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Ah, the beautiful rock of Red Rocks, Nevada. The climbing here is so interesting that every climber needs to experience the thrill of climbing on chicken heads, pockets, huecos, cracks & slab.
I would like to thank Stewart Midwinter for the great time on the trip. All of these pictures came from Stewart. We took digital photos on the trip and keep them fairly small to easily send them as emails or upload to my site. Thanks Buddy.
The routes I will display here is Cat in the Hat 5.6, Olive Oil 5.7, Beulahs Book 5.9. There are sport climbing shots in the picture gallery.
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Pitch one of Cat in the Hat 5.4
We set out on the hike in to the Mescalito Tower where the very popular route, Cat in the Hat is found, on the left branch in the river, on the south side of the Tower. The climb follows the natural weakness in the face, and climbs on big jugs all the way. Pitch one you can see how big some of the Huecos are and the corner crack is full of jugs.
By clicking the picture you will see the Second pitch area near the belay. The climbing here is so enjoyable, the sun is so warm and the rock has so much grip on the shoes, you feel there is no way you could slip. |
Stewart on the top of Pitch 3
Click Picture to view Pitch 4 & 5 run together.
Pitch three was so enjoyable at 5.6+, the crack climbing is on the nice varnished rock with large handholds and foot holds. The crack takes awesome gear and the climbing is so fun. The top of the crack it widens up to a #3.5 camlot, good for a belay on the large ledge, or climb up 10 feet to a hanging perch with slings wrapped around the rock.
Pitch 4 & 5, became one as Stewart finds himself off routeish, he went the right way to connect the two pitches but he added a bad placement that added a huge rope drag. Everything went fine, top out came to vision of the chains.
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Kelly boldering on the way to the summits last chimney pitch.
There are hundreds of meters of scrambling to reach the final pitch up this chimney. The majority is third class with a few spots of 5th class scrambling. The Mescalito tower is capped with a band of red rock that has some varnish sections, some steep ass looking crack climb that looked hard. We chose to climb the chimney, we had no description of the climb, and all we could see was a bolted station at the top.
Click the Picture to see the Chimney pitch at the start, it widens to some big stems. There also looks to be another line to the left of this pitch in a small grove corner. Their looks to be tricky gear in the corner, and the climbing seem to be more difficult. Once on the top of this pitch, there is still another 150+meters to the summit with a short 5.3 / 5.4 section to top out on.
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Kelly stands in front of Oilive Oil 5.7 6pitch, we managed to do it in four.
The approach to Olive Oil is very confusing and strange. The trail seems to peter out in the mouth of the canyon. The scramble trough the thick bush and large boulders gets kind of confusing to try and find the start of the climb. Once at the base of the climb we get ourselves ready to climb. Stewart decided he needs to drop the kids off at the pool, goes behind some rocks, puts his hand dons for balance, and finds a carabineer.
Two gentlemen showed up to do the route, seemed very cocky about the area and climbing with speed. He claimed he was a guide and that he wanted to know if we knew how to climb on this type of rock, he definitely wanted to go ahead of us. We refused the chance to let him go, once we were on the route, we caught up to the party ahead of us, and we never saw the guided party again. They seemed to move very slow.
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Climbers up high on Pitch 2/3 :
Kelly heading up the start of p2
Pitch two and three can be joined with a sixty-meter rope, with a short section of simal climbing. The guide that wanted to pass gave this information to us. So I head off on the climb and passed the final climbs hanging at the belay on top of two. I made a separate belay in the crack with lots of small to medium nuts in a series anchor. This was a perfect place to belay to view the next pitch.
Click the picture to see the final corner dihedral, we took a variation to the right.
Pitch 4 can follow almost three different lines, I believe they are all good, and so the party ahead of us went up one way and we took another way to the same huge chimney ledge.
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Kelly at the last belay
The first party climbed the final pitch up the large corner dihedral, so I decided I would try this line to the right. Up I went on no so traveled rock, 5.8 climbing as a variation to the normal route. The last pitch is a scramble around the summit block. We decided we would climb to the top of the block and summit out. Nice, we had one old button head bolt that was completely rusted and only one bolt. So we used it for the 12-foot free hanging rap off the back.
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Beulahs Book 5.9 4Pitch
Click the picture to view the entire Solar Slab Wall. The purple climb in that picture is Beulahs Book, the yellow lines are variations up the face 5.8, and the white line is Solar Slab gullies and Solar Slab. The decent for the lower climbs is rappelling Solar Slab Gullies. Less hang-up with the ropes down here.
Beulahs Book recommended that we take lots of gear up to #4 Camlot. So we hauled almost double set of cams and nuts, tri cams, some hexes. We used maybe 6 pieces in every pitch. The large black open book that I got to lead made me think we would use it all, but it turned out to be full of jugs and edges for the feet.
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Stewart heads up the small finger crack on pitch one.
The climbing on this pitch is wild, a very large chimney evolves in front of you and you find yourself stemming and doing moves on both walls of the clime. The belay is casual in the chimney. Stewart ended up dropping his new Petzel Reverso and mad me go burrowing into the chimney to look for it.
Pitch 2 (Click the picture to view) was the hard and wild pitch; I found the stemming on the start of the chimney with the bolt to be the most difficult. After pulling the bulge at the top of the chimney, you view the incredible corner above, how intimidating does that look. Up I go finding it fairly easy and fine.
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Unknown Climber on the Variation face 5.8.
Climbers on the climbs beside up were a joy to watch them climb.
Click the picture to see the final pitch to the top of the lower wall below the enormous Solar Slab. The climbing on this pitch was very interesting with all the knobs of rock everywhere. Small crack spots and pockets for the try cams to fit into. This pitch was a rope stretcher at 60meters, you cant here your partner and so I just started to climb.
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Kelly decending the Solar Slab Gullies Rap 1 of 6.
If you climb the face via the Variations or Beulahs Book, we recommend that rapping down the Gullies is probable the easiest and then only one rope needs to be brought along. We watch two other people rap the Variations on the face and they found themselves with a rope epic. We were hiking out as they were still rapping, when we arrived they were all ready at the top of the first belay and the second was half was up pitch 1. Taking the gully can really cut off lots of time on your day.
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