Epinephrine 5.9, Black Velvet Canyon

Climbed on October 20, 2023. 

Fun Rating: Very Fun.

I struggled with this writeup, as what more needs to be said about one of the most climbed routes in one of the most popular climbing destinations in the country? Epinephrine is the main reason a good number of people come to Red Rock Canyon to climb, and is currently #3 on Mountain Projects “20 Classic Climbs” list. Larry and Bill have an entire chapter in Red Rock Odyssey dedicated to the climb, and are much more eloquent in their descriptions of the challenges and triumphs of climbing than I can aspire to be. So, instead of detailing an epic we didn’t experience, waxing lyrically about how meaningful a route it was, or giving yet another pitch-by-pitch rundown no one needs I submit to you the following stream of consciousness:

Blast-off.

It’s been a long time since I’ve asked for a take while climbing on gear, and I was going to be damned if it was going to be in the middle of the long chimney pitch on Epinephrine. What would I tell all of my friends? The ones who know me as a chimney guy. The ones who know about the Herbst Tour and my quixotic dream to have climbed all of the same pitches as one of the great founders of the place I’ve grown to love more than any other. Shame, and rising panic, were beginning to fill a familiar space in my chest. 

This was supposed to be fun for me. I wasn’t supposed to be scared and tired like so many other people had described in the posts and comments that I’d read, scouring them for information like some ancient augur hoping that day’s flock of birds would tell them something no one had been told, or something no one had listened to yet.

Some concern.

I remember looking down at my partner, embarrassed that I wasn’t living up to the story I had for myself. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. My foot had slipped on my first step off of the belay ledge, and that sense of insecurity had plagued me for the entirety of the pitch so far. I found myself pressing my left shoulder a little too hard into the back wall, and my feet a little too hard into the front. My sun shirt, unneeded so far, was sticking to the rock and making progress more challenging than I’d hoped as well. The excuses and little anxieties were building up faster than I could stop them. “Zak, take,” it would be so easy to say, “take, take, take, take…” and so on with rising volume and need until I felt the comforting weight of safety pulling up at my hips and sucking me towards my cam. 

The sting of tears in the corner of my eyes began to blur the rock in front of me. “Fuck, fuck this, I fucking hate this,” and with that mantra I scraped higher. Shame and embarrassment were anger now, and I was going to be damned if I was going to make more of a fool of myself than these pauses and deliberations had made of me already. The rest of the pitch went by in a series of vague curses, epithets, and minor slips. By the time I made it up the last small stretch of offwidth I was truly exhausted, perhaps more emotionally than physically. I had almost thrown up at the top of the Fox when I had done that pitch, and I felt similarly thin and used up now.

Zak above the chimneys.

We climbed fast from there, trying to make up the time I had lost during my tribulation in the climb’s maw. I hated how much fun I was having now that we were face climbing again. This wasn’t the part of the climb I was supposed to be enjoying most. Pitch after pitch of lovely terrain gave way to scrambling and then suddenly I was giving my partner a hip belay under the famous pine at the top of the route. A woodpecker gently tapped above my head and provided a kind of metronome for still meditation. As it hopped from branch to branch, quietly and softly knocking at the wood, I realized I had lost something on the route and remained unsure of what it was precisely, but keenly felt its lack. As Zak made his way up the long ramp that led to the emergency cache next to me at the top of the route, I screwed on a brave face and pushed that feeling down for later. We had another couple hours of hiking before we were back at the car, and I’d have more than enough time to wallow on the trudge back. 

As we hiked past a series of peaks, the broken and sun blasted tops of this desert alpine world lulled me into a sort of trance. Other than the occasional moment of confusion as we ledged out or chose the wrong side of a cairn, the miles quickly passed and suddenly we were approaching the parking lot, shared laughter in the air as a kind of balm against the various scrapes we carried with us both physical and esoteric. I still felt that heaviness in me, deep down and waiting for its opportunity to strike again. I may not have found precisely what I lost in that pitch, swallowed by stone and birthed alive but diminished at its end. Something else was in its place, though, quiet and small but unmissable when sought.

Zak towards the top.

Fun has three types, as it is commonly described amidst climbers. Type 1 is fun in the moment, type 2 is fun after the fact, and type 3 isn't fun until enough time has passed that you’ve convinced yourself it was actually type 2. I think that personal growth has those same three types as well, and I experienced the second kind on that pitch. I’m glad for having done it, and how it changed me, but I think I’ll follow on that pitch next time.

Happiness pre-walkoff.

Trihardral 5.8, First Creek Canyon

Climbed on July 24, 2022. 

Fun Rating: Quite Fun.

Climbing through the summer in Las Vegas is much more tolerable than many climbers are led to believe, looking at the triple digit temperatures on weather apps from their shady belays in Squamish. It does, however, require cultivation of a sufficient quantity of desert experience, carrying a sufficient quantity of water, and with the knowledge that “comfort” is not the goal. With all those things in my mind, and with my main desert creature Zak busy with work, I swindled my wife, Megan, (ever patient and with saintly tolerance) and my erstwhile protege Justin into a thruple attack on Trihardral.

A rare selfie.

I had been looking at this one for a while as the FA party was the stuff of legend. The history would have called to me even if it weren’t described as a “giant, right-facing corner” and “shaded from the morning sun.” A perfect target, in my mind, for a quick romp up and somewhat toasty walk out. There was no one else in the First Creek lot as Megan and I met with Justin, perhaps we should have taken this as an auspice and called it there. Justin, I noticed, was in a t-shirt with no hat. I had some small concern about this, but given how much water we had and that I figured the whole climb would be in the shade I made the internal call to go ahead with the climb. In hindsight, this was a mistake.

Justin climbing out of the sun.

The hike to the wall was warm but bearable, and after some water and snacks we set off. As with many of my experiences on climbs, I remember it mostly in snapshots and at calm moments at belays. The corner itself was fantastic, and when I offered the decision between the 5.6 slab and the 5.9 crack variation in the upper pitches, my partners decided on the slab. This was easily my least favorite part of the climb, not difficult but a good runout to the first solid placement, and while I can slab fairly well I am not a man who typically enjoys it.

We made it to the top in a few hours, longer than I expected. This was another mistake, as I know that when this particular climbing group is together we move fairly slow. It was past noon by the time we started hiking off, and basically as soon as we finished rapping off past Atras (coming for you soon, baby) we were in full sun. Megan and I retreated to the safety of our sun hoodies, but Justin did not have anywhere to flee. Thus began the Great Trudge.

Megan at a prototypical Red Rock tree belay.

About a mile into the hike, Justin started feeling unwell. Over the next 45 minutes we were able to find him a small bush to hide behind, have me hike our packs back, get water, and cool him off enough to make it back to the car. This was by far the most dangerous moment I’ve had related to climbing (writer’s note: this is no longer the case, unfortunately), and it had nothing to do with the climbing itself. I had climbed in the Vegas summer a great deal before this, and have taken this moment with me on my climbs since. 

Justin has, in fact, continued to climb with me. I know, I’m surprised too.

The true denizens of the canyon.

Sandy Hole 5.7, Angel Food Wall

Climbed on November 12, 2023. 

Fun Rating: Fun but Fucky.

I’ve titled this vision quest that I’m currently on the “Joe Herbst Appreciation Tour,” but for a long while now that’s been shortened in casual conversation with friends to the “Herbst Tour.” It’s a lot easier to abbreviate things when you’re saying something like “I think I need to take a break from the Herbst Tour for awhile,” or “Oh, this is a Herbst Tour climb? I’m out,” or “Yeah let’s climb, just not anything on the Herbst Tour,” and so on. While this is the side effect of an overly long name, the result of this is that I’m also considering Betsy Herbst’s FA’s as a part of the overall JHAT. Sandy Hole is one of her routes, put up with the Uriostes in 1977, right in the heart of the early RRC heyday. 

Megan shivering at the first pitch anchor.

Starting just left of Tunnel Vision, a trade route that Joe had put up with Grandstaff a few years earlier, and sharing a grade rating of 5.7 on Mountain Project nowadays, Sandy Hole begins with some easy climbing up broken terrain before you’re faced with a roof and squeeze chimney. I am somewhat notorious in my group of friends for wacky and inefficient beta, I’m unsure what my deal is but I find more often than not that I did it “wrong” when there is a wrong way to do it (having seen photos of Joe on Nadia’s Nine after my ascent, I realize that I was facing the incorrect way in the first pitch chimney, as an example.) I wanted to get that out in the open and clear, because I want to believe that I pulled the roof incorrectly. I just don’t think that squeeze chimney to chicken wing to fully cutting feet on slopers to a slab mantle is a very 5.7 sequence of moves, and as such I feel I must have done something wrong. Once I finished with that rather exciting bit of beta and could see what I was in for above, I scoffed and got on with it.

One of the coffin-spaces in the chimney pitch.

A good portion of the pitch was on some really dire varnish plates. Nothing broke on me while I was climbing, but I was avoiding putting my feet on anything that wasn’t a really solid looking smear. I was very pleased when this section finally ended and I could get back to the crack. It was probably about 20-30 feet before the entrance to the massive chimney and the anchor area that I was really missing my forgotten hand jammies that had been left in my pack when we had stashed them in the wash. I love a good jam, and I’m a fairly competent crack climber, so when I say that the back of my hands were bleeding, that should give you a decent idea of how sustained the crack climbing was and how long this pitch went on for. After almost the entire length of my 70m rope I was in the chimney.

It was quite a balmy day in the sun with a mild breeze, but with no light hitting any portion of the first two pitches I was shivering a little in my windbreaker. By the time my wife met me at the anchor with the words “so far I’d give this climb 0 stars” I was fully in sufferfest mode. After a moment of snuggling to warm up at the belay where we discussed that it would actually be more miserable to try to bail from here, I set off into the void for the second pitch.

Safely ensconced in the chimney-tomb.

If this isn’t your first time reading this blog, you’ll know I’m a man who loves a good squeeze. Offwidth, wide crack, and chimney are very much my bag and that type of climbing is where I have my most fun. The second pitch of this climb was a 4 star pitch for me. It was a series of extremely tight and claustrophobic squeezes, each ending in a coffin-sized space where you could rest (uncomfortably and contorted) before committing to the next unobvious and frightening squeeze sequence. Each of these was framed by ancient and massive piles of guano far enough away you weren’t afraid of accidentally getting it on you, but left you wondering where all the bats were. At its top, the chimney ends and you’re left with a mostly unprotectable traverse out a slabby hallway above the void of the pitch you’ve just climbed. It is incredibly unique, a little serious, and absolutely wild terrain and reminds me of the best parts of Community Pillar all combined into a single pitch. This was very much a type 2 pitch for my wife, who’s chest and butt are bigger than mine and contributed to a really frightening experience on follow. If you’re a curvier climber, or weigh more than around 180 lbs this will be a very challenging pitch. 

From there we climbed straight up the crack system and met up with the tunnel pitch of Tunnel Vision. This was my second time on the tunnel pitch and I was just as blown away by how wild and fun it was. The sidewalk at the top leading to the hand crack wall is still probably my favorite terrain in RRC, and makes me feel like a kid in a children’s museum. A couple hundred feet of mostly mindless but entertaining climbing led to the top of the route and the lovely but deceptively long Angel Food walkoff. My wife and I had taken some elopement photos in the park over by the Running Man wall the previous day, and my connection with this place had never felt stronger to me. We spent the walk talking about how wild that climb had been, and how hilarious the original 5.6 rating seemed to us now after having been on it. Betsy and the Uriostes didn’t fuck around, and once again we found out

Back to the bag stash

Atras 5.9-, Icebox Canyon

Climbed on June 29, 2023. 

Fun Rating: Very Fun.

Climbing in Red Rock Canyon is often profound, frequently moving, and almost invariably enjoyable. It is my favorite place on earth thus far, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it (except maybe opening the gates earlier.) For all the joy and triumph, however, the desert requires something in return. In the canyon this often takes the form of long and strenuous approaches, or longer and more strenuous descents. On Atras, and many other climbs that Zak and I seek out, the price to be paid was in the form of bad rock. 

Zak on the first pitch.

After the immaculate varnished corner of the first pitch, full of pods and offwidth and even a hands free kneebar or two, I stood at the belay looking up at the two routes to enter the squeeze section and was displeased. To the right a small corner that petered out into a roof that looked potentially layback-able. To the left, an exposed and unprotectable face of questionable rock quality. I believe it is in these moments that we find the gray area between good and bad experiences, exultation or disappointment or worse. Which way to go? On such infrequently climbed rock there is no trail of previous climbers to follow, guiding chalk or rubber stains wholly absent from the twenty feet or so of rotten-looking white sandstone. Choose right and the day continues on its trajectory of fun and fulfillment. Choose wrong and suddenly it’s a one star climb, if you’re lucky. Always choices to be made, and all choices have consequences one way or another.

Myself starting pitch 2.

I chose left and after a blank-faced moment shared with my partner, I set off and upward. The rock was predominantly the type of soft sugary white stone that acts as a kind of Schrodinger’s hand or foothold. That being, there is an equal chance of it holding or breaking, and you won’t know until you’ve fully trusted it with your weight. I carefully picked my way through microflakes and slopers that more resembled sandboxes, the frown that had begun at the first few moves deepening with each subsequent lack of protection opportunities. Suddenly I was there, a frightening mantle into a shouldery move and the comforting cool of the squeeze chimney was against my shoulders and neck. I took a moment to catch my breath and steady my nerves before looking up and evaluating the tunnel above me. Finally, I was thinking, I can have some real fun. 

Safely below the squeeze.

Helmet off and safely stowed, I entered a tight hallway barely big enough for my chest and harnessed hips to pass. For a while the only thing that existed in my personal universe was the rock cold against my cheek and the steady sequence of breathing out, shuffling upward an inch or a few, and breathing in to stop myself and rest. At the top I turned the roof and finished the route up the easy final offwidth. Belaying my partner up, I settled into my customary quiet enjoyment of where I was and my place in the grand scheme of things. With the swifts diving in turns, and a solitary raven calling to anyone who would listen, I reflected on the climb and smiled at what I had called out to my partner while in the chimney:

"There's a lot of Herbst routes where I wonder, 'why don't people climb this more often?' This isn't one of those routes, I get it."