March in the Wild Wild West

Red Rocks

After returning to Texas from South America, I took a little break from climbing in February. Once March rolled around I was anxious to hit the road again. The next destination was Red Rock just outside of Las Vegas. I met up with my friend Chris from Cali and we spent 10 days knocking off some of the easy classics of the area. The weather was less than ideal for several days including cold temps, rain and even snow. However we were able to climb Cat and the Hat, Birdland, Olive Oil, Black Orpheus, Solar Slab, Crimson Chris, and some others. Chris was worn out and decided to head home leaving me to troll for some partners, I ended up climbing Ginger Crack with  a solid climber named Tico, we even resucued some Kansas college students on the way out (there is a funny story to that).

Chris and I atop Black Orpheus

 Next my good friend Mark and his brother Allan fley in from Hawaii, and we headed to Zion for some big wall fun. They were going to do a route on Moonlight Buttress and I was going to solo Lunar X.

Somewhere in the desert

Alan working on his tan

Flying Monkeys Mark and Ammon

After fixing the boys decided to bail while I continued on. I found some of the mandatory free climbing challenging while rope soloing, it would have been trivial with an actual belay. I made it to the top of pitch 4 and was almost killed by a huge block that a party above me knock down, it was a close call and missed me by about 3 feet however I was hit by some of the exploding debri that rung my bell pretty good. I decided to bail at that point but bivied for the night since it was getting late and I was pretty tired. The guys above me had dropped stuff all day including a cam that just missed me and several small rocks, at that point I was mentally fried and ready to go down.

Cold Water

Zion Bivi

Zion

My Feet

Back to Vegas and a littly partying with the bros and some of there firends before they headed back to the Island.

The Strip

I climbed Jubilant Song yesterday on Windy Peak and it was very windy. Today is a rest/laundrey day and will meet up with my friend Karsten this weekend. I am kind of ready to get out of vegas at this point, I think a week or two is about all I can  handle from this place. I am looking forward to heading to Indian Creek for the Month of April.
That is the latest form me.