Red Rocks: day 1 (miserable)

Ben and I had been planning a trip to Indian Creek in Utah, a crack climbing Mecca, for months. But in the week leading up to the trip it became obvious that the forecast wasn't going to cooperate, so we had to come up with an alternative, fast. We considered Bishop, our default option, Yosemite Valley, and Red Rock Canyon in Nevada. Red Rocks had been highly recommended by our friend Max and I'd read about it in Climber Girl's blog. I'd also heard people at the gym rave, and we knew it was prime Red Rocks season, so we decided to divert to Red Rocks.

The original plan had been to meet at Victorville on Thursday night and make our way up to Vegas, but come Thursday morning I woke up with the cold I'd been nursing for the past few days continuing to take its course for the worse. So we postponed our start to Friday morning. As planned we met at Victorville, arriving within 5 minutes of each other despite the three hour drive, and continued to Vegas in my car (having been told that 4x4 would be helpful if we wanted to climb in certain places). We got to Vegas around noon, and made a quick stop at Desert Rock Sports to pick up Jerry Handren's guide book (which I had been told is exceptionally good, and I concur with that assessment). The guys at DRS recommended Rio, a fresh Mexican food place, for lunch, so we went, and, frankly, we were impressed! Fed and watered, we made our way to the BLM campground, which was chock full. We checked in with the host, thinking we were screwed and would have to go to the next closest campground 20 miles away, but the host told us to camp anywhere near the overflow area and try to minimize stepping on plants. We were so grateful!

After pitching the tent, I was all fired up about hitting a crag, so we headed out to the Ragged Edges wall, which had been recommended by Bob, the local RR expert at my gym. When we got there there were other people on Ragged Edges, so we picked a 5.5 crack to the left of Ragged Edges to familiarize ourselves with the rock quality. Ben led it, and scored a 0.5 camalot in the process, and I followed. I'd been feeling crappy all day, with huge amounts of snot, coughing and a sore throat, but climbing absolutely did me in. We got off that 5.5 and my head was throbbing. My sinuses were so bad that I was in agony whenever I tilted my head even slightly. Good luck climbing like that! We stood under Ragged Edges, looking up at the thing, wanting to climb it, yet I was moaning in pain. Finally, Ben made the decision that I, in my cloudy, pained state could not bring myself to make: we should deal with the sinus infection now, before it ruins our vacation. We'd spotted an urgent care place on Charleston St on the drive to the campground, but I was concerned it would either be closed before we got there (it was about 5pm when we left the crag) or they'd refuse to prescribe antibiotics, which I was in obvious need of, and tell me to wait it out. Taking our chances, we headed there as fast as we could, and once there everything turned out well: the place was open and they prescribed amoxicillin. We dropped off the prescription at Walmart and went for a beer at a local sports bar around the corner, where we had tons of fun rooting for State (don't even remember which State!) along with everyone else in the joint, in a basketball game. After that we picked up my drugs and called it a night.