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Our friend Bob M. invited us to a climbing outing at RRCNCA where we’d meet up with a few of his climbing buddies and get in some late winter outdoor climbing.

We camped at the RRCNCA BLM campground just outside the park. Pretty basic, flat spots, vault toilets, water, $10/night ($5 / night if you have that “mature citizen” card). Downside – the roads are paved with crushed white rock so every vehicle going by makes a lot of noise. Add spring break and the proximity to Vegas, and it gets pretty noisy.

We met Bob’s friends Steve, Kay, Lila, Brad, John and Tim. All were more experienced than us; they spent most of their time off doing multi-pitch climbs on big walls while Carol and I mostly spent our time at the Calico Hills crags.

If you go, I highly recommend the “Red Rocks – A Climber’s Guide” book by Jerry Handren. It follows what seems to be the latest trend of having pictures of the crags and routes instead of drawings, which makes for more time climbing and less time fumbling around looking for the route. Also, you can get showers at the Red Rock Climbing Center on Charleston Blvd. Not fancy, but hot water from above pretty much works.

Pictures – I uploaded a fairly minimal set; one thing wrong with rock climbing pictures is that – unless you have a third party hanging on rope from above or something – you get a lot of butt shots that all look the same to non-climbers. Coming off the crags, we met and talked to a couple, Mindy and Vance. Mindy is a professional photographer looking to get established in adventure photography. I can see a top rope / Grigri / handled ascender & etrier coming in pretty handy. I plan to try it on our next outing.

We had a pretty good wildlife bonanza – we saw 8 robust-looking Bighorn sheep coming out of Pine Creek canyon. We also saw chuckwallas in the wild for the first time, and some RRC wild burros.

Being Vegas, we also saw some “hootchie girls” (as Carol says) posed in not a lot of clothes in front of high-end  sports cars out in the desert.

Another highlight was dinner with friends Nancy and Randy (Vegas locals) as well as Amy and Roger (from Rockville). Roger brought one of his fabulous pies (apple this time) for dessert for all of us. Between the wine, dinner and dessert, Carol and I burned hot all night metabolizing calories.

We also ran into Ron, Ellen and Yvonne from the Southern California Mountaineering Association on the crags. Small world.

Crags / Routes:

• Something not in the guidebook I named “Crabby McSlabby” – we spent the first afternoon working slab climbs. You’ll find it in the arroyo between Tuna and Chips Wall and Newcastle Crag, I think.
• Panty Wall – I led (sport) Silk Panties, toproped Scanty Panty. Then I led (trad) The Thong and Cover my Buttress. The Panty wall is a busy place.
• Cut Your Teeth Crag – I led (sport) Impacted Molar and Interproximal Stripper.
• Riding Hood Wall – I led (trad) Physical Graffiti, two pitches. This would be my best lead up to now. Funny story – before we left home with Bob, we went out to our climbing gym for a tuneup for him as he hadn’t been able to get out climbing. Sometime during the morning, Bob was working crack climbs in our gym and I said something like “I don’t ever practice crack ’cause I suck at it.” So, of course the second pitch of Physical Graffiti was 180 feet of mostly sustained crack. My new plan is to spend some time practicing crack climbing…
• Moderate Mecca – I led (trad) Soupy Sales and Chicken Gumbo for your Dumbo. Gumbo had what looked like an interesting start with a pull up over a block, but that turned out to be pretty easy. We toproped The Singing Love Pen, but busted out trying to get over the two big overhangs. Next time we’ll climb it.

Carol is a tremendous climbing partner; she’ll follow anything I’ll lead, cleaning gear and managing belays. Also, to save my bad knee, she shoulders most of the weight for hikes in and out from the routes. Thanks, Carol!

I also noticed a big difference between last year and this year for us. Last year’s leads tended to be adrenalin-doused flop-sweat-fests for me, but this year – thanks to a better plan in the climbing gym – the leads were actually fun…

All in all, the biggest week of climbing outdoors yet for Carol and me. A great time, old friends, new friends and we plan to meet up again with the FOB’s in Yosemite in June.

In case you missed the pictures…