Bishop and Red Rocks

Red Rocks the morning after a storm

Sorry it's been so long since we last posted.  I guess that we've been a bit lazy.  Anyway, when we wrote our last post we'd just arrived in Bishop.   We stayed there for about two weeks, mostly bouldering.  The weather was more or less perfect for climbing - sunny and around 10 - 15 degrees during the day, with virtually no wind (unfortunately it was very cold at night - down to minus 6 or 7, which is pretty cold in our unheated van).  I'd definitely recommend late autumn as a good time to visit Bishop, certainly better than the spring, which was warmer but a lot more windy.

We did some good problems, including ones that had beaten us last time we were here.  Innes in particular was climbing really well, getting up test pieces such as the Hulk at the Happys and High Plains Drifter at the Buttermilks, and lots of other V6's and V7's.

Innes sticks the crux move of the Hulk

Innes on High Plains Drifter

Innes tops out on High Plains Drifter - they have bloody big boulders here at the Buttermilks

I made a prolonged assault on  Ironman Traverse (V4) but didn't quite manage it.  I haven't given up though - we might go back to Bishop before we leave the States, because it's pretty close to Los Angeles where we have to end up.

Me on Ironman Traverse - what a cool problem and not a bad view either

Me on An Artist of Leisure at the Happys

We left Bishop mainly because we were knackered and had run out of skin on our fingertips.  We didn't really have a plan about what we were going to do for the next few weeks.  Now that it's winter it is a question of following the good weather around, and you never know if it's going to be warm enough to climb in a place until you get there and try it out.  We wanted to find somewhere where we could climb routes rather than bouldering, so we decided to go to a place called the Virgin River Gorge in Northern Arizona, just north of Las Vegas.  On the way we called in at Red Rocks (just outside Las Vegas) and did a route called Frogland, 5.8.  This was good but not what we'd planned to do - we were planning to do a slightly harder route called Dream of Wild Turkeys.  However when we got to the bottom of it just after sunrise we found two rucksacks and two pairs of shoes at the bottom.  Shortly afterwards a police helicopter started buzzing around, and dropped off two rescuers who told us there were some climbers stuck halfway up the route who'd been there all night.  Apparently they had got their ropes stuck while descending by abseil, so they couldn't get down.  We felt very sorry for them.   It had been around freezing the night before, and there are 14 hours of darkness at this time of year.  This would have felt like a long time spent on a ledge not big enough to sit down on, with probably not very warm clothes.  The rescuers were planning to descend from around 500 feet above the stuck climbers and then lower them, so asked us not to go up in case we got in the way.  From what we could see it took them several more hours to reach the climbers, who must have been very cold and hungry.

Innes on Frogland

Then we carried on to the Virgin River Gorge.  This has really good climbing on European style limestone, but it is spoilt by the fact that there is a motorway running through the bottom of the gorge.  The traffic noise is so bad you can't think, or have a conversation, so we only stayed a couple of days.  After this we felt it was time to have a few days break from climbing, so we headed to Zion National Park.  Here we admired the huge sandstone cliffs but didn't do any climbing.  It all looked a bit scary and serious.

Zion Canyon.  The buttress in the foreground on the left which is catching the light is the famous Moonlight Buttress

From Zion we were planning to go to the Grand Canyon.  I had been there last year with Sheona, but Innes hadn't seen it.  After that we were going to head to southern Arizona, in the hope of finding some warmer weather.  We didn't make it to the Grand Canyon, because the weather had other ideas.  We stopped off for the night halfway between Zion and the Grand Canyon, in the middle of the desert.  When we woke up in the morning it was suspiciously quiet and gloomy outside.  We looked outside and it was snowing heavily.  Our plans quickly changed to getting to civilisation as quickly as possible.  After a slightly hairy drive through a blizzard, we made it to Flagstaff in Arizona.  Here it continued to snow and for a while we thought that we would be stuck for the night in a supermarket carpark, with the temperature forecast to be minus 15.  I don't think any harm would come to us if we got stuck in a blizzard in the van (after all we have plenty to eat and warm clothes) but it would be very boring.  Luckily in the afternoon it stopped snowing and we managed to escape to Phoenix, which is 5,000 feet lower and 150 miles south of Flagstaff, and much warmer. 

The van snowed in in Flagstaff - it is definitely not adapted to driving in snowy conditions

We'd planned to go climbing at a place called Queen Creek Canyon near Phoenix, but the night we arrived it snowed again - practically unheard of in Phoenix.  We began to feel a bit like the snow was following us around, especially when we got the weather forecast and saw that the only place that it was snowing was Arizona.  In the end we gave up on Arizona and came back to Red Rocks in Nevada, where we've spent the last week.  Until today the weather has been perfect, and we've been doing some good climbing, although it is too cold to do any of the longer routes in the canyons. 

On our rest day we discovered some brilliant hot springs just outside of Las Vegas.  If you are ever in the area they are well worth checking out - just google Goldstrike Canyon Hot Springs and you'll get all the info you need to find them.  The springs are in a canyon, and you have to walk about two miles to get there, which keeps the crowds away.  There are lots of different pools which are different temperatures, from very hot to pleasantly warm, and including the one in the picture which was very like a jacuzzi.  The hot water seemed to do something strange to us though, as we found the walk back up the canyon after a couple of hours' soaking extremely difficult.  Innes has also heard that there is an amoeba that lives in hot springs that can cause an extremely rare but fatal infection if it gets into your nose, and is trying to convince me that the fact that he is coughing and sneezing is the first sypmtom.  I think it's more likely that he's got a cold!

Me enjoying the hot springs and a rare opportunity to get clean

Today there has been a bit of a snow shower at Red Rocks, which has left the scenery looking very beautiful.  It's supposed to be sunny again tomorrow, so we're planning to stick around for a bit.

Red Rocks this morning

Not that long until the end of our trip now, and it being Christmas we are thinking of you all at home, and looking forward to seeing you soonish.  I'm also looking forward to a centrally heated house.  And our big question at the moment is what should we have for Christmas dinner?  It's difficult to know what to make without an oven.  Any suggestions welcome.

best wishes

Ruth