7 from the less-than-accurate book description of the wall, and of course our friend's adorable puppy Queso. Lower points include the tire blowout/flat spare tire some of our friends had to deal with. After a solid day, we negotiated our way back through the sea of drum circles and rainbows and headed out.
Queso the puppy!
We rolled into Red Rocks the next day, and were blown away by the huge, brightly colored sandstone walls and smaller Calico Hills in the park. The campsite, which we heard lovingly referred to as Campganistan, was expensive but is the only game in town. Eventually we grew to like it despite the dust and lack of a view, and cut costs by sharing the site first with our friend Mike Foley and with Mike's friend Heather and yet another (different) Mike. During our first week or so in Red Rocks, we climbed with our campmates a lot, and were also able to meet up with fellow Seattleite Brian Smith during his Vegas trip.
Red Rocks at it's finest
View from the Calico Hills
Mike on Meadowlark Lemon
Mike and Heather at Kraft
Making dinner at camp
After a week or so of hanging out, we made our last grad school visits. Seth headed east to Columbia, where he was able to sample the sophistication an Ivy League education would allow him: boat cruise on the Hudson and a symphony at Yale. He also flew home to tour the University of Washington. During a complicated exchange of airport dropoffs, car parking, and pickup - during which we may or may not have kinda misplaced the car in the airport parking lot for a bit - Chelsea visited UT Austin between Seth's tours.
Once our graduate school visits were finished the climbing began in earnest. We did a lot of diverse climbing while in Red Rocks, focusing mostly on sport climbing and bouldering. Almost all of our sport climbing was at the Gallery, Red Rocks most popular sport crag. That wall bakes in the sun for most of the day, so we had pretty hot conditions, but overall we enjoyed the climbing. We also spent a day at the Sandstone Quarry, which was a lot more sandy/chossy. Our sport climbing highlights include Chelsea's onsight of Minstrels in the Gallery 5.12b, and sends of The Gift (5.12d), The Glitch (5.12c) and Fear and Loathing (the classic Vegas 12a). Seth onsighted a cruxy 5.10c and also sent his hardest route on a rope, A Day in The Life (5.11c). We also (unsuccessfully) tried to find Mt. Potosi with our friend and now Vegas local Sam Johnson, but made up for getting lost with an afternoon of bouldering followed by the best pizza Vegas has to offer (thanks for the intro, Sam!).
The Gift, photo cred Jo Banner/Instacred Sethman
Seth's 10c onsight
A Day in the Life, 11c!!!
Fear and Loathing 12a
The boulders in Red Rocks are super good overall, but some of the best climbing is pretty spread out. As a result, we spent most of our time in Gateway Canyon and at The Kraft boulders, where the boulder density/development is greater. Our favorite boulders were The Monkey Bars Boulder (Monkey Bars Right/Traverse etc.), Pork Chop (V4), and the Dead Heart (V4).
Monkey Bars Right V6
Pork Chop V4
We had originally planned to do a few longer multi-pitch routes, but our time got away from us and we only managed to do one: the classic and incredible Birdland, a five pitch 5.7 on the Brass Wall. We dealt with some of the lines/waiting/unsticking people's ropes that can be commonplace on the classics in Red Rocks, but the route was outstanding.
Stoked on Birdland!
As we got to the end of our time in Vegas, we decided to get a room on the strip with Heather and Mike. We stayed at Excalibur, much to Seth's excitement. We were stoked to go out on the strip that night, but struggled to find a club open on a Tuesday (who'd think there are days when the strip isn't crazy?!). Once we did find our club, though, we got our cover's worth. A lot of our fellow club-goers were pretty concerned with looking cool or whatever, but we were ready to dance like crazy. It got to the point where we were either forcing people to dance with us or to clear out of the way if they didn't want to get trampled! We had a fantastic night, and a great send-off for our time climbing with Heather and Mike, who were leaving the next day. We spent a few more days at the now spring-break packed campground, and then headed off to the incredible boulders and scenery of Bishop California.
Strip shenanigans (jean jacket $5000, coyote vest $2500 - don't break it...)
Loved the pictures and stories! Keep it up.
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