RAINBOW WALL

The Rainbow Wall is the biggest wall in the Red Rocks. I always wanted to climb it so it was a treat when Chip and I decided to fly to Vegas in 2008 and do the Original Route (5.12a). The plan was to spend 2 nights back in Juniper Canyon – first at the base of the wall and wake up to do our climb, and the next night in the bottom of the canyon so we could climb on the Brownstone Wall the next day. This wall is directly across the canyon from the Rainbow Wall, so we looked at it all day from belay stances. It looked great!

The Original Route on the Rainbow Wall was first climbed in 1973 by my frequent climbing partner at that time, Larry Hamilton. Back then, he mentioned that he and his buddy Joe Herbst were doing some amazing climbing around Las Vegas and they had done a big wall. I politely laughed, thinking there’s no climbing of any worth near Vegas. But now we know differently. Their Original Route has since become a brilliant 14-pitch free climb with multiple sections of safe 5.12a. Now the climb is rigged up with bolted anchors at every belay, and you just rap the route with a single rope when you top out. Very civilized.

The climb came off as planned, and we loved the route. At some point midway up, we became aware of another party coming up fast below us. We were moving pretty fast ourselves and topped out before they reached us, but as we descended we passed them and got this perfect view of Tom Moulin, local master, just walking up one of the 12a sections on pitch 10 (you could swear you were in Eldorado). He and his partner were linking Jetstream (5.12c), in adjacent Pine Creek Canyon, to the Rainbow Wall – and they were moving pretty darn fast. Chip and I had done Jetstream the year before and found it burly and under-rated. I was pretty impressed with these boys.