Resolution Arete, Red Rocks, Nevada
May 4, 2001

by Andy Gale

Brent and I planned to do this route at the end of April/beginning of May since earlier this year. We have big plans for long routes in the Sierra Nevada range this summer and we wanted to get an early start by doing the biggest challenge we could think of at Red Rocks in the spring. That would be Resolution Arete. It is long. It has plenty of tough (for us) pitches. At 5.10, A1 it may have only two 5.10 pitches and only 6 feet of aid, but it has a pile of 5.9 climbing and various runout, rotten, offwidth etc pitches.

It clocked in at 22 pitches for us, 24 if you count that we didn't even simulclimb the third class pitch 6, but broke it up into 3 pitches because of a minor route-finding snafu. At any rate, we eventually settled on Friday, May 4 as the target date, which happened to be my 35th birthday. A bunch of rec.climbers were in Vegas for vacation and to celebrate the 75th birthday of a much more notable climber than I, Allen Steck. Thus, we settled on that weekend so that we could hang out with them during the weekend.

We arrived in Vegas around 9PM on Thursday night and stopped by Bonnie Springs Ranch for a bit to meet up with all the rec.climbers. Then we headed off to our usual campsite and organized gear before hitting the sack at around 11pm. We got key approach beta from Craig and that turned out to be really helpful. At 4 AM the alarm went off and we threw everything back in the truck and hit the road while munching grumpily on poptarts and drinking bottled frappuccinos. We parked at the old Oak Creek campground and loaded up gear, food and water (Gatorade for me) and hit the trail at about 445.

We each had 4 liters of water or gatorade and I had 3 Luna bars and a Snickers bar. Brent also had his usual selection of energy bars. Except for a brief stop when Brent remembered that he forgot his two HB cams that complement the 1 and 2 camalots we made good time and took 1 hr 45 minutes for the approach. But we clearly could have gotten an earlier start by at least 45 minutes as we had plenty of daylight for the approach. We each carried our own supplies, I in a large fanny pack and Brent in a small backpack. The plan was to alternate leads and Brent started up the first pitch at 7 AM.

The business starts right away with a 30 foot unprotected traverse to a 5.9 offwidth crack. Nevertheless, the first 4 pitches proceeded at a good pace but not super fast. I should have extended the 2nd pitch past the crux of the 3rd on my lead but I was definitely feeling intimidated by this climb so I stopped at the normal belay since I knew the crux of pitch 3 was 9+ and PG. I could have also pushed the belay higher on pitch 4 but that probably didn't make too much difference. On pitch 5 Brent followed the path of least resistance up the runout 5.8 face and ended up setting a belay before reaching the top of the pinnacle, but he was pretty much right below the peak of the pinnacle. I didn't really register this and finished that pitch up on my lead to the top of the pinnacle, but I should have been 20 feet or so down the right side of the pinnacle. This put me above the described 5.5 slab of pitch 6 and I couldn't figure out where the 3rd class traverse was so I set up a belay and brought Brent up.

I knew the route finding would be a bit tricky here but for some reason I did not read the written description on George Bell's topo, but only Swain's written description, which was less clear (I copied both onto 1 sheet of paper). That cost us time as we explored around for a bit before discovering the traverse and then ended up breaking it up into pitches since my out of position belay caused big rope drag.

Presently though we made the base of pitch 7 on the south side of the main arête and Brent led away. I could feel that we were running late already but Brent wouldn't look at his watch (I didn't bring mine). "What did it matter?" he said, we were going to the top regardless. Fortunately, the expected heat never really materialized as it was quite windy, which kept us cool. After two more pitches I set up a belay below the roof of pitch 9 and brought Brent up. It looked hard! I don't know about Brent, but I was intimidated. Since we were clearly running behind we made no attempt to free it. Brent dangled out the roof on slings that he left behind for me and then pulled the corner and continued up free climbing from there. Presently I followed him.

In front of me was the free-climbing crux of the climb. I had been dwelling on this lead for the last 5 pitches or so. It was supposed to be a tricky 10c move with pro below you. For some reason I was thinking that the crux was high up as the pitch left the left facing thin corner. So I hopped on belay and pulled up into a good stance where I placed a 3.5 camalot and then made a really dicy reach left to get a gaston and stepped up into a thin stem. I placed a green alien and pulled another tough move and then continued up. After another 15 feet the climb suddenly got really easy and I came to the realization that I had already passed the crux! Cool. I fooled myself and certainly made the crux easier by not realizing I was doing it.

The next pitch (11) was another awkward one. It seemed that Brent was getting all of those. He ran out 50m of rope and set up a belay. When I came up I realized he was already partway up pitch 12. I thought I might be able to link the rest of 12 and 13 together but it still seemed too far so I stopped at the base of 13. After all those earlier tough pitches Brent was ready for me to lead one so I got this lead. It is a left slanting 5.9+ crack with the usual assortment of Red Rocks face holds. It was also very slightly overhanging and looked like it might be pretty strenuous. It didn't turn out to be too bad though and I proceeded up it to the clear crux. I was basically hand traversing the crack with jams and face holds.

Right below the crux was a fixed friend and I clipped that and started pulling thru the crux. Above the crack was a big jug that was well chalked and after a move I grabbed that with both hands and cranked to bring my right foot up high for the long reach out left. Suddenly there was a loud crack and the hold smacked me in the knee en route to the bottom of the cliff as I plummeted downwards. I fell about 10 feet but it was a clean fall on the overhanging rock and was over before I knew it. That was a rush! Both of us were surprised. I hung for a bit to calm down and then climbed back up to the crux. The fixed friend held my fall.

Presently I pulled thru the crux but abandoned the thought of continuing up the pitch 14 chimney as I was a bit shaken up. I set up a belay deep in the chimney and Brent led it. It turned out to be pretty easy except that getting pro in the back of the chimney was a pain as usual. On top of 14 I finally persuaded Brent to look at his watch and it was about 530. We were definitely running late but the summit did seem possible.

Pitch 15 appeared to be another dicy one as it was poorly protected face climbing up to a bulge overhang that was supposed to be 5.9. But I did get good pro for the crux move and pulled it without too much difficulty, in spite of my new distrust of any face hold on the route. Brent got to lead yet another offwidth up to the catwalk and I walked across that sidewalk to the base of pitch 18. At this point we clearly were running short of daylight and Brent continued promptly up the next pitch in the right facing corner of the gully.

Sure enough, it was offwidth too and Brent had some difficulty at the crux. He stopped at a mediocre belay below a crack/flake on the left side of the gully and I came up to him and grabbed the rack before continuing up to a blocky rotten looking roof. The Swain beta said traverse left under the roof but that looked dubious at best and I pulled up thru the corner crack at the right of the roof before stepping left around the corner. It was then easy ground to the big pine tree on a ledge at the end of the detailed topo (pitch 19).

Brent came up as dusk was falling and asked me what was next before grabbing the rack. The description was 400 ft of easy ground with a couple of 5.8 sections headed towards the notch in the summit. Dusk was falling though and we put our headlamps on before Brent headed up. The problem was that with the limited light it was difficult to look far ahead and see the path of least resistance and Brent bogged down in a notch/chimney after about 80 feet. At that point the light was gone, our energy levels were fading fast and the climbing looked difficult above Brent so we had a brief conversation over the radios and decided to call it a day.

Brent lowered off back to the ledge and we left the rope there and settled in for the night. I had a pouch space blanket and Brent had a regular space blanket. My clothing consisted of long pants, t-shirt, fleece long sleeve shirt and a light windbreaker. I think it was about 8pm when we stopped heading up, though I didn't ask. We settled in for a long uncomfortable night on the sloping ledge. The wind came and went but it didn't really get too cold. Brent's watch read about 54 at the lowest point. My fragile space blanket didn't allow much movement as it ripped quite easy but if I kept still and held it around me I stayed reasonably warm. Comfort was not an option though and the night was endless. The perfect view of the lights of Bonnie Springs Ranch in front of us was torture more than comfort.

Eventually though, the sky lightened and we set out again to finish off the climb. Brent climbed back up to his high point and decided to just bring me up to there. As I came up, the better route off to the right was now obvious in the daylight. But I decided to just lead off from where Brent was anyway since it certainly seemed doable and should be quicker than backtracking to the correct route. I ended up pulling some really rotten 5.8ish moves and presently brought Brent up when I had plenty of rope drag and could see an easy traverse to get back on route. After getting back on the easiest path I led one more quick pitch over another steep bit and at the top of that we coiled up the rope and walked up to the summit.

At that point it was about 6.30 AM on Saturday. After packing up and taking care of the necessary bodily functions we set out to find the proper descent route down First Creek Canyon. Finding the proper gully into the head of the canyon wasn't as straightforward as the TRs I had read made it out to be but after a bit of wandering we made it into the Canyon and headed down. Endless boulder hopping and bush thrashing later we made it out to the tourist trail at the head of the canyon and after reaching the road it was another tiring 10 minutes to the truck up the road at Oak Creek. We reached the truck shortly before 11 AM for a 30-hour round trip.

1 full set of HB offset nuts, brass and aluminum
3-4 DMM Wallnuts, 1 large, several medium
1 set aliens blue, green, yellow
1 set offset aliens, blue-black, blue-green, green-yellow
1 full set Camalots, 0.5-4
3 smallest offset Friends
2 HB Quadcams, (#1 and #2 camalot equivalent)
12 2-ft slings
1 60m rope
and we each carried our own personal gear.

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