Red Rock: Epinephrine
Trip Date: October 4, 2018
Fees/Permits: America the Beautiful Pass
Last month as we were tabling an event at Vertical World to advertise for the annual Peaks of Life gala, I chatted with Connor who was back in Seattle for the week or so leading up to the gala. At some point that night, he mentioned that he would be taking a course at Red Rock in October and offhandedly asked if I wanted to go climb with him there on the few days he had off.
Ever since I moved to Seattle, with so many mountain opportunities in my own backyard, I hadn’t been traveling nearly as much as I used to. I thought about it for a couple weeks, and the warm weather sounded really nice, I wasn’t working, so I finally came around to it and thought, well why not?
So bright and early on a Thursday morning, I found myself seated on a flight in front of a very loud bachelorette party to Las Vegas. Connor picked me up at the airport, I threw my bags in the car, picked up a bagel, and headed to Red Rock for our climb.
I had talked to Shelby, who also happens to be a mutual friend, about climbing at Red Rock and she was adamant that I climb Epinephrine. I had briefly glanced over the description on Mountain Project and mentioned it to Connor.
I’ve never done a rock climb of this scale before. I think the most I’ve ever done is a 2-3 pitches, not to mention I’m terrible at chimneys and crack climbing. But as usual I more or less blindly jumped into this and Connor very patiently led me up all the pitches.
The first pitch was a weird face climb – I fell once. It was a 5.8. Good start, Amber.
The next ~4-ish pitches were all chimneys. It took me at least the first two chimneys pitches to figure out what the heck I was doing. There was a lot of sitting on the rope, mulling over which wall to face, and trying shove all the stuff hanging off my harness to one side or another. I finally figured this stuff out at some point. I was tired. Connor for some reason was enjoying himself. Not fair.
There was some more face climbing, some crack climbing (ugh, one day I’ll learn to like it), and a lot more of trying to convince myself the top was close. I almost had a mental snap before the last roped pitch. Oh, and the sun was setting so I got mega stressed.
It was physically challenging for me to figure out how to get through the chimneys but more mentally challenging to sustain climbing for so long. It was a gorgeous climb and had a top out with a view of the twinkling lights of Las Vegas in the distance (a much better perspective of the city in my opinion). Maybe one day I’ll learn how to enjoy crack climbing. But until then, you can give me chimneys.