By Skittles
By the time we were wrapping up our play time in Arizona, I really couldn’t wait to get back to Vegas. The last time we were in Vegas we really didn’t have enough time to play and this time we were going to be back in town for two weeks for the Red Rock Rendezvous.
Not only were we looking forward to the RRR, we were also stoked to have so many of our good friends coming to the event that we hadn’t seen since Winter OR. Clint C-Dog, Mike and Sara ClimberGirl joined us for the weekend and OMG, we had an absolute blast! The social festivities kicked off in where else but the Last Vegas Strip for St. Patty’s Day. Though the boys were able to stay out of trouble we woke up to an RV full of strippers!
Fun on The Strip: check. Next stop: RRR! We had the best time over the course of the long weekend out at the Spring Mountain Ranch. A huge shout out to the folks at Mountain Gear: Paul, Phil and Alena! Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to be a part of such an amazing event…thank you, thank you, thank you! The exposure to so many climbers and mountain bikers was great and we were stoked to be picked up by the local gear shop, Desert Rock, as well as the Mountain Gear Retail Shop! Yeah!
Aside from the “work” part of the event, we had a great time with all of our friends. Our RV, became somewhat of a home base for the JTree crew and it was like having a slumber party every night. I don’t think I went to sleep one night during the event that I didn’t hear “Do you wanna pet the kitty” only to be responded with thunderous laughter to put me to sleep. It was great and I can’t wait to hang with Clint, Mike and Sara again!
Post-RRR, we were able to get some chillaxin’ in and out to the park for a couple of days of climbing. We were also able to catch up with our friends Lisa and Tim, Loren and Salone, and my cousin Wyatt! We took Wyatt to Panty Wall and he did his first outdoor rock climbs ever with no falls!! I hope he had a good time and gets out rock climbing again sometime soon.
Our time in Vegas would not be complete or made possible the one and only, John Wilder. He has in a way become part of the JTree family! We are already starting to plan our next trip to meet up somewhere, since we can’t wait until Summer OR in August!
We woke up the next morning to a nice sunny (but windy) day and were excited for our first rock climbing since Shelf Road back in Colorado! As we pulled up to the parking area, we could see that there were other climbers already up on the rock climbing in the sun, so we quickly grabbed our bags and started on the approach. According to the guidebook, there were two approaches - one which took you up by a waterfall, and the other that took you up what looked like a scree field on the map. After spending about 15 minutes looking for the trail by the waterfall we gave up and started to follow the second approach trail. What looked like a 10 minute approach from the road quickly turned into an hour of scouting around, climbing up and looking, and trying to find the path of least resistance up for us and Torrent. After several attempts at going up, we finally found a gully that was the least sketchy of all and we finally made it up.
Finally we could touch the rock!!! We figured that since this was our first time climbing at QCC and there were hardly any other climbers around, we could start on one of the four start moderates. The only other group there recommended that we start on a classic 5.9 and pointed it out to us from where we were standing. Dave was about halfway up route, when the lady who pointed it out to us came over and profusely apologized that we were mistakenly on (an equally as classic) 5.10d. Not quite the warm up we had in mind! Oh, well. It ended up being a pretty fun route, although hard for us to start on since we are climbing totally weak sauce as of late! We climbed another route there and then decided to call it a day seeing as how we now had the adventure of descending the crappy approach! I do have to say, Torrent is getting pretty good at these sketchy descents. He will walk out to the edge of the cliff, then wait for David to down climb and hoist him down. He’s even gotten so good as not to freak out and scratch David’s back while doing it!
Our second and final day at QCC was more of a scouting event than a climbing one. We FINALLY found the the main approach trail on one side of the waterfall. There was no way that we would have been able to make it up that way with the dog because of climbing the rebar ladder and super sketchy fourth class climbing! On our way back down to get the dog, we decided to mix it up a little bit and cross the waterfall to get to where the dog was. Since it had been raining the past couple of days and there was snow melting, the waterfall was raging and the ponds were huge. David easily jumped across a large wet boulder to reach the other side (so easy for people with long legs!). I was scared I was either going to fall down the waterfall (not good) or into the pond (also not good, but not as bad!). It took a couple of minutes of deliberation, but finally, I made the jump! We all made it down safely where we were greeted by the D-O-double-G!
