who would’ve predicted one year ago that shelley would be living in toronto? we were both living in sydney last year and spent these days ski mountaineering in japan – capping off our week long holiday with a big climb/ski of Hakuba Yari. at that time we had no idea we would even be moving back to japan. anyway, our holidays haven’t aligned this year and shelley is studying hard to be pilates instructor while i have been sleeping until 11am, watching Judge Judy, hanging in the MEC library, and writing posts. toronto seems like a nice city, culturally, but as far as i can tell, ontario has the topographic significance of a dinner plate and weather similar to my washing machine. so, with rain forecasted in Canmore and Squamish we decided to cash in some flight miles to Las Vegas after i wrote this critically acclaimed poem:

the weather in canmore and squamish looks bad
if we flew down to vegas then i would be glad
to cash in some miles and rent us a car
and drink all the margaritas in the airport bar
climb at red rocks, maybe hire a guide
maybe my jackson friend Kent McBride
spend some dough and have a good time
shelley gonna be my partner in crime?

naturally, it’s pretty hard to say ‘no’ to anyone who writes such wonderful poetry and we headed off to the City of Sin. Red Rock Canyon is 200,000 acres of Aztec sandstone located about 15miles west of vegas in the Mojave desert. there are over 1600 climbing routes from bouldering problems to 20+ pitch trad. in short, it’s convenient, it’s world-class, they have 300+ days of sunshine (only 4″ of rain) per year, and a lot of options.
without going into much detail, my camera detached from my harness on the 2nd pitch of solar slab gully and exploded. we salvaged the memory chip and these are the only pics we got.

the approach

dear leader

solar slabs area

belaying shelley up the first pitch before the camera ate shit and died

in the end, red rocks didn’t inspire a lot of confidence. the easy 5.1-5.3 pitches we climbed didn’t really inspire us to go tackle the 5.6-5.8 stuff i highlighted in the guidebook and seemed much harder than the 5.5-5.6 we were climbing in yosemite last june. maybe it was the just the exposure. oh well, back to the gym!! we’ll come back when we improve!