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Climbing Crimson Chrysalis
About 18 miles outside of Las Vegas, Nevada is Red Rocks national park. It is a really nice park with a long windy drive for tourists that shuttles you around to various "scenic views" where you can stop and see the sights- mostly mountains. Like these:
This was our destination one morning in late November 2000. (When I say we, i\'m referring to Charlie, Jessie, Ben, Jeremy, Kevin and Gus (that\'s me!)). We\'re all rock climbers, and since there was rock all round us, and this was the whole purpose of our trip to Las Vegas, we decided to go up one of those suckers. The climb we decided to do was called "Crimson Chrysalis". A 9 pitch 5.8+ mixed route. 900ft with hanging belays. (That\'s climber speak for a really tall but moderate route where I have to hang on the rock by little bolts at 8 different stations.)
We woke up real early that morning, grabbed our packs filled with ropes, shoes, harnesses and assorted other climber goodies and loaded everything up into our trusty AstroVan that we had rented for the week. We take a little bit of water for each of us, but not too much since we do have to cary all this stuff on our backs. We wouldn\'t want to get weighted down with needless stuff. Needless stuff like headlamps and flashlights, since we were sure to be done with this climb before dark. A quick stop at Carl\'s Jr. (aka Hardee\'s if you live in the midwest) for breakfast and we were on our way.
Act I Scene II: Trail head to our climb.
As always, we have to do a bit of hiking before we can get to climbing. And that usually involves going uphill quite a bit. Today was no exception and after about 30 minutes of easy walking I found myself jumping from boulder to boulder up a ramp to get to the start of the climb. As we approach Crimson Chrysalis I\'m looking at it and thinking to myself that it doesn\'t really look that big. Three pitches at the most. But as I later found out, it\'s not until you get to the very top that you realize how far up you really are. Funny how that always is.
Putting all six of our brains together we manage to squeeze out a little bit of math and figure that we are going to need about three groups of two to climb up make it to the top in an orderly fashion. Jeremy and Charlie are the first team, myself and Ben make up the second, and Kevin and Jessie bring up the last.
After Jeremy and Chuck head up, it\'s Ben\'s turn. I belay him as he goes up to his first stop. Every thing is going pretty smooth so far. I put a little pack on my back with water and a power bar and start heading up the rock towards him.
It\'s cold. My fingers start to get numb and I can barely feel the rock. I hate this kind of climbing. That, and it\'s a crack/chimney climb where you are always reaching above and behind you. I don\'t really like that kind of climbing either... Oh well, I\'ll just make the most of it and try and enjoy it.
After a while of climbing, I reach the belay station where Ben is waiting. I clip into the bolts, put my weight on them (this is the scary part that takes a little getting use to), and we start trading gear. And try not to drop anything.
Ben starts climbing the next pitch, and Jessie soon catches up to me from below. I make room for him at the station so he can belay Kevin up. It\'s a little awkward, but hey, you do what you have to do.
This process continues for a little while longer... climb, belay, make room for Jessie, climb, belay, make room for Jessie... and then the climb breaks out onto the face. Ahhhhhhh. This is the kind of climbing that I like to do and that I feel I\'m better at. The climb instantly changes into something worth doing and I\'m having alot more fun.
After a while it\'s over. 4 or 5 hours later and we\'re at the top looking down and trying to figure out how we are going to get back to the bottom. But at least the view is nice.
Act I Scene III: Going down.
Well, this is going to be interesting. Here we are, all 6 of us sitting on top of a big rock 900ft off the ground. And the way back down is the way we came up- a very long drop. Charlie and Jeremy are going to be the first 2 to go down- they put their rope through the rappel anchors and lower themselves, skipping the first belay and stopping at the next- where they have to untie and clip into the wall. (Actually, it\'s clip into the wall and then untie- in that specific order... otherwise you might just end up a puddle at the base of the rock.)
Actually, I\'m just assuming that\'s what they are doing. I\'m not looking over the edge, I\'m mostly talking with Ben, Jessie, and Kevin. We decide that since the sun is starting to go down, that it would probably be best if we go in groups of 3, and since the rope hasn\'t been pulled yet for Charlie and Jeremy, we send Ben down to where they are. A couple of minutes go by and we hear the rope being pulled through the anchors.
It\'s our turn to go down next. Jessie takes 2 ropes (a red rope and a white rope) and ties them together using a special knot that in theory won\'t come apart while we are depending on it the most. We run the red end of the rope through the anchors till it comes to the knot (at which point the rope can\'t go any farther, because the knot is bigger than the eye holes in the anchor). Myself and Kevin tie into to the rope, Kevin has the red end and I have the white. We have everyone repeat "Pull the white end" (because if we try and pull the red end, we might screw ourselves by getting the knot stuck in the anchors or something) and begin weight the rope and prepare to simul-rap.
Let me depart from the story here for a second to explain what "Simul-Rapping" is. It stands for Simultaneous Rappelling, where two climbers go down the rope at the same time. It\'s faster than one person going down by themselves, which is good, but it also brings with it a whole new set of rules to live or die by.
Rule #1: Make sure the two rappelers weigh about the same. If you don\'t, it\'s going to mess up the balance that you need to perform this technique.
Rule #2: Weight the rope at the same time. Meaning, don\'t have one person put all their weight on the rope, while the other person is just standing by idly. If you do, the person standing is going to get yanked forward, slamming into the anchor, and the person weighting the rope is going to get a serious scare when he finds himself falling down (still attached to the rope) at a faster pace than he was expecting.
Rule #3: Don\'t get ahead of the other climber. Stay close to each other so the balance stays the same.
Rule #4: Unweight at the same time. Or you will get into a scenario much like in rule #2 - only this time one person finds himself below where he wants to be.
With those thoughts in mind, myself and Kevin weight the rope gently, and stare at the knot, praying that it doesn\'t come undone. (Of course we trust the knot, or else we wouldn\'t be there. But it just seems to go against all common sense to be doing what we are.)
We slowly lower ourselves to the belay station and clip ourselves into the anchors and untie from the rope. This is a weird feeling. Up until this point, we had always been tied into the rope while on the wall, but now we were not. Just some pieces of tightly sewn together cloth and some metal bolts stuck into the rock keep me and Kevin alive. I try not think about it too much.
Now only Jessie is left atop. He ties into the rope and rappels his way down to us and clips into the rock. It\'s getting a little crowded at this point, but that\'s ok, we won\'t be in this position for long.
"Pull the white rope". Good thing we remembered that. Jessie begins to pull the white rope as we thread the end through the anchors here at this belay station. We watch the red end of the rope move up the rock, and then stop. "It\'s stuck. Pull on the red rope a little bit," Jessie says, "the knot is probably stuck in a crack.". Lucky for us, the red rope hadn\'t gone completely past us yet, and we give it a little tug and Jessie pulls his end and the knot breaks free of whatever it was stuck on. Thoughts of myself being stuck on the rock, with a caught knot above us that we aren\'t able to get out flash through my head. I just hope it doesn\'t get stuck again.
Pull, thread, pull, thread. "Here it comes!" Jessie says as the rope comes falling down towards us, free from the anchors. We finish threading the white rope through the anchors and everything is once again like it was 150 ft. above us, only this time we have to remember to "Pull the white rope".
For some reason, and I don\'t remember why, we decide that Jessie and Kevin should both simul-rappel down this time. So they head down the rope, and it\'s just lonesome old me, by myself, and the lights of Las Vegas beginning to show up in the distance. That means it\'s really starting to get dark, and cold. And there is this feeling that starts to come over you that you want to hurry up- but you don\'t dare rush things, because you don\'t want to mess up what you are doing.
"Ok, we are off rappel!". I tie into to the rope (using both ends) and rappel down to Jessie and Kevin, where we repeat much the same as above, including the scares with getting the knot stuck. Jessie and Kevin both go down to the next station, and I\'m up there alone again to look at the lights as they get even brighter.
The lights are actually extremely pretty to look at. As you probably know, Las Vegas is filled with lights, and all around it is desert. So as you look around, you see nothing but darkness and this little universe, with tiny little bright stars below you and in the distance. It felt pretty cool, and I also felt pretty lucky to see this for some reason, even if I had to be the last person off the rock.
We continue this a couple more times, until we find ourselves at the last station. Next stop- solid ground.
Jessie, Kevin and myself talk a little bit, and decide to go ahead and send Kevin down first, so he can start hiking out of here with the other guys. (It\'s definitely dark now and Ben and Jeremy have a plane to catch). The rope from the other guy\'s rappel is still there, so Kevin takes it on down just fine. Jessie and I unite their rope, and drop it to the ground. Now all we have to is pull ours, thread it through the anchor, and slide on down to the ground.
Of course it couldn\'t really be that easy, could it?
Of course not. As we pull the white rope, it gets stuck. No big deal, we have gone through this before and know how to deal with this. Just pull on the red rope and - wait a minute. What do you mean the red rope is also stuck?
*%$%#*@
Minor panic begins to set it. "What the hell are we going to do?". Tug, Tug, Yank, Yank, "DAMN!!!!" Here we are, it\'s dark, it\'s cold, we need to get to the airport, we have an hour hike ahead of us to the car, and our ride to the ground has just flaked out on us.
Jessie begins to think a little bit, and comes up with a little plan. The white rope is close enough to touching the ground that if someone were to rappel down on it, and free the red rope, then whoever was left on the rock would be able to pull it and all would be well. The weight of the person on the white rope should stretch it enough so that it would touch the ground, or come very close to it.
"Ok, sounds like a plan- " I say. "I guess you will go down and untie the red rope?".
"Yea".
We tie off the white rope to the anchors that we are at, so Jessie has something a little more stable to attach to than a knot stuck somewhere in the rock. He rappels down to the red rope, futzes around with it for a little bit and shouts up to me- "I got it, wait till I get down to the ground!".
He gets down and I undo the knot at the anchor. I take some deep breaths and quadruple check everything I\'m doing to make sure I don\'t screw up. I pull the white rope, it comes neatly down, it gets all threaded up and I unclip myself from the bolts for the last time and head down to ground.
What a trip. And it wasn\'t even over at this point, we still had to get back to the car - and in the dark.
I\'ll spare you the details, it would probably double the length of this story as it is, so I\'ll just give you some highlights:
We got lost. It\'s hard to follow a trail at night, especially so in the desert where everything looks the same.
There was alot of screaming. Cactus needles hurt. Cactus needles hurt alot. Every once and an while you would hear someone shout in agony as they ran into a cactus that they swear wasn\'t there a second ago. I had 2 or 3 jump out in front of me. Nothing like brushing your leg across one of those suckers.
I got to do a forward flip! I was at the front of the group, as we were going down a small hill to what looked like a dried up creek bed. As I was going down, I felt something keep my right foot from lifting up. And to compensate and keep my balance I quickly tried to raise my left foot and put it in front of me. But it of course was stuck under the same thing that my right foot was. And as I was flying through the air, I knew without even looking back that I had gotten my feet stuck under some barbwire, and that the landing was going to hurt. I was right on both accounts.
2 hours later and alot less blood from minor mishaps, we found the road. And eventually the car.
Jeremy and Ben missed their flight, but were able to get ahold of another one that was leaving in 15 minutes (talk about making it to the airport just in time).
The rest of us headed back to the hotel and slept.
The End.
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All things copyright © 2001, 2002 August Mueller
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