Lady Luck - Red Rocks

Cassondra and I climbed Lady Luck (5.7, 1000ft) this past weekend. It felt like I spent hours researching the First Creek Slabs descent route on Mountain Project. I made this map to save others time. Each dot represents an anchor location:

Gear: .4 cam, doubles of .5 to 3" cams, C3 micro cams, set of nuts, 8 single draws, 3 double draws, Petzl Reverso, 2 cordellettes, 4 lockers

The night before the climb, we stopped at Desert Rock Sports to pick up a new 70m rope. No one who posted a trip report descended with a 60m, so buying a 70m seemed like the sensible thing to do. We started up the First Creek Trailhead around 6am. It was pitch dark and the temperature was a chilly 45 degrees. In the darkness we got spooked by some bright eyes staring at as from behind a bush, but it turned out to be a deer.

Starting up pitch 1

Finding the base of the climb was not difficult but we spent about 30 minutes at the start flaking the new rope. It was an expensive rope and I expected it to be the best rope I’d ever seen. Instead it tangled itself into a birds nest of coils. I named it curly. We finally started climbing around 8am.

Top of pitch 2, big ledge

The first pitch was 35 meters and I built the anchor in a crack just above a big flat terrace ledge. Once I belayed Cassondra up, I broke the anchor down and she just belayed me sitting on the terrace below. The second pitch trended left for 40 meters and ended on an even larger ledge with some trees. It was shady and had enough room to walk around and take a bathroom break.

Pitch 3 anchor, looking up

The third pitch trended left again, was 35 meters and stopped in a crack where we could take advantage of the shade. Pitch 4 was 45 meters, partly along the left facing dihedral. The top of the dihedral was one of the first crux moves of the climb. I built a hanging belay just above a bush growing in the dihedral.

Cassondra climbing while talking to mom. Most of this climb goes at 5.3

The fifth pitch was easy slab climbing without much protection, especially on the lighter colored rock. At this point the rope was getting very tangled and at one point I had to maintain a stance on blank slab for what seemed like over 5 minutes while Cassondra worked on the rope. My last piece of pro was probably 30 feet below me and it was a bit unnerving. Some swear words might have been uttered. I decided to end the pitch after 50m so I could get off belay and we could untangle the rope.

Lead climber’s nightmare

With the rope issues figured out, I ran pitch 6 almost the entire rope length (~65m). Pitch 7, the final pitch, was 35 meters and what seemed like the most sustained crux of the whole climb. It was a right facing dihedral, but not very long and lots of protection options (#2 and #3’s mostly). We topped out around 3:30pm. No one else was on the climb. The two other climbers we saw on another route has already finished and descended.

Following one of the upper pitches

From the finish, you have to scramble up a vegetated gully and exit the gully to climbers left. After you exit, traverse some light colored ledges into another gully. Follow this gully all the way to its base where a huge pine tree grows. The descent is to your left.

Topped out. Still a scramble up from here

We tried hard to hurry on the rappels but there was 6, plus some down climbing so we didn’t get back to the ground until well after dark. The first 5 rappels were bolts with cordelettes, the 6th was from slings on a tree. Even with a 70m rope, some down climbing was required. We finished the rappels around 7:15 pm and it took another 30 minutes of blind wandering to find my backpack at the base of the climb.

The descent. Fourth rappel anchor visible in lower left

We had one final scare on the walk out when we stumbled upon a herd of eye balls watching us in the dark. It turned out to be a pack of wild donkeys grazing in the valley. We arrived back at the parking lot at 9pm. I think we did awesome for our longest climb to date (1000 feet). It’s hard to believe Cassondra only started climbing less than 2 months ago. She also put up some of her first leads in Calico Basin the next day and they were not easy. Now that we know the area, I’d love to come back and try Hot Flash.

Final rappel