• Day 1, I led half way up Iron Horse, took a fall above the fixed pins. The left aider caught my foot and flipped me upside down. It’s pretty steep so that I didn’t hit anything. The aider bruised my foot a little bit, but not serious. However I was not mentally ready to move on so I asked to be lowered. I ended up following the pitch.
• I then led pitch 1 of City Park, a classic easy aid route. I cleaned it after Liang led after me.
• Day 2, I wanted to do Iron Horse but it was taken so we ended up doing City Park again. Liang led the first pitch and I led the second. It took us 5 hours in total including sorting gears.
• Beta for City Park: first pitch is a 70 meter rope pitch. Bring lots of small offset nuts. I used a 0.3 Camalot at one place. There is a crack that can take an M size Metolius SuperCam near the anchor but can be freed easily. The second pitch begins with an old quarter inch bolt followed by an awkward diehedral. The diehedral takes a handful of small brassies and a couple of large stoppers (I used #10 and #11 BD stoppers). I then used #5-#8 of Metolius cams. When the diehedral disappears, there is a bolt on the slab on the right. I did a couple free moves (not hard but very scary) above the bolt to a big ledge. I freed and french freed the rest using one 0.3 Camalot.

• Chossmaster (5.7)
• Boschido (5.10b)
• Whipsaw (5.9) Yinan’s first 5.9 lead.
• Crossing the threshold (5.8)
• Pony keg (5.9)
• Air guitar (5.10a)

• LD: Clearly Human 5.7
• TR: Twilight My Robe 5.4
• TR: Corroding Through Nocturnal Silk 5.8
• TR: When Angels Dress in Closets Deep 5.4
• TR: Incessant Wounds Still Ebbing in the Gloom Embers Bright 5.10b
• TR: A walk in the park 5.7
• TR: Black Belt Internet Spray Masters 5.10a
• LD/TR: Oh Coulee, Oh Coulee 5.8
• TR: Bad Moon Arisen 5.10b
• TR: broken glass 5.10b

Red Rocks offers some very nice moderate multi pitch routes. We spent 4 days during Thanks Giving 2009 and had an awesome time.

Day 1. Cat in the Hat. We were not early and efficient enough. We reached our cut off time (2:30pm) and rapped from pitch 4.

Day 2. Geronimo. We wasted two hours finding the approach route and rapped from the top of 2nd pitch. Very nice pitches though. The party rappelling before us had their ropes stuck twice. We untangled for them. The second time was so bad that I had to use my body weight to get it off multiple places. I also saw more than one cut rope in the crack. So I recommend doing 2 single rope rappels instead of 1 double rope rappel from the top of P2. Some people choose to rappel to the base of P2 and rappel again from there to the ground. That poses a big risk of rope getting stuck too.

Day 3. We climbed Johny Vegas and connected with Going Nuts, then did 7 rappels down to the base. We are quite efficient by now. We took the gully route for rappeling for a couple reasons: we want to scout the route in case we want to do Solar Slab later and it’s all single rope rappels. The gully is a little dirty, be careful with kicking off rocks.

Day 4. We went back to Cat in the Hat. Started around 8 and finished before 2:30. Surprisingly we were the only party that day. A little beta on the route: you can link the first two pitches to save time. Rope drag is not a problem. Pitch 3 is quite low angle. Tian and I spent 17 minutes from “climbing” command to “climbing” command. Pitch 4 is probably the crux of the route. Pitch 5 is very short, probably not even 50 feet as the topo says. The crux of pitch 6 is below the bolt, place a bomber pro before reaching the friction slab to avoid runout if you are not comfortable with friction. On the rappel side, pitch 4 is a bit tricky with regard to rope entanglement. Be very careful. pitch 2 can be rapped with a single rope (60m), barely though.

We go to Sunshine Wall and repeat a bunch of routes. Nothing new, just for the record

After breakfast at McDonalds, we drove to Icicle Butress. Temperature is in the mid 40s but there is sunshine. I led pitch 1, 3, and 4. Yinan led pitch 2. There is some serious rope drag on pitch 4. I used 4 double slings and I wish I had more. It’s almost impossible to hear your belayer on any of the pitches except the 2nd one. Very fun and moderate route and perfect weather. We had the whole route to ourselves. We got back to the car at 2pm and had lunch/dinner at South.

Day 1:

• Cinnomon slab 5.6 lead. First pitch is really fun although it feels more like 5.7 to me. Second pitch is pretty easy.
• Spiderman 5.7 lead. No wonder it’s a 4-star route. The lie back is definitely the crux. The roof is not as hard as it looks.

Day 2:

• Moscow 5.6 lead. A very pleasant route. We did it in 2 pitches with the second being a very long one (about 180 ft). The off width crack about 2/3 through the second pitch is a bit awkward for me. A couple big cams (3-4″) recommended to avoid runout. Communication is a problem especially the second pitch.
• Rabbit stew 5.7 lead. A fine sustained finger crack with plenty of features for feet on the diehedral.
• Lycopodophyta 5.7 TR.

Did every route on Write off rock

We spent a Sunday cragging at Royal Columns practicing crack climbing. We did 5 routes in total.

• Rough Boys 5.5
• Rap Route 5.5
• Level Head 5.6
• Wild Child 5.7
• Slacker 5.4