Red Rocks, Joshua Tree, and to the Border!

Coop on Warmup Handcrack in Indian Creek

Craig sending in the dinosaur suit on Halloween in Indian Creek

After departing Utah, we headed southwest to Red Rocks, Nevada.  We were on a mission to put up some longer multipitches after doing a weeks worth of single pitch cragging in Utah.

On our first day, we climbed a classic 9 pitch 5.8 route called Crimson Chrysalis.  It was a long day of steep,  juggy sandstone and three person hanging belayswith Craig and Skyler.  The climb is beautiful!  All 9 pitches are extremely steep and continue up one nonstop face all the way to the summit.  There wasn't a single belay ledge all the way to the top!  After reaching the summit, we started our rappel and ended up finishing the last three rappels in the dark on a semi-epic.

Unfortunately, this time of year, the days are too short to put up the other classics we were looking at (Epinephrine mainly) and the weather rolled in.  It ended up getting super windy and blew the rain around Even a little snow came through.  We ended up heading to a local Nevada biker bar for the evening and sticking to some single pitch routes the next day.  We dinked around and headed south to Joshua Tree  in hope of warmer weather!

Coop on the classic cave route that's perfect for sunny, hot, desert weather

Believe it or not, cracks like this aren't even named in Indian Creek.  This was labeled "unknown crack 5.10"

The Supercrack of the Desert.  Excellent climb!

We reached Zion and this is from the top of Angels Landing hike. 

Our Zion campsite

enroute to Angels Landing

Joshua Tree Camping

Craig working through "Head Over Heels 5.10a" 

Head over heels 5.10a

the original "J-Tree"

5.10X

The brutal desert life

a small monster on a 5.5x (Skyler)

Craig being awesome

Skyler racing the evening light on Double Cross in Joshua Tree 5.7 classic

Scouting out a boulder problem called pigpen in the dark!  

Skyler Sending pigpen V4 the next day!

We reached Joshua Tree. It was the coldest yet!  We were getting frozen fingers in the shade and so we had to stick to climbing in the sun.  However!  we managed to put up some of the harder routes of the trip and I managed to put up a few trad 5.10s myself.  Stoked on that!

Illusion Dweller 10.B in Joshua Tree.  

There is a place in Joshua Tree called "The Chasms".  The locals say the tradition is to walk through these passages at night with no headlamps.  It involved squeeze chimneys, lying on your back in small passages, boulder hopping, and it's really not recommended unless you meet one of the other dirt baggers who can show you through!

Now, we are in LA and getting ready to cross the border to Mexico!  We will be departing day after tomorrow from here at 2am to race through Tijuana and down the peninsula to put some miles between us and the border.  After that, it's surfboards, coronas, and spearfishing!  I bought a legitimate speargun that looks like something from James Bond. I'm excited to see if I can manage to bring in some dinner.

I apologize for my lack of updates but my computer is giving me the blue death screen and I'm hoping to get it repaired tomorrow before we cross borders.