The Vegas You Never Knew — Red Rocks Climbing

Sun­ny sand­stone rock climb­ing in Las Vegas? It is the real deal- not like the smoke and mir­rors or glitz and lights you find down on the Strip. Long time guest Sharad H. and I, MM guide Marc Rip­perg­er, ven­tured out for a quick three-day trip into Red Rocks Nation­al Con­ser­va­tion Area sit­u­at­ed lit­er­al­ly 5 min­utes out­side the city limits.

Our first day in the canyon was a great warm-up day of sin­gle pitch climb­ing in Cal­i­co Basin- below you can see the stun­ning red rock. Clouds built up in the after­noon and the rare rains loomed upon the desert turn­ing every­thing a bril­liant green. 

Marc Rip­perg­er photo

After the rains we set out to do the route Solar Slab. This 5.6 is just one of the many clas­sic mul­ti pitch mod­er­ates tucked into Oak Creek Canyon. We logged over 10 pitch­es and 1,500 ft. of climb­ing; to top off the day, we cleaned up and put on our dress up shoes and gam­bled away all our assets… Just kid­ding. Instead we enjoyed a more con­ser­v­a­tive night of good food and drink down on the strip. 

Marc Rip­perg­er photo

Our final day in Red Rocks we spent in Ice­box Canyon and climbed some mul­ti­p­itch split­ter cracks on the var­nished sand­stone. Sad­ly our Vegas vaca­tion came to a close and I shut­tled Sharad back to the air­port for work on Monday. 

Marc Rip­perg­er photo

We are hap­py to announce dates for this spring and fall:

March 25 – 29
Octo­ber 14 – 18

Join our guides for a day of climb­ing, a course, or up to five days climb­ing the area clas­sics. We are also pleased to announce AMGA Sin­gle Pitch Instruc­tor cours­es hap­pen­ing dur­ing the same time peri­od. Click here to learn more about the SPI cours­es.