After a short stop over in Moab for Jen to ride with some friends before we took off for good, we headed for Red Rocks. The drive was a complete nightmare, starting off with a nasty dust storm just outside town, and eventually deteriorating into a complete blizzard which chopped the drive into two days. But, by the time we got to Vegas it was great weather.
The camping situation here is rather interesting at the moment. The official campground is basically always full, so you can either drive 45 minutes each way to a nice BLM hang, or you can camp in the pullout at the edge of town known as Skid Row. We chose the latter, as it was much more convenient, and every van there was full of people just like us.
Going into this trip, Jen and I are both coming off some pretty serious injuries. I spent a year recuperating my back after two injuries. It’s good now as long as I stay on the PT, but I’m now fighting a shoulder injury as well. Jen has a finger that’s been slowly healing for months and she has a displaced rib that’s causing her a lot of issues. Remember when we said we have to do this trip before we get too old? I hope we didn’t already get too old.
Either way, this means that we’re keeping it pretty low key on the climbing front and slowly building ourselves back into the sending machines we hope to be in a couple months. Or, let’s face it, ever again. I have a lot of goals for this trip that require me to be a shitload stronger than I am right now, and I’m trying to find the balance between getting fit and healing.
During our five days of climbing here we did two classic multi pitch routes, one not-so-classic multi pitch route, and two days of just straight up cragging in order to get in more pitches. Plus a quick bike ride with the Murphy dog to make sure he got plenty of exercise.
We left earlier than we had planned because it was getting a little hot, the Vegas scene was bumming us out a bit, and there were a couple things (kinda) between Red Rocks and Yosemite that we wanted to see before we got too far North. So, after snagging one last shower at the local climbing gym (which is straight out of 1998), we hit the road and headed toward Death Valley.
