Climbing the Desert: Red Rocks 2011

If you've never climbed at Red Rocks turn off your computer.  Pack your climbing gear.  Get in your car and start driving to the amazing sandstone cliffs just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.  The place has everything from hard single pitch sport to 2,000' multi-pitch trad marathons.  And that is where this venue really shines, it is a trad climbers mecca.  Here are a few pics from my last trip with RMI guide Thomas Greene.

The deceptive scale downplays the size of the features at Red Rocks.  This frame is probably about 2,000'. 

Red sandstone meets white.

Thomas Greene scrambles to the top of a rock feature in Calico I.

The start of Frogland, one of my favorite climbs at Red Rocks. 

Topping out on Frogland.

Gear hanging from my harness as I belay Thomas up the 9 pitch route, Crimson Chrysalis. 

Another small belay ledge a few hundred feet up on Crimson Chrysalis. 

Thomas cranking varnish on the 8th pitch of Chrysalis.